By Katie Gu
In the post-Dobbs world, the accessibility of modern reproductive technologies is morphing from an intentional design feature into a dystopian defect.
Tag: dobbs
That’s Criminal: The Choices Fertility Specialists May Have to Make
By Gerard Letterie
Fertility care operates in a delicate emotional space that demands complete trust across the consult table. Trust that decisions will be made with the patient’s best interests. Trust that guidance will be offered exclusive of any other competing influence, be it financial, personal, or convenience.
In a post-Dobbs setting, new, restrictive laws may disrupt this delicate equilibrium. This concern is materializing with an increasing velocity as states look to further limit reproductive autonomy.
Next in the crosshairs might be the disposition of embryos in the context of IVF. Dobbs has energized the pro-life movement to expand beyond abortion to other reproductive technologies within the context of the catchphrase “life begins at conception.”
Decriminalizing Abortion in Argentina: 8 Takeaways from the Inflection Point of Legalization
By Alicia Ely Yamin
In December of 2020, Argentina’s Congress passed Law 27.610, which overhauled the country’s previously restrictive legal framework on abortion. Law 27.610, “Access to Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy,” created two kinds of legal abortion: (i) IVE (its acronym in Spanish, which translates to “Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy”), which allows any person to request an abortion up to 14 weeks gestation; and (ii) ILE (which stands for “Legal Interruption of Pregnancy”), which makes abortion available at any point in a pregnancy for cases involving rape, and where there is a threat to the life or “integral health” of the pregnant person.
Around the world, when countries have taken steps to liberalize abortion access, these new laws have proven challenging to implement, as in Ireland and South Africa. As with any country, lessons from Argentina are deeply contextualized. Nonetheless, the Argentine experience offers insights to consider for countries at different stages of abortion struggles.
The End of Public Health? It’s Not Dead Yet
By Nicole Huberfeld
Once again, health law has become a vehicle for constitutional change, with courts hollowing federal and state public health authority while also generating new challenges. In part, this pattern is occurring because the New Roberts Court — the post-Ruth Bader Ginsburg composition of U.S. Supreme Court justices — is led by jurists who rely on “clear statement rules.” This statutory interpretation canon demands Congress draft textually unambiguous laws and contains a presumption against broadly-worded statutes that are meant to be adaptable over time. In effect, Congress should leave nothing to the imagination of those responsible for implementing federal laws, i.e., executive agencies and state officials, so everything a statute covers must be specified, with no room for legislative history or other non-textual sources.
Employers and the Future of Public Health
By Sharona Hoffman
As state and federal public health authority erodes, employers may increasingly find themselves playing a central role in promoting public health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers either incentivized or required employees and customers to be vaccinated and/or masked even in the absence of federal and state mandates. In the future, they may frequently take the lead in implementing public health measures.
Overhauling our Federal Courts to Preserve and Advance Public Health
By Sarah Wetter and Lawrence O. Gostin
In the Federalist No. 78, Alexander Hamilton called judicial independence “the best expedient which can be devised in any government to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws.” Judicial independence is also critical for public health. Over the last century, courts have affirmed broad public health powers and established modern health-related rights. Yet in a significant departure from history, today’s federal courts have been far from impartial, issuing ideology-driven decisions that will resound for decades to come, with harmful public health consequences.
Failures of Imagination in Public Health Policy
By Daniel Swartzman
If public health is to prosper, we will need to overcome the after-effects of several failures of imagination.
- Failing to recognize the threat to liberal democracy from the last 50 years of coordinated conservative political and policy actions.
- Failing to use litigation against inadequate public health actions, as did the early civil rights and environmental movements.
- Failing to anticipate litigation that challenges our efforts, such as with the ACA or the upcoming attempt to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
- Failing to demand moral leadership of governmental actors.
- Failing to make political action and advocacy an integral part of professional education in public health.
The End of Public Health? An Introduction to the Symposium
By Jennifer S. Bard
Teaching public health law over these past three years has meant contending with a series of federal and state court rulings that in different ways have called into question many of what seemed to be the most established principles of public health law. The double whammy of the pandemic and a new, and very different Supreme Court have already resulted in more dramatic changes to public health law in the past few years than in the preceding one hundred plus years.
How Dobbs Threatens Health Privacy
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.
Physician-Led Advocacy for the Future of Reproductive Health Care
By Katie Gu
The American Medical Association (AMA) recently adopted new policies aimed at protecting access to reproductive health care and reducing government interference in medical practice. As the nation’s most prominent professional medical association, the AMA’s unified stance brings a stronger physician-led voice in reproductive health care advocacy in the aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Care Organization.