The Hypocrisy of Sex or Pregnancy-Based Affirmative Action
The Supreme Court’s sex-based jurisprudence has always been a mess; the Court, for example, is not even willing to conceptualize pregnancy-based discrimination as sex discrimination. But, oddly, within this mess, the Court has consistently recognized sex-based affrmative action as consistent with its sex discrimination jurisprudence. The Supreme Court’s race-based affrmative action jurisprudence has consisted of […]
Unintended Consequences of Fetal Personhood Statutes: Examples from Tax, Trusts, and Estates
The laws of taxation, trusts, and estates are new fronts in the culture wars over abortion. After the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, some anti-abortion states enacted fetal personhood statutes that have the potential to unsettle and destabilize longstanding legal doctrines that otherwise create predictability and stability in the […]
On the Human Right to Healthy Menstruation
This short essay introduces the Bellagio Declaration on the Human Right to Healthy Menstruation, a statement signed by an interdisciplinary group of academics, artists, policymakers, clinicians, and practitioners in 2024. The Declaration frames the human right to healthy menstruation as including (1) non-discrimination on the basis of menstruation; (2) dignity in all matters related to […]
Flattening Breast Cancer by Removing the Breasts: Protecting a Woman’s Right to Choose Reconstruction of an Aesthetic Flat Chest After a Mastectomy
Breast cancer takes away women’s choices. Many women decide to regain control of their bodies and prevent future cancer or follow-up surgeries by having a double mastectomy without any reconstruction, leaving a fat chest. When their doctors refuse to perform this surgery or their insurers refuse to cover this form of chest reconstruction, women are […]
Only Useful as a Uterus: How to Shape State and Personal Safeguards on the Implementation of Whole Body Gestational Donation to Protect the Value of Women as Whole Persons
This Note analyzes whole body gestational donation, as proposed by ethicist Anna Smajdor, and the organ donation consent laws that would be implicated by implementation of such a system. Further, this Note analyzes the ethical implications of such laws upon vulnerable groups of people and how the law should protect certain groups from the dangers […]
The Networks: The Coordinated Mobilization of Doctors for Bans on Gender Affirming Healthcare for Minors
A key feature of the current anti-LGBTQ backlash is opposition to gender affrming medical care for minors. Anti-trans activists bring out physicians to argue that “science” shows that gender affrming care is dangerous and should be banned, particularly for vulnerable children. These physicians present themselves as neutral and unbiased, responding to organic concerns from lawmakers—but […]
The Current Cultural Defense Framework: Misconception of Minority Cultures and Disregard of Gender Antisubordination Values
American courts tend to accept cultural defenses raised by minority defendants attempting to explain their sex-subordinating crimes when the sexist norms underlying their cultural claims converge with those norms still embedded in American society. When culture is used as an excuse in this way, establishing an effective mechanism to assess the authenticity of minority defendants’ […]