Michele Goodwin on ‘The Week in Health Law’ Podcast

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This week, University of California, Irvine Law Professor Michele Bratcher Goodwin offers a detailed and insightful analysis of an increasingly adversarial relationship between women and the state. In a series of articles, Goodwin has demonstrated that pregnancy is being policed by an array of oppressive state laws, many of which are being used in contexts far removed from their legislative intent. She asks in “The Pregnancy Penalty,” “If a woman is fourteen times more likely to die during pregnancy and childbirth than terminating a pregnancy through a legal abortion, why do some lawmakers resist support for contraception and seek to criminalize abortions?” Today’s podcast includes many troubling answers, rooted in historical and social theoretical analysis.Our conversation includes a detailed look at leading abortion cases and their limitations. We end with a disturbing narrative about under-age marriages in the US, often in circumstances that otherwise would be statutory rape. Goodwin describes the failed institutions that have made underage marriage a global problem.

Michele Goodwin is a Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California, Irvine with appointments at the School of Law; Program in Public Health; Department of Criminology, Law, & Society; Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies; and Stem Cell Research Center. Her publications include six books and over 80 articles and book chapters on law’s regulation of the human body, including civil and criminal regulation of pregnancy and reproduction, reproductive technologies, human trafficking (for organs, sex, and marriage), and tissue and organ transplantation.

The Week in Health Law Podcast from Frank Pasquale and Nicolas Terry is a commuting-length discussion about some of the more thorny issues in Health Law & Policy. Subscribe at Apple Podcasts, listen at Stitcher Radio Tunein, or Podbean, or search for The Week in Health Law in your favorite podcast app. Show notes and more are at TWIHL.com. If you have comments, an idea for a show or a topic to discuss you can find us on Twitter @nicolasterry @FrankPasquale @WeekInHealthLaw

Nicolas P. Terry

Nicolas Terry is the Hall Render Professor of Law at Indiana University McKinney School of Law where he serves as the Executive Director of the Hall Center for Law and Health and teaches various healthcare and health policy courses. His recent scholarship has dealt with health privacy, mobile health, the Internet of Things, Big Data, AI, and the opioid overdose epidemic. He serves on IU’s Grand Challenges Scientific Leadership Team, working on the addictions crisis and is the PI on addictions law and policy Grand Challenge grants. His podcast is at TWIHL.com, and he is @nicolasterry on Twitter.