Tag: Reproductive Rights

TWO Upcoming Events (5/7-5/9): “After Hobby Lobby: What Is Caesar’s, What Is God’s?” & “Law, Religion, and Health in America”

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Pre-Conference Session

Hobby_Lobby_slide_270_174_85“After Hobby Lobby: What Is Caesar’s, What Is God’s?”
May 7, 2015, 4:00 – 6:00 PM
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East BC
Harvard Law School,
1585 Massachusetts Ave.,
Cambridge, MA [Map]

As prelude to the 2015 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference, “Law, Religion, and Health in America,” please join us for a pre-conference session examining the role of religion in the American public sphere. Our expert panel will discuss the nature of conscience and conscientious objection, religious freedom, and religious accommodation from philosophical, theological, historical, legal, and political perspectives.

Panelists:

  • J. Dionne, Jr., Columnist, The Washington Post; Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
  • Diane L. Moore, Senior Lecturer on Religious Studies and Education and Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
  • Charles Fried, Beneficial Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
  • Frank Wolf, Representative, Virginia’s 10th Congressional District, U.S. House of Representatives, 1981-2015 (retired)
  • Moderator: Daniel Carpenter, Freed Professor of Government, Harvard University and Director, Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University
  • Moderator:  Glenn Cohen, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School and Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center

The panel will be followed by a light reception.

This event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Register online!

 Full Conference:
stethoscope_bible_slide“Law, Religion, and Health in America”
May 8-9, 2015
Wasserstein Hall
Milstein East ABC
Harvard Law School
1585 Massachusetts Ave.,
Cambridge, MA [Map]

Religion and medicine have historically gone hand in hand, but increasingly have come into conflict in the U.S. as health care has become both more secular and more heavily regulated.  Law has a dual role here, simultaneously generating conflict between religion and health care, for example through new coverage mandates or legally permissible medical interventions that violate religious norms, while also acting as a tool for religious accommodation and protection of conscience. 

This conference will identify the various ways in which law intersects with religion and health care in the United States, understand the role of law in creating or mediating conflict between religion and health care, and explore potential legal solutions to allow religion and health care to simultaneously flourish in a culturally diverse nation.

Highlights:

Keynote Lecture: Religious Liberty, Health Care, and the Culture Wars

 Plenary Session: The Contraceptives Coverage Mandate Litigation

The conference is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. View the full agenda and register online!

The pre-conference session is co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center and the Ambassador John L. Loeb, Jr. Initiative on Religious Freedom and Its Implications at the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University.

The 2015 Petrie-Flom Center Annual Conference, “Law, Religion, and Health in America,“ is supported by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

THIS WEEK (3/18 – 3/20): Families Matter: Ethically, Legally, and Clinically

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Families Matter: Ethically, Legally, and Clinically

child_pediatrician_slide_270_200_85_c1March 18 – 20, 2015

Harvard Medical School
Joseph B. Martin Conference Center
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Boston, MA 02115

A full agenda is available on our website.

We often talk, in bioethics, about individual autonomy.  Yet our most challenging ethical, legal and clinical controversies in health care often center around family roles and responsibilities: How should we handle parents’ refusals of medically recommended treatment or, conversely, parents’ requests to medicate or surgically alter their children?  What should be known, and by whom, about a child’s genome, especially when genetic information effects other family members?  What weight should be given to family interests in decisions about a child’s health care?  How should we think about 3-parent embryos? Gamete donors? Gestational mothers? What rights and responsibilities should fathers have with regard to decisions about abortion and adoption, for example, as well as health care decisions for their offspring?  Health care decisions might be messier, but maybe they would also be better if we gave more attention to family matters, and how families matter.

This multidisciplinary program has been developed to inform and deliberate with ethicists, health care providers, attorneys and the public about changes in conceptions of the family and medical technologies and practices that challenge moral conventions and contemporary law.  Faculty experts and participants will engage in thoughtful discussion regarding a broad range of ethical and legal issues that arise from new ways of creating and new ways of understanding families and providing health care for expectant parents, growing fetuses, infants, children, adolescents….and their families.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

FREE REGISTRATION! Families Matter: Ethically, Legally, and Clinically

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

Families Matter: Ethically, Legally, and Clinically

child_pediatrician_slide_270_200_85_c1March 18 – 20, 2015

Harvard Medical School
Joseph B. Martin Conference Center
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
Boston, MA 02115

A full agenda is available on our website.

We often talk, in bioethics, about individual autonomy.  Yet our most challenging ethical, legal and clinical controversies in health care often center around family roles and responsibilities: How should we handle parents’ refusals of medically recommended treatment or, conversely, parents’ requests to medicate or surgically alter their children?  What should be known, and by whom, about a child’s genome, especially when genetic information effects other family members?  What weight should be given to family interests in decisions about a child’s health care?  How should we think about 3-parent embryos? Gamete donors? Gestational mothers? What rights and responsibilities should fathers have with regard to decisions about abortion and adoption, for example, as well as health care decisions for their offspring?  Health care decisions might be messier, but maybe they would also be better if we gave more attention to family matters, and how families matter.

This multidisciplinary program has been developed to inform and deliberate with ethicists, health care providers, attorneys and the public about changes in conceptions of the family and medical technologies and practices that challenge moral conventions and contemporary law.  Faculty experts and participants will engage in thoughtful discussion regarding a broad range of ethical and legal issues that arise from new ways of creating and new ways of understanding families and providing health care for expectant parents, growing fetuses, infants, children, adolescents….and their families.

Co-sponsored with the Center for Bioethics at Harvard Medical School, with support from the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

The Hot Wave of Anti-Abortion Legislation

Michele Goodwin Leave a comment

Allison M. Whelan, J.D.
Senior Fellow, Center for Biotechnology &Global Health Policy, University of California, Irvine School of Law
Guest Blogger

As the majority of state legislatures get back in session, it is clear there will be no dearth of “anti-choice” legislation proposed and considered throughout the country.

In Texas, Representative Matt Krause (R-Fort Worth) is pushing a new law that would provide representation to fetuses in court hearings. This law responds to Marlise Munoz’s case, a brain-dead pregnant woman left on life support for two months because doctors refused to honor her family’s request to remove her from life support. Doctors claimed they were prohibited from doing so because Texas law prohibits withdrawing or withholding life-sustaining treatment from pregnant patients, regardless of their previously-expressed wishes.

South Dakota Representative Isaac Latterell (R-Tea) is sponsoring House Bill 1230, which seeks to ban dilation and evacuation (D and E) procedures sometimes used in second-trimester abortions. The bill uses inflammatory and graphic language (for example, making it illegal to “knowingly behead a living unborn child”), arguably intended to provoke disgust over the procedure to increase support for the bill. HB 1230 includes criminal penalties and physicians violating the law may be charged with a Class 1 felony and face fifty years imprisonment.

Fifty Ohio legislators have introduced House Bill 69, a “fetal heartbeat” law that would outlaw abortion after a heartbeat can be detected. This can occur as early as six weeks gestation, before some women even know they are pregnant. Read More

AGENDA NOW AVAILABLE! 2015 Annual Conference: Law, Religion, and Health in America

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff Leave a comment

2015 Annual Conference – Law, Religion, and Health in America

stethoscope_bible_slideMay 8 – 9, 2015

Milstein East BC
Harvard Law School
1585 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138 [Map]

Religion and medicine have historically gone hand in hand, but increasingly have come into conflict in the U.S. as health care has become both more secular and more heavily regulated.  Law has a dual role here, simultaneously generating conflict between religion and health care, for example through new coverage mandates or legally permissible medical interventions that violate religious norms, while also acting as a tool for religious accommodation and protection of conscience.

This conference, and anticipated edited volume, will aim to: (1) identify the various ways in which law intersects with religion and health care in the United States; (2) understand the role of law in creating or mediating conflict between religion and health care; and (3) explore potential legal solutions to allow religion and health care to simultaneously flourish in a culturally diverse nation.

Special sessions include:

  • Thursday, May 7, pre-conference session on the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision
  • Friday, May 8, Keynote: Douglas Laycock, University of Virginia School of Law – Religious Liberty, Health Care, and the Culture Wars
  • Saturday, May 9, Plenary Session: Adèle Keim, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Gregory Lipper, Americans United for Separation of Church and State – The Contraceptives Coverage Mandate Litigation

 A full agenda is now available on our website. 

The conference is free and open to the public, but space is limited and registration is required. REGISTER ONLINE.

Pre-conference session co-sponsored by the Petrie-Flom Center and the Ambassador John L. Loeb Initiative on Religious Freedom and Its Implications at the Harvard Kennedy School Center for American Political Studies.

The full conference is supported by the Oswald DeN. Cammann Fund.

Colorado Personhood Version 4.0

jwill 1 Comment

By Jonathan F. Will
[Cross-posted at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights.]

This November citizens of Colorado will have an opportunity to vote on a proposed amendment (Amendment 67) to their state constitution that would define the words “person” and “child” in the Colorado Criminal Code and Colorado Wrongful Death Act to include “unborn human beings.”  Similar personhood measures were rejected by a margin of 3-to-1 by Colorado citizens in 2008 and 2010, and a proposal in 2012 failed to receive the requisite signatures to get on the ballot.  Is this version 4.0 all that different?

A New Strategy

In short, the language is different, but not in ways that ought to matter for those concerned about the implications for reproductive rights.  I was initially surprised that a fourth personhood proposal was able to secure enough signatures to get on the ballot when the third measure was not.  After speaking with a reporter from Colorado, it became clear that the strategy this time around was very different.

This most recent personhood effort rode the wave of momentum generated by the 2012 story of a Colorado woman, hit by a drunk driver, who lost her pregnancy in the eighth month of gestation (a boy she had named Brady).  At that time, Colorado did not have a law on the books that permitted the drunk driver to be prosecuted for the death of the fetus.  Amendment 67, advertised as “The Brady Amendment” was offered as a solution, and there was no trouble generating over 100,000 signatures.  Even without Amendment 67, Colorado has since passed a Crimes Against Pregnant Women Act, which criminalizes (with varying degrees of punishment) the termination of a woman’s pregnancy without her consent.  This new law does not define the fetus as a person, expressly permits women to choose to have abortions, and certainly is not considered to go far enough for those in favor of sweeping personhood measures.  Amendment 67 was thus still viewed to be necessary by some. Read More

Using Tissue Samples to Make Genetic Offspring after Death

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By Yu-Chi Lyra Kuo

Last month, John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka were jointly awarded the 2012 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their research on induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).  iPSCs are capturing the public imagination as embryonic stem cells did fifteen years ago, but without the controversy surrounding the destruction of embryos: iPSCs can be garnered instead from living somatic tissue of an organism at any point in its lifespan–even late adulthood.  Yamanaka’s research has shown that somatic cells can be “reprogrammed” to develop into any kind of cell–including an embryo–speaking to the vast research potential of iPSCs.

In light of the research potential of iPSCs, I wanted to highlight the results of a remarkable study (published last month) where scientists induced iPSCs from mice into primordial germ cell-like cells, and aggregated them with female somatic cells to create mature, germinal oocytes. The team was then able to show that these oocytes, after in vitro fertilization, yield fertile offspring. Essentially, the research team created viable mouse embryos from skin cells, and fertilized them using IVF to produce healthy mice, some of which have already produced offspring of their own.

Read More