Friday, May 8, 2015

Satirical Ad Campaign Takes Aim at Chile's Extreme Abortion Ban

The Daily Beast: Chile’s Shocking DIY Abortion Ad Campaign, by Nina Strochlic:

A viral satirical campaign—which shows women going to awful measures to “accidentally” lose a pregnancy—is critiquing the country’s strict anti-abortion laws.

“It’s important that you find a long and steep set of stairs,” a young, brunette woman says in Spanish to a hand-held camera. She walks up steps of an anonymous building. “Make sure there’s no security cameras, so no one can see you.” . . .

“In Chile an accidental abortion is the only kind of abortion that is not considered a crime,” the video displays in bold type. The satirical videos are part of a campaign launched last month called Abortion Tutorials. It was conceived for theMiles Organization, a reproductive rights NGO, by advertising agency Grey Chile. The groups are hoping the Chilean government will be shamed into reforming what is the strictest abortion law in the world. . . .

May 8, 2015 in Abortion Bans, International | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Fear of Parental Disapproval Leads Teens To Forgo Birth Control

CNN: Survey says teens skip birth control because they fear parental judgment, by Kelly Wallace:

Parents, if the following finding doesn't make you sit up and take notice when it comes to talking to your kids about sex and birth control, I'm not sure what will get your attention.

In a recent survey, 68% of teens said they agreed with this statement: The primary reason why they don't use birth control or protection is because they're afraid their parents will find out. . . .

May 8, 2015 in Contraception, Teenagers and Children | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

New Study on Premature Babies and the Viability Standard in Abortion Law

TIME:  How a New Study on Premature Babies Could Influence the Abortion Debate, by Eliza Gray:

A new study showing that a tiny percentage of extremely premature babies born at 22 weeks can survive with extensive medical intervention could change the national conversation about abortion, though the research is unlikely to have a major effect on women’s access to abortions in the short term.

Pro-life advocates said the study—which was published by theNew England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday and found that 3.5% percent of 357 infants born at 22 weeks could survive without severe health problems if hospitals treated them—could benefit the pro-life movement by sparking discussion about the viability of premature babies. . . .

_______________________________

This article correctly points out that the study in no way contradicts or forces reconsideration of Supreme Court precedent governing pre- and post-viability abortions.  Unlike what some articles suggest, the Supreme Court has never set viability at a specific point in pregnancy (even in Roe), but rather has left the determination of viability to the provider to determine based on the individual facts surrounding each pregnancy.  Viability depends on many factors, including the type of medical facilities available.  

-CEB

May 8, 2015 in Abortion Bans, Medical News, Pregnancy & Childbirth | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

New Oklahoma and Florida Abortion Waiting Period Laws Join This Year's "Flurry of Roadblocks"

The New York Times: State Legislatures Put Up Flurry of Roadblocks to Abortion, by Frances Robles:

Oklahoma’s governor this week approved a law extending to 72 hours the mandatory waiting period before a woman can have an abortion. Here in Florida, lawmakers enacted a 24-hour waiting period that requires two separate appointments — one for anultrasound and information about fetal development and another for the actual procedure.

These are just two laws in a surge of bills passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures this year that make it harder for women to have abortions. . . .

May 8, 2015 in Abortion, Mandatory Delay/Biased Information Laws, State Legislatures | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

New Scholarship from Dov Fox

Dov Fox (University of San Diego Law) has posted new scholarship on SSRN. Below are the abstracts:

Dov Fox

Race Sorting in Family Formation:

Our laws afford enormous freedom not only to parents, but also to the intermediaries — adoption agencies, social workers, sperm banks, and egg vendors — that bring them together with (future) children. These middlemen routinely exercise this discretion to emphasize race in matching parents to the same-race gamete donors or adoptive children they tend to prefer. 

This Symposium Essay provides a conceptual framework to govern the use of race in decisions about family formation. This spectrum of salience-varying ways to manage racial information ranges from those that lay the greatest emphasis on race to those that soften or altogether exclude its expression. 

The Essay locates the operation of these different approaches in the law and practice of adoption and assisted reproduction. That race tends to reproduce itself within the family makes these unique contexts from which to ask what sort of racial self-understandings our multiracial democracy should seek to embody.
 

The State's Interest in Potential Life:

Courts have resolved a range of controversies by casual appeal to the state’s interest in “potential life” that the Supreme Court has held capable of overriding even fundamental rights. My analysis of this potential-life interest reveals its use to mean not one but four species of government concern that I call prenatal welfare, postnatal welfare, social values, and social effects. I demonstrate how these distinct state interests operate -- across a range of different contexts with varying levels of justificatory strength -- to resolve reproductive disputes in more precise and sound ways. I respond to institutional competence and social mediation challenges to disentangling potential-life interests. 
 

Religion and the Unborn under the First Amendment:

Assisted reproduction, stem cell research, and abortion are among the primary social controversies in which religion tends to play a conspicuous role. A prominent objection to government restrictions on such unborn-protective practices holds that they involve judgments about nascent human life that hew too closely to religion under constitutional principles that govern the separation of church and state. I argue that this Establishment Clause challenge trades on a misunderstanding of religion and its relationship to ideas about the unborn. It conflates four influences commonly associated with religion. The first three — compulsions of faith, promises of salvation, and obedience to God — are the ones that government may not endorse. But there is a fourth, involving broader visions about what makes society good, that legitimately animates state action. And it is this fourth influence, I will try to show, that best explains most efforts to protect fetuses and embryos. This isn't to say such laws don't have other constitutional problems; just that the First Amendment isn't one.

May 8, 2015 in Scholarship and Research | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)