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The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.
baby feet

The Freedom to Choose (to Give Your Babies Away)

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By Martin Guggenheim

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s remarks during the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization oral arguments from last December reveal, as clearly as anything, the futility of continuing to debate the subject of abortion with religious zealots — whether those zealots are stalking abortion providers, harassing women outside of clinics, or wearing judicial robes. The chasm is simply too wide. On the one side is a deeply held belief that terminating a pregnancy means murdering a human being. On the other side is an equally firmly held belief that denying a woman the right to terminate an unwelcomed pregnancy treats her as an incubator and denies her agency over her own life, and, as a result, constitutes gender discrimination and allows the religious beliefs of some to control the lives of all.

We can spill all the words we want, but nothing clarifies more clearly the uselessness of bothering to continue this discourse. On one level, Justice Coney Barrett’s remarks are simply preposterous; they reveal a cluelessness about the human condition and the meaning of bearing a child and then placing a newborn for adoption at birth. 

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Abortion rights protest following the Supreme Court decision for Whole Women's Health in 2016

The Danger of Forced Pregnancy

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By Laura Briggs

When Amy Coney Barrett suggested that adoption and safe-haven laws were an adequate substitute for abortion care for people who did not want to be pregnant, she was essentially insisting that they do a kind of high-risk, uncompensated labor to produce a baby or child for adoptive families like hers. 

Like the anti-abortion movement that supported her nomination for the Supreme Court, Coney Barrett is not shy about acknowledging that she is in favor of forced pregnancy, and that this labor — in both senses of the term — could benefit other people who were childless or had fewer children than they wanted. 

We know this work has value; people who hire women in the United States to carry a surrogate pregnancy pay them $30,000 to $50,000. Denying abortion to women who want them, and then expecting them to relinquish the resulting baby for adoption, is asking them to do that same labor for free.

As Black feminist legal scholar Pamela Bridgewater has pointed out, there is a word for forcing people to do unpaid reproductive labor on behalf of others: enslavement. In fact, as she argues, forced pregnancy was key to the historic labor system of slavery in the United States — the children of enslaved mothers were themselves enslaved, and once the importation of African people for purposes of enslavement was banned in the United States in 1808, it was how slavers kept the system going and increased their own wealth, including by raping enslaved women. Slavery was outlawed in the United States with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, but Coney Barrett apparently means to reinstitute a version of it. 

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Washington, DC, USA, May 5, 2022: people protest the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion

Adoption, Family Separation & Preservation, and Reproductive Justice

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By Gretchen Sisson

When a draft of the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health was leaked last week, its content was a jarring shock for many. Over a few days, the surprise of the leak and the appall at the decision narrowed into specifics, and more people noticed what might have been missed in first reading: in a footnote, a passing citation from a fourteen-year-old report from the Centers for Disease Control that read, “the domestic supply of infants relinquished at birth… had become virtually nonexistent.” 

In coverage, this note sparked rage anew at the connection between abortion bans and increasing the supply of adoptable infants being made overt. Yet, much like those of us who study abortion in this country were not surprised by the draft of the decision, those of us who study adoption were even less surprised by this note. In the Dobbs oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett told us this was about adoption – and pre-Roe history has shown us how closely adoption and abortion are linked rhetorically, if not actually in people’s pregnancy decision-making. Yes, the Dobbs decision will also be about constraining people’s choices and controlling their lives and futures to conform to fundamentally regressive ideas about family, gender, and race. But then again: most often, so is adoption.

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KYIV, UKRAINE - Feb. 25, 2022: War of Russia against Ukraine. A residential building damaged by an enemy aircraft in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.

Misplaced Skepticism on Accountability for War Crimes Against Health Care in Ukraine

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By Leonard Rubenstein

Russian attacks on hospitals, ambulances, and health workers in Ukraine — including more than 180 attacks confirmed by the World Health Organization, and double that number reported by the Ministry of Health — have gained global attention. In one case, viral photos document the evacuation of pregnant women, including one on a stretcher who later died, from a maternity hospital in Mariupol destroyed by Russian shelling. It is likely that investigations will show that many of these acts are war crimes. Accountability for these crimes must be pursued.

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London, England, UK, January 22nd 2022, Long covid symptoms sign on pharmacy shop window UK.

Mobilizing Long COVID Awareness to Better Support People with Acquired Disabilities

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By Marissa Wagner Mery

Long COVID exposes an often-unacknowledged facet of disability: that one is far more likely to develop a disability than be born with one.

Estimates suggest that, at present, approximately 10 – 20 million Americans are now afflicted with the array of debilitating symptoms we now call Long COVID, which include fatigue, shortness of breath, and cognitive dysfunction or “brain fog.”

The upswell of advocacy and awareness around Long COVID should be mobilized to call attention to and address the challenges faced by newly-disabled adults, particularly with respect to employment.

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Sign at train station in Berlin that describes free support for pet owners coming from Ukraine.

Ethical Challenges Associated with the Protection of Pets in War

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(Photo: Sign at the central train station in Berlin (Berlin Hauptbahnhof) that offers free support for pet owners coming from Ukraine. Courtesy of Kristin Sandvik.)

By Kristin Bergtora Sandvik

Introduction

The care for animals rapidly became a part of the humanitarian narrative of the attack on Ukraine.

There are countless accounts of the efforts of activists, shelters and zoo staff to keep animals alive, as well as underground operations to get them to safety. And, as Ukrainians flee for their lives, they are frequently accompanied by their pets.

EU initiatives and advocacy efforts by animal rights groups pushed receiving countries to modify entrance requirements, waive fees, provide veterinary services, and shorten or eliminate quarantine times. The EU announced a special derogation in Regulation 2013/576, allowing the import of Ukrainian refugee pets without meeting standard requirements. Many governments have welcomed Ukrainian pets with or without their owners, and without documentation, rabies vaccine, and/or microchip.

Humanitarian action is typically human centric; this broad societal acceptance of pets as legitimate refugee companions, and the attendant rapid regulatory accommodations, are unique developments. In this blog, I draw on perspectives from disaster studies, international humanitarian law (IHL), refugee studies, and animal studies to articulate a set of ethical dilemmas around classification and policymaking that arise when pets are recognized as a humanitarian protection problem.

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Two women shaking hands.

An Empathetic Ear: Strategies for Employer Health and Wellness Negotiations

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By Stacey Lee, Jacobo Guzman, and Gladys Johnson

Amid federal and state vaccine mandates, labor shortages, and increased requests for remote work flexibility, employers find themselves in an evolving landscape with less latitude over their organization’s workplace. As a result, employers and employees find themselves in conversations about crafting a “new normal” in which worker well-being is featured more prominently than before.

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Person examining psilocybin mushrooms in lab.

Microdosing Under the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act: A Definite Maybe

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By Dave Kopilak

In November 2020, Oregon voters passed the Oregon Psilocybin Services Act (the “Act”), of which I was the primary drafter. This piece of legislation legalizes and regulates the manufacturing of psilocybin products and the provision of psilocybin services under Oregon law. The manufacture, sale, and use of psilocybin products under the Act will continue to be illegal under federal law.

The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) is the state agency that will regulate the program. The Act provides for a two-year program development period that began on January 1, 2021 and that will end on December 31, 2022. The OHA is currently engaged in the rulemaking process and will adopt final rules by no later than December 31, 2022. The OHA will begin receiving license applications on January 2, 2023, and the first licensed businesses likely will begin operating in the first half of 2023.

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Woman experiencing headache lying in bed in darkened room.

Small Doses of Psychedelics for Cluster Headaches

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By Bob Wold

One understudied condition for which small doses of psychedelic substances such as psilocybin may be beneficial is cluster headache.

As founder and executive director of the advocacy group Clusterbusters, I have seen firsthand, as a patient and an activist, that, despite its modest name, cluster is far from “just” a headache. It is a chronic pain condition that lasts “on” and “off” for months or years, often with no hint as to its origin. Estimates suggest that one in 1,000 people – which equates to over 332,000 Americans – suffer from cluster headache.

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A paper figure of a cat that fills the shadow of a lion. 3D illustration.

A Proportionate Response to Microdosing

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By James Fadiman

Law and policy around microdosing of psychedelic substances should reflect its proportionally low risks.

“Microdosing” refers to the practice of consuming very low doses of psychedelic substances, about 1/10th to 1/20th of a typical dose, primarily of psilocybin-containing mushrooms or lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). Doses typically are taken intermittently, over several weeks, and they do not interfere with normal daily activities, unlike the powerful consciousness-altering effects of higher doses.

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