W&L Law Review Roundtable

May, 01-2020

My tweet has been the focus of a law review roundtable, featuring the law review version of the tweet itself and responses from scholars. (link below)

see https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr-online/

Carliss N. Chatman, If a Fetus Is a Person, It Should Get Child Support, Due Process, and Citizenship https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1122&context=wlulr-online

Shaakirrah Sanders’ Fetal Equality raises an additional right to which a fetus may be entitled as a matter of equal protection: health care, which implicates state laws that provide civil and criminal exemptions to parents who choose religious healing instead of medical care for their children and minor dependents. The evidence of harm to children from religious healing is well documented. Yet, currently, approximately forty-three U.S. states and the District of Columbia have some type of exemption to protect religious healing parents in civil and criminal cases.

see https://lawreview.wlulaw.wlu.edu/fetal-equality/

Anthony Michael Kreis’ Under Ten Eyes addresses Legislative and Judicial power in America’s abortion debate. The piece sheds light on the material issue in relation to the legislation and litigation stemming from this debate. Kreis states that, “It is not just about the question of who has power over women’s bodies, it is more fundamentally about who holds power.” He refers back to my article numerous times and states that, “The article incisively demonstrates how fetal personhood is singularly focused on ending abortion in the United States and is gaining traction notwithstanding the fact that its advocates have not reasoned through the ‘unintended and potentially absurd consequences’ of their policy positions.” He also addresses the hard truth that, ‘the natural flow of constitutional time has been manipulated and rigged to stand athwart progressive social change,” and as a result the rights to bodily autonomy for women in America now rest with five male justices on the Supreme Court.

see https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1124&context=wlulr-online

Helen M. Alvarè disagrees with Chatman and Kreis about the impact of the legislation and pending Supreme Court case. In Personhood: Law, Common Sense, and Humane Opportunities, she suggests that,“The Supreme Court has the last word on the meaning of “person” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of “life” to persons.”

see https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1123&context=wlulr-online

Back

FEATURED STORIES