Personhood - Bill of Health

The Irony of Pro-life Efforts to Grant Embryos Legal Personhood

May 15, 2023May 5, 2023 Dov Fox Leave a comment

By Gerard Letterie and Dov Fox

The overruling of Roe v. Wade has emboldened pro-life lawmakers to confer legal personhood status on early-stage embryos outside of pregnancy as well, including in the context of assisted reproduction. Recognizing embryos as legal persons, it is said, promotes a “culture of life.” And yet treating embryos as persons would actually undermine a promotion of human life, in this critical sense: helping people to have the children they want and are otherwise unable to have.

Washington, DC, USA - December 1, 2021: Abortion rights rally at the Supreme Court, Jackson Women's Health v. Dobbs.

Assisted Reproduction in a Post-Dobbs US

May 8, 2023May 23, 2023 Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel and Seema Mohapatra

Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) such as in-vitro fertilization (IVF) face an uncertain future as anti-abortion policymakers and advocates work to restrict access to reproductive care post-Dobbs.

Until last summer, modern ART had been performed in the United States with the Constitutional protection for abortion care in the background. After Dobbs, fertility doctors and patients have begun to realize that strict abortion laws and policies affect not only those who do not wish to continue a pregnancy, but also people who very much desire to have a child.

File folders containing medical records.

How Dobbs Threatens Health Privacy

January 10, 2023January 9, 2023 Nicolas P. Terry Leave a comment

By Wendy A. Bach and Nicolas Terry

Post-Dobbs, the fear is visceral. What was once personal, private, and one hoped, protected within the presumptively confidential space of the doctor-patient relationship, feels exposed. In response to all this fear, the Internet exploded – delete your period tracker; use encrypted apps; don’t take a pregnancy test. The Biden administration too, chimed in, just days after the Supreme Court’s decision, issuing guidance seeking to reassure both doctors and patients that the federal Health Privacy Rule (HIPAA) was robust and that reproductive health information would remain private. Given the history of women being prosecuted for their reproductive choices and the enormous holes in HIPAA that have long allowed prosecutors to rely on healthcare information as the basis for criminal charges, these assurances rang hollow (as detailed at length in our forthcoming article, HIPAA v. Dobbs). From a health care policy perspective, what is different now is not what might happen. All of this has been happening for decades. The only difference today is the sheer number of people affected and paying attention.

red and green silhouette illustration of women having a conversation.

The Not-So-Sacred Human Genome: What South Africans Think About Heritable Human Genome Editing

December 2, 2022December 2, 2022 Donrich Thaldar Leave a comment

By Donrich Thaldar

South Africans have issued a clarion call for research to move ahead on health-related applications of heritable human genome editing (HHGE), finds my research group’s new public engagement study — the first of its kind in Africa.

The study engaged a diverse group of 30 South Africans in three evenings of deliberations on the governance of HHGE. The methodology entailed (a) facilitated deliberation between the participants with the aim of finding consensus, although consensus was not forced; and (b) ensuring well-informed deliberations by providing participants with balanced, internationally peer-reviewed information about HHGE and the ethical arguments relating to it. The results of these deliberations are summarized briefly below.

American Constitution - We the people with US Flag and gavel.

Abortion Bans Threatening Pregnant Patients’ Lives Are Unconstitutional

October 5, 2022October 5, 2022 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By James G. Hodge, Jr., Jennifer Piatt, Erica N. White, Summer Ghaith, Madisyn Puchebner, and C. McKenna Sauer

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion, laws went into effect in multiple states that restrict when abortions may be provided, including during potentially life-threatening emergencies.

To the extent highly restrictive, amorphous, and indeterminate abortion bans contravene physician implementation of life-saving interventions for pregnant patients — and thus infringe upon the Fourteenth Amendment’s protection of the right to life — they are unconstitutional.

Legal Preparedness for Aging and Caregiving

September 16, 2022September 16, 2022 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Sharona Hoffman

During 2013 and 2014, I endured a very difficult 18 months. Both of my parents died, my mother-in-law died, and my husband was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at the age of 55. As I went through all of this, I learned a great deal about getting older, getting sick, facing the end of life, and caregiving. As a result of my personal experiences and my professional background as a Professor of Law and Bioethics at Case Western Reserve University, I wrote a book called Aging with a Plan: How a Little Thought Today Can Vastly Improve Your Tomorrow.

The book addresses many legal, financial, medical, social, and other support systems for aging and caregiving. In this article, I discuss the legal documents that every American adult should have. These documents can help ensure that your finances and health care are well-managed as you age and that your wishes will be followed after death.

The Years of Magical Thinking: Pandemic Necrosecurity Under Trump and Biden

September 7, 2022September 9, 2022 The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Martha Lincoln

From spring 2020 through the present day, Americans have endured levels of sickness and death that are outliers among not only wealthy democracies, but around the world. No other country has recorded as many total COVID-19 casualties as the United States — indeed, no other country comes close.

This situation is not happenstance. From early moments in 2020, the concept of a right to health — and indeed, even a right to life — has been discounted in American policy, discourse, and practice. Quite mainstream and influential individuals and institutions — physicians, economists, and think tanks — have urged leaders to shed public health protections — particularly masking — and “move away” from the pandemic. Over the past two years in the United States, leaders in both political parties have capitulated to — if not embraced — the doxa that a certain amount of death and suffering is inevitable in our efforts to overcome (or “live with”) the pandemic. In a piece written during the first months of COVID under Trump, I called this dangerous yet influential outlook necrosecurity: “the cultural idea that mass death among less grievable subjects plays an essential role in maintaining social welfare and public order.”

Washington DC 09 20 2021. More than 600,000 white flags honor lives lost to COVID, on the National Mall. The art installation " In America: Remember" was created by Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg.

Introduction to the Symposium: Health Law and Policy in an Era of Mass Suffering

September 6, 2022September 2, 2022 Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel and Benjamin A. Barsky

Last spring, the United States crossed the bleak and preventable 1,000,000-death mark for lives lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this symposium, our hope is to acknowledge — and mourn — this current era of mass suffering and death.

In particular, we want to reckon with the role of health law and policy in shaping, and at times catalyzing, the impact that the pandemic has had on our loved ones and communities.

Doctors and patients sit and talk. At the table near the window in the hospital.

Does the Right to Health Enhance Patient Rights?

August 11, 2022July 29, 2022 Luciano Bottini Filho Leave a comment

By Luciano Bottini Filho

Despite the value of a constitutionally enshrined right to health, such a guarantee, on its own, does not ensure patient rights or a nuanced understanding of patient-centered care.

This article will consider the case study of Brazil as an example. Despite Brazil’s recognition of the right to health, this constitutional protection does not set sufficient standards to guide judicial decision-making around patient care.

Person looking at the mirror. Abstract concept for psychological and personal traits like behavioral mindset, self esteem, confidence, identity and more.

New Evidence on Dementia, Identity, and Decision-Making

July 18, 2022July 15, 2022 James Toomey Leave a comment

By James Toomey

In my paper Narrative Capacity (recently published in the North Carolina Law Review), I argue, among other things, that the legal system’s recognition of personal decision-making should be a function of personal identity, not (as it currently is) of an individual’s momentary cognitive functioning.

Category: Personhood