Tag: Abortion

Gavel and stethoscope.

The Journal of Law and the Biosciences’ Growing Impact

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

The Journal of Law and Biosciences, a co-venture between Duke University, Harvard Law School, and Stanford University, offers high-quality, open-access scholarship at the intersection of the biosciences and law. The Journal, which is published by Oxford University Press, is the first fully open-access, peer-reviewed legal journal to focus on these issues.

Recently, the Journal of Law and the Biosciences received exciting news in the form of an updated impact factor score. The journal now has an impact factor of 6.066, a substantial increase from the year prior. It ranks third out of 56 ethics journals, second out of sixteen journals in the medical ethics category, second out of 154 law journals, and first out of seventeen journals in the legal medicine category.

The following excerpts highlight the cutting-edge scholarship published in the Journal‘s most recent issue, which closed in June 2022.

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Asbury Park, NJ - January 21, 2017: "My Body My Choice" sign at Women's March and worldwide protest.

The Only Moral Abortion is…

Carmel Shachar Leave a comment

By Carmel Shachar

Since June 24, 2022, I have spent a lot of time thinking through the post-Roe legal and ethical landscape, both publicly and privately. Very often, the discussion is centered about the impact that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization will have on patients whose health or lives are threatened by their pregnancies — such as people with ectopic pregnancies, missed miscarriages with a high risk of sepsis, and preeclampsia — and the physicians who care for them.

These cases are, no doubt, important. But I am writing this piece to provide a counterpoint to this public discussion: abortion should be safe, legal, and accessible not only when the patient’s life or health is in danger. When we focus on the “blameless” abortions, such as the underage victims of incest, or the woman who wanted to be a mother but found out she has cancer that needs to be treated, we cede ground on this issue, by playing into the notion (whether knowingly or not) that some abortions are more justified or acceptable than others.

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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

Reproductive Governance in a Post-Roe US: The Weaponization of Health Systems

Alicia Ely Yamin Leave a comment

By Alicia Ely Yamin

I was living and working in Peru in 2001, when Karen Noelia Llantoy discovered she was pregnant with an anencephalic fetus. Llantoy, a minor at the time, became profoundly depressed. Her own physician, a social worker, and a psychiatrist all concurred that she should have a termination, as anencephaly is a fatal brain defect that also poses an unnecessary risk to the mother’s physical health, and the pregnancy was having a severe impact on Llantoy’s mental health.

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Supreme Court of the United States.

Where Exactly Is the New Constitutional Line Between Abortion and Contraception?

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Einer Elhauge

The new Supreme Court decision in Dobbs overrules the right to abortion but repeatedly reaffirms the right to contraception. Whether that distinction can be justified under the Court opinion’s constitutional methodology has been the subject of much critique. Here, however, I wish to focus on a different question: just where is the new constitutional line between abortion and contraception after Dobbs?

The dissent takes the Court opinion to eliminate any constitutional right “from the very moment of fertilization.” But the Court opinion never says so, and for good reason. The Court’s analysis rests heavily on the fact that the lion’s share of states banned abortion “at all stages of pregnancy” at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. The state statutes on which the Court relied for this conclusion were all limited to terminations of “pregnancy” or efforts to procure the “miscarriage” of a pregnant woman.

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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

Stemming Supreme Court Rights Reversals

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By James G. Hodge, Jr.

Based on the May 2022 leak of an initial draft, most believe the Supreme Court will carry through some rescission of abortion rights later this month through its final opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Already, concerns have arisen over other freedoms the Court may seriously reconsider down the road, including rights to gay marriage, intimacy, contraception, and informational privacy.

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Black and white photograph of the front of the Supreme Court. Pro-abortion protestors stand holding signs, one of which reads "I stand with Whole Woman's Health"

A Brief History of Abortion Jurisprudence in the United States

James Jolin Leave a comment

By James R. Jolin

POLITICO’s leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization suggests that U.S. abortion rights are on the verge of a fundamental shift.

If the official decision, expected this month, hews closely to the draft, the constitutional right to abortion affirmed in Roe v. Wade (1973), Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), and other seminal Supreme Court rulings will disappear.

This brief history of abortion rights and jurisprudence in the United States aims to clarify just what is at stake in this case.

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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

The Leaked Dobbs Opinion, Explained

Chloe Reichel Leave a comment

By Chloe Reichel

On May 2, 2022, Politico published a leaked draft of the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which showed the Supreme Court’s intent to overturn the right to abortion as decided in Roe v. Wade.

In response to the leak, the Petrie-Flom Center hosted a discussion with legal historian and Daniel P.S. Paul Visiting Professor of Constitutional Law Mary Ziegler and Petrie-Flom Center Faculty Director, James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, and Deputy Dean I. Glenn Cohen.

Together, Cohen and Ziegler explained the background of the case, the contents of the draft opinion, and its potential implications not just for abortion access, but also for other constitutionally-protected rights, and for access to reproductive technologies, such as in-vitro fertilization.

The highlights of the conversation have been edited and condensed below.

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Hand holding glass ball with inverted image of surroundings reflected in ball.

Flipping the Script: Adoption and Reproductive Justice

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Kimberly McKee

Adoption is a reproductive justice issue. Pretending otherwise ignores how adoption is used as a red herring in anti-abortion arguments. A recent invocation of this faulty logic occurred in Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s questions during the November 2021 oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Coney Barrett’s statements implied that the option to relinquish infants vis-à-vis adoption rendered abortion availability unnecessary. This line of thinking is one with which I am familiar, as both a Korean international, transracial adoptee, and a critical adoption studies scholar. 

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Austin, TX, USA - Oct. 2, 2021: Two women participants at the Women's March rally at the Capitol protest SB 8, Texas' abortion law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.

Organizing and Activism of Adopted and Displaced People

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

By Lina Vanegas

I am a transracial and transnational displaced person. I was separated from my country, language, and culture and taken to Michigan, which has no connection to me or my ancestors. I was taken there to create a family for strangers who had the privilege and resources to buy me. I had family in Colombia and I was far from being a true orphan. I was bought in Bogota, Colombia and sold to a white couple living in the Midwest in 1976. 

I use the word “displaced” intentionally, because the word “adopted” does not define my lived experience in an accurate way. The word “adopted” is language that was created by the child welfare-industrial complex, also known as the adoption industry. I do not subscribe to any of the constraints or barriers that they attempt to put onto my life with their language choices. Using the word “displaced” defines the intentional separation from my family by the child welfare-industrial complex. 

My lived experience has informed who I am and has inspired and motivated the work that I do online and in the world. It is very rare that adopted and displaced people’s lived experiences are seen, heard, validated, centered, and believed, so my mission is to do that online, on my podcast, Rescripting The Narrative, and in the work that I do as a social worker and with the organization Adoptees for Choice.

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