Reproductive Rights Prof Blog

Yale Law School Conference on Sexual and Reproductive Rights

Today through Sunday, Yale Law School hosts a conference on "The Future of Sexual and Reproductive Rights.":

Constitutional law and politics have changed greatly since the last outpouring of legal scholarship on questions of reproductive rights in the 1980s and 1990s. That wave of scholarship anticipated and responded to the Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Today we are once again at a crossroads. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last term in Gonzales v. Carhart and the Court’s 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas have signaled the possibility of dramatic changes in the near future. They are fueling a call for a renewed conversation about the law and politics of this contentious field.

The Yale Law School Conference will assemble leading thinkers, cultural observers and journalists who focus on these subjects.  They will offer and test a range of cutting-edge insights about what could and should develop in these critical areas.  Part of their work will be an examination of the pressures that are brought to bear on news media when covering abortion or same-sex marriage, the attempt to require that both points of view are given equal weight and whether journalists have a duty to test conflicting claims.  The Conference is co-sponsored by the Law School’s Law and Media Program (LAMP).  It will begin long before anyone arrives in New Haven, with thought-pieces posted by panelists in September on the well-known legal blog, Balkinization.

Click here for the conference program.

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism: Symposium on Pregnancy Discrimination Act

Yale Journal of Law and Feminism: Respecting Expecting: The 30th Anniversary of the PDA:

Please join the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism at a Symposium celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act. We will be commemorating this landmark occasion, along with the twentieth anniversary of the Journal, with a symposium featuring the women and men who have been involved in every critical phase of the decades-long campaign for sex equality in the workplace. The event will bring together distinguished advocates and scholars from across the country to share their insights into the PDA and the future of workplace equality. Judge Marsha Berzon will be our Keynote speaker.

The Symposium will be held on Nov. 7-8, 2008.  Click on the above link for more information.

NAPW Law Student Writing Competition

Via National Advocates for Pregnant Women:

NAPW Law Student Writing Competition 2008-2009 Academic School Year. $1,000 first prize

Issues of concern to pregnant and birthing women have often been missing from discussion in law school courses and among reproductive rights activists. Thanks in large part to public education efforts by writers, filmmakers, and community activists, there is an unprecedented amount of attention and momentum surrounding the rights of pregnant and birthing women. To advance these efforts further, NAPW has developed two writing contests. NAPW and numerous Co-Sponsors and Supporters (to be announced) hope that these contests will leverage the enthusiasm and creativity of a new generation of feminist legal scholars and spark critical thinking about the need to address childbirth and birthing rights as constitutional and human rights issues.

The first contest asks for a critical analysis of the absence of birthing rights issues from gender discrimination and feminist jurisprudence textbooks and curricula (in fact, none of the top three casebooks used in law school courses dedicated to gender and the law address the issue of childbirth or midwifery). The second contest asks students to develop legal theories that can be used to challenge policies banning pregnant women from having a vaginal birth after a prior caesarean section (VBAC). This topic will encourage students to address a growing problem that has received very little attention from the feminist legal community both in academia and within the leading women's rights legal advocacy organizations.

The deadline is May 31, 2009.  Click here for more information and submission guidelines.

Call for Book Reviews: Women and the Law

Pace Law Review: Proposals Due September 25, 2008

The editors of Pace Law Review invite proposals from scholars, researchers, practitioners and professionals for contributions to a special book review issue to be published in Winter 2008.  We seek proposals for reviews of any book published in 2008, 2007 or 2006 that contributes to the understanding of women¹s experiences with the law.

Pace Law School has a longstanding commitment to both the study of women and the law and the development of women as lawyers and leaders.  The Pace Women¹s Justice Center was founded in 1991 as the first academic legal center in the country devoted to training attorneys and others in the community about domestic violence issues.  Pace is a vibrant and intellectual community that contains several nationally-recognized scholars of women¹s, children¹s and LGBT rights.

A law review volume devoted to books concerning women and the law promotes an ongoing discourse on women and the law, justice and feminist jurisprudence.

Please submit book review proposals of no more than 500 words by attachment to plr@law.pace.edu by September 25, 2008. Proposals should include:
(a) the intended reviewer¹s name, title, institutional affiliation and contact information;
(b) the title and publication date of the book proposed for review;
(c) a description of the importance of the book to the general topic; and
(d) any other information relevant to the book or proposed review (e.g., the proposed reviewer¹s expertise or any relationship with the author). 
Authors are welcome, but not required, to submit a CV as well.  We expect to make publication offers by October 1, 2008.

Complete manuscripts from authors of accepted proposals will be due November 1, 2008.  Completed book reviews should not exceed 8,500 words.

Student Scholarship: The Right to Abortion in Taiwan

Hsiaowei Kuan (Penn Law) has posted Abortion Law and Abortion Discourse in Taiwan: Rights, Social Movements and Democratization on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

My dissertation tells a story of the abortion right in Taiwan: how abortion was not a right either before or after its legalization, how it became a right after the mobilization of social movements and democratization, and finally, what sort of right it is today. Abortion was legalized in Taiwan in 1985, for the purposes of population control and social and economic development of the nation. The legalization debates of the 1980s (the Old Abortion Debate), did not include a rights discourse. Twenty years later, when new abortion bans were submitted to the Legislature for review, a fresh round of debate (The New Abortion Debate) began in which a rights discourse emerged. My dissertation compares the abortion discourses of the Old Abortion Debate with the New Abortion Debate. I examine in what way they are different and, in particular, whether the use of the language of rights increased. Based on an empirical analysis of legislative records, I conclude that the quantity of abortion rights discourse significantly increased in Taiwan in the period of the New Abortion Debate. I explore the factors that appear to have contributed most to the emergence of the rights discourse. I argue that structural change in the legislative forum and the ideological change in the concept of rights altered the political atmosphere, creating the possibility of adopting rights discourse in the New Abortion Debate. However, the framing of feminist proabortion movement affected the abortion rights discourse more directly. Feminists framed women's abortion right as a right to abortion autonomy rather than what North Americans refer to as a private choice or a freedom. Under the strong influence of feminists, abortion autonomy has become the dominant perspective in the abortion rights discourse in Taiwan.

Student Scholarship: The ADA and Selective Abortion

Dov Fox and Christopher Griffin (both of Yale Law School) have posted The Collateral Effects of Law on Social Behavior: The Case of Antidiscrimination Law and Selective Abortion on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

This Article explores the powerful ways in which changes in the law can bring about unexpected changes in social behavior that is unrelated to that which the law regulates. We puzzle through this unexamined phenomenon by considering the relation between a major antidiscrimination law, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and a routine reproductive practice, selective abortion on the basis of Down syndrome. Our empirical analysis of U.S. natality data suggests that the ADA has the surprising effect of preventing the existence of the very class of people the law was intended to protect. We explain this paradox by showing how the ADA's implementation mechanism generates stigmatizing attitudes toward people with disabilities. The law's requirement that those seeking its protection prove the limitations caused by their disability does damage to our understandings and expectations about what it means to be disabled. Using formal regression analysis, we find suggestive evidence that the ADA significantly increased the incidence of decisions to terminate a pregnancy following a positive test for Down syndrome. We discuss the implications of this expressive externality for disability, reproduction, and antidiscrimination law in the United States.

Thanks to My Research Assistants!

Thanks to my wonderful research assistants this semester for their invaluable help performing research for this blog:  Mul Kim (3L), Olivia Lieber (2L), and Christina Tenuta (1L). 

A special thanks and congratulations to Mul, who graduated today and who has been helping me with the blog since its launch on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade last year.  Good luck, Mul!

Student Scholarship: Procreative Rights, and Child Welfare and Future Persons

Carter Dillard (LLM candidate, NYU) has posted two articles on SSRN.  Here are the abstracts:

Rethinking the Procreative Right:

Few principles are as universally accepted in legal scholarship today, but based on such scant support, as the fundamental nature and broad scope of the right to procreate. What is perceived as a vague but nonetheless justified legal and moral interest to procreate freely without regard to others is, upon closer examination, based on little more than misconstrued or inapposite case precedent and blurry statements in non-binding sources of international law. By relying on this authority, conflating procreation with conceptually distinguishable behaviors, presuming its intrinsic value, and ignoring competing rights and duties, lawyers have largely overlooked procreation and its legal and normative limits. Interpreting U.S. constitutional and international law sources, and finally employing Locke's model of natural rights, this Article redefines the right in law and practice as satiable and narrow, acknowledging the competing rights and duties that both qualify and justify the right. It posits that the procreative right, properly stated, includes at least the act of replacing oneself and at most procreation up to a point that optimizes the public good.

Child Welfare and Future Persons:

While ethicists have delved deep into the rights and wrongs inherent in procreating, lawyers have had little to say about the matter, stymied by practical concerns, the tendency of the law to ignore future persons and their interests, and the misperception of a fundamental rights boundary that absolutely forbids state intervention. But recently a small door has opened in the wall between law and ethics, as some courts faced with having to constantly remove abused and neglected children from parents adjudged unfit have issued temporary no-procreation orders. As precedent slowly begins to form and the possibility of ex ante regulation of procreation and parenthood begins to grow, a moral and legal debate is beginning over what duties prospective parents owe their future children and the society with which they will interact, the resolution of which will in part define the actual constituency of the future state. This Article is the first to cut through the debate, which is a muddle of conflicting state and constitutional law, uncovering the essential principle at its core, and arguing for codification of that principle. It posits, largely through deductive reasoning, that there is a moral and legal duty on a prospective parent to be fit when he or she has a child, one arising from or creating correlative claim-rights shared by the state and prospective children, and a prospective parent has no liberty to have a child until he or she is fit. It argues for codification of this principle to be applied in cases of recurring abuse and neglect, taking courts out of the sea of confusion where they have been left by politically sensitive legislatures, and allowing them to best protect the various interests involved and avoid irreparable harm.

Student Scholarship: A Feminist Legal Response to Plan B Regulation

Amanda Allen (3L, CUNY Law School) has posted A Plan C for Plan B: A Feminist Legal Response to the Ways in Which Behind-the-Counter Emergency Contraception Fails Women on SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

On August 24, 2006, the Food and Drug Administration approved Plan B, the brand-name drug sold for emergency contraception, for sale to pharmacy customers eighteen and over without a prescription. However, Plan B must be shelved behind the pharmacy counter; thus, a customer over the age of eighteen seeking this medication must ask a pharmacist for it. A pharmacist with a moral or religious objection to emergency contraception can, therefore, still pose a barrier to a customer seeking to obtain it.

I use a feminist legal perspective to examine the regulation of behind-the-counter sale of emergency contraception to customers over the age of eighteen, addressing two problems with the regulation. First, because the regulation permits only behind-the-counter sale of Plan B, pharmacists are in a unique position to decide whether they think the customer should receive the requested medication - thus making pharmacist refusals possible. Second, the regulation surreptitiously adds an age requirement that was neither contemplated by the manufacturer nor medically justified, which hinders the access of young women and women without the required identification.

first map out a litigation strategy to challenge pharmacist refusals to dispense emergency contraception. Using New York law as a model, I discuss the various theories of relief upon which a refusing pharmacist could be sued, including professional causes of action and administrative causes of action. I further posit private causes of action - including sex discrimination, wrongful conception, and breach of fiduciary duty - as a way to hold refusing pharmacists accountable to customers seeking emergency contraception.

I next discuss Tummino v. von Eschenbach, a lawsuit that challenges the regulation's age restriction. I argue that the age restriction privileges both age (adults) and gender (male purchasers/non-users) in ways that are unrelated to the use of the drug or its risks. This section applies a feminist legal perspective on the age restriction through use of constitutional theories supporting invalidation of the age restriction, in particular minors' right to decisional privacy.

Law Student Writing Contest: Alice Paul Feminist Jurisprudence Essay

The Women and the Law and Legal Rhetoric programs at American University Washington College of Law are seeking student submissions for the Alice Paul Feminist Jurisprudence Essay Contest. 

The award is $1000 for the best unpublished student essay. The winner will deliver her or his paper at Washington College of Law and will receive help in placing the essay in a publication.

For more information, visit the contest website.

Scalia Tells Roger Williams Law Students He Would Not Be Confirmed Today

Boston Globe/AP: Scalia says he'd have difficulty winning confirmation now, by Eric Tucker:

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Monday he would have had difficulty winning confirmation to the nation's highest court if he were nominated today because the public expects its judges to rewrite the Constitution rather than interpret the document narrowly based on its original intent.

Scalia, who was confirmed by the Senate in 1986 by a 98-0 margin, told students at the Roger Williams University law school that he wouldn't be able to get 60 votes now....

The right to an abortion, he said, is nowhere to be found in the Constitution though advocates on both sides use the document to bolster their respective positions. Debates over abortion and the death penalty, among other topics, are best left to legislatures rather than to the nation's highest court, he said.

"You want the right to abortion? Create it the way most rights are created in a democracy. Persuade your fellow citizens it's a good idea -- and pass a law," Scalia said. "You don't like the death penalty? Persuade your fellow citizens it's a bad idea and repeal it."

Saint Louis University Journal of Health Law & Policy and the Center for Health Law Studies present:

20th Annual Saint Louis University Health Law Symposium

             

                  

                  Friday, April 4, 2008
                    8  a.m. to 4 p.m.
                  Location: Courtroom

The desire to form a family and have a child has long been central to many people’s idea of a good life. It has also long been surrounded by stigma for people with disabilities -- whether parents, prospective parents or children -- who continue to face barriers to the full enjoyment of reproductive autonomy, parenting and family life. Against this backdrop, advances in technology such as assisted reproductive technologies and prenatal diagnostic techniques represent the potential for increased access to informed reproductive choice but also for the increased stigmatization of individuals with actual or perceived disabilities. Available care, services and support often reflect an inaccurate understanding of what it means to be disabled, for both parents and children. This Symposium will examine the impact of these issues on parents, prospective parents and children living with disabilities.

For more information, see the conference website.

 

Brooklyn Law School Symposium Today on "Decentralizing Rights"

Brooklyn Law School is hosting a symposium, Decentralizing Rights: State-level Strategies to Promote Justice and Equality, today:

In the mid-20th century, the Warren Court revolutionized constitutional law by nationalizing norms of rights and equality. From Brown v. Board of Education to Miranda v. Arizona to Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court invited those seeking to promote rights and equality to litigate in the federal courts. But, following changes in the composition of the Court in later decades, the tide has turned.

The Roberts Court has shown a willingness to water down or eliminate rights in some areas and seems likely to continue the trend of lowering the federal constitutional floor. Litigators who explore the alternative of going to the states confront the expense of litigating issues fifty times instead of one, among other challenges.

This symposium will assess how organizations whose mission is to promote rights and equality have responded to these challenges. It will compare the strategies that have led to successor failure in different areas, such as the death penalty, reproductive freedom, LGBT rights, eminent domain, and school equity, and will consider how well national and local organizations have adapted to decentralization.

More information is available here.

Conference on Gender and Intellectual Property

 

American University Washington College of Law's Journal of Gender, Social Policy and the Law, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and Women and the Law Program present:

The Fifth Annual
IP/Gender: Mapping the Connections
Exploring the rich intersection of intellectual property law and feminist theory.

April 4, 2008
American University Washington College of Law
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, NW • Washington, DC 20016

Click here for more information and registration.

Brooklyn Law School Symposium Today on "Partial-Birth Abortion" Bans

I am looking forward to participating in a symposium today at Brooklyn Law School, "The 'Partial-Birth Abortion' Ban: Health Care in the Shadow of Criminal Liability."  My co-panelists are Talcott Camp (Deputy Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project), David Meyer (University of Illinois & Visiting Professor at Brooklyn Law School), and Priscilla Smith (Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School).  Nan Hunter (Brooklyn Law School) will moderate the panel.  For a description of the symposium and a full list of speakers, click here.  Papers will be published in the Brooklyn Journal of Law & Policy.

S.C. Law Review Symposium on Equality and the Roberts Court

I am looking forward to participating today in the South Carolina Law Review Symposium, The Roberts Court and Equal Protection: Gender, Race, and Class.  I will be speaking on the panel on gender along with Deborah Brake (Pittburgh), David Cohen (Drexel), and Teresa Collett (St. Thomas).  The full list of panels and speakers is available here.

Student Scholarship

Dov Fox (Yale Law School) has posted Retracing Liberalism and Remaking Nature: Designer Children, Research Embryos, and Featherless Chickens on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

Liberal theory seeks to achieve the moral and practical goods of toleration, civil peace, and mutual respect within modern pluralistic societies by excluding from public debate those arguments that arise from within formative conceptions about what gives value to human life. I ask whether it is reasonable to bracket, for purposes of public deliberation, our deepest moral views about genetic engineering. The answer to this question depends, at least in part, on how we come down on those moral issues that such biotechnological practices presupposes. I argue that the moral language of liberal justice - of rights and duties, interests and opportunities, freedom and consent, equality and fairness - cannot speak to the moral concerns at the heart of such practices. My goal is not to indict liberalism as a valuable framework in many areas of theory and practice. I mean, instead, to challenge the suitability of liberalism to furnish a plausible and coherent account of the moral status for a range of biotechnological practices.

Graduate Scholarships in Reproductive and Sexual Health Law for Lawyers from Developing Countries

The International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme at the Faculty of Law of the University of Toronto, Canada is offering graduate scholarships.

The scholarship, which enables lawyer activists from developing countries to undertake the Master of Laws (LL.M.) Programme at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law, includes full tuition, travel and a stipend for living expenses.

The application deadline is February 1, 2008.

See the brochure for more information.

We would sincerely appreciate it if you could help distribute this
information to outstanding lawyers who are committed to advancing
reproductive and sexual health law in their own developing countries and/or regions.

See abstracts of theses by past graduates.

George Washington Law Review Symposium: Conflicting Interests in Reproductive Autonomy

Friday, November 2, 2007

George Washington University Law School
Jacob Burns Moot Court Room, Lerner Hall
2000 H Street, N.W. | Washington, DC

The registration deadline is Monday, October 29. Registered guests will be invited to join us for breakfast, lunch, and an evening reception.

The 2007 George Washington Law Review Symposium focuses on the legal and moral issues arising out of the regulation of new reproductive technologies. The proliferation of technologies such as in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and genetic enhancement tests the boundaries between the societal benefits of and autonomy interests in accessing these technologies and the state’s right to regulate, even prohibit, them. These boundaries are unclear, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s increasing deference to the state’s interest in protecting potential life as clarified in the recent decision of Gonzales v. Carhart.The four panels of the Symposium will bring together leading legal scholars in reproductive rights and constitutional law, sociological researchers, and representatives of the medical community, think tanks, and the President’s Council on Bioethics to discuss these issues.

Panels:

The Personal Right: Privacy, Property, or Child?

The State's Interest: The Implications of Gonzales v. Carhart and Other Recent Cases

Issues of Access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies

Dialogue: A Method for Reconciling Conflicting Views in Reproductive Technology

See full agenda and register online at: www.law.gwu.edu/LawReview

Symposium: The New Face of Women's Legal History

The symposium will be held at the University of Akron School of Law on October 19th, 2007.  From the conference website:

The New Face of Women's Legal History Symposium brings together legal scholars and historians to focus on modern scholarship reviving and recreating the field of women's history. The broad theme reaches the diverse array of topics that form the base of recent work in gender and legal scholarship. The annual symposium is part of the tradition growing out of The University of Akron's Constitutional Law Center.

Reva Siegel (Yale) will be the keynote speaker.

Call for Submissions: Feminist Jurisprudence Essay Contest for Students

The Women and the Law and Legal Rhetoric Programs at American University, Washington College of Law are seeking submissions for our student Feminist Jurisprudence Essay Contest.  The purpose of the contest is to foster the next generation of scholars and activists by encouraging them to write about feminist approaches to law.  Each year we offer a $1000 prize for the best unpublished student essay, paper or article.  We also arrange for the winner to deliver his or her paper at Washington College of Law, and, if possible, help the student to place the essay in a publication.  We are always amazed and delighted at the creativity exhibited in the submissions we receive.

The deadline for submissions is June 1, 2007.  Find out more here.

Legally Female: What Does It Mean To Be “Ms. JD”? Conference Was Held on 3/31

The conference Legally Female: What Does It Mean To Be “Ms. JD”? was held on March 31 at Yale Law School.  The conference was a collaboration between Yale Law Women and the national blog, Ms. JD, which explores the status of women in the legal profession.

Susan Cartier Liebel attended the conference and describes her experience on her blog.

Recent and Upcoming Law Students for Choice Events

Law Students for Choice at CUNY Law School hosted a panel presentation yesterday.  The topic was "Reproductive Rights: Past Victories, Future Challenges," and the speakers were reproductive rights activist Bill Baird; Marcia Pappas, President of the NY State Chapter of NOW; and Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health.

Law Students for Choice and Law Women at the University of Cincinnati College of Law will host "The Supreme Court and Women's Rights: Gathering Storm Clouds" on Monday, 3/26.  The featured speaker is Gretchen Borchelt, Counsel for the Health and Reproductive Rights program at the National Women's Law Center.

If you would like your school's Law Students for Choice event publicized on this blog, please email me at borgmann@mail.law.cuny.edu.