The three part series Redefining the practice of medicine: Winks and nods and euthanasia in Quebec (Bill 52: An Act respecting end-of-life care) has been translated into Turkish and published in volume 14 of the Comparative Current Criminal Law Series by Özyeğin University in Istanbul.
Category: Legal Commentary
Obamacare and religious liberty
A corporate conscience?
WHEN the Citizens United decision came down in 2010, 80% of Americans were unhappy to learn that political speech by corporations was protected under the first amendment. Three years later an effort to undermine Obamacare by expanding the constitutional rights of corporations is quietly gaining ground in the courts. The campaign, summarised here, includes some 73 cases challenging the law’s requirement that health-insurance plans provided by large employers include coverage for birth control. (A limited exemption—which Republicans are trying to expand—applies to religious organisations.) This contraceptive mandate, detractors say, presents organisations owned by religious individuals opposed to certain forms of birth control with a dilemma: abandon their beliefs or pay a hefty fine of up to $100 per employee per day.
Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinet manufacturer with 950 employees in Pennsylvania, is one of the plaintiffs challenging the mandate. Conestoga is owned and run by the Hahns, a Mennonite family that considers two forms of birth control—the emergency contraceptives known as Plan B and ella—to be the sinful taking of embryonic life. The family has objected to Obamacare’s mandate on constitutional grounds and under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a 1993 law requiring that “substantial burdens” on religious exercise be justified by a compelling state interest. . .[Read more]
Lost in Translation: The Failure of the International Reproductive Rights Norm
CFAM has posted a three part series based on a new paper just published in the Ave Maria Law Review.
Part One: A Norm is Born
NEW YORK, September 13 (C-FAM) For decades, powerful countries and wealthy foundations conducted a campaign to create a global standard for abortion rights. Despite their efforts, the phrase “reproductive health” has been adopted, but not an international norm of reproductive rights. [CFAM Part 1]
Part 2: Reproductive Health Doesn’t Include Abortion . . . But It
Does
NEW YORK, September 20 (C-FAM) The term “reproductive health” seeped without fanfare into UN language in 1972 when it was adopted by Jose Barzelatto, the inaugural head of WHO’s program on human reproduction. Its first appearance in a UN document was a World Health Organization (WHO) report 20 years later by Barzelatto’s successor, Mahmoud Fathalla. His sprawling description of the term contained “fertility regulation,” which for WHO included “pregnancy interruption,” that is, abortion. [CFAM Part 2]
Part 3: No Norm, No Right
NEW YORK, September 27 (C-FAM) In 2006, the term “reproductive health” made it into a binding international law treaty for the first time, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While this was a victory for the reproductive rights movement, it produced mixed results.
Twenty-three nations opposed the term. After it was reluctantly included, fifteen made statements reminding the term’s proponents what they had assured them throughout the negotiations: that the term “reproductive health” did not include abortion or create any new rights. [CFAM-Part 3]
- Secret Memos Reveal Worldwide Pro-Abortion Legal Strategy
- Conscientious objection as a crime against humanity
Proposed Rwandan law would legalize abortion, make conscientious objection illegal
Law Governing Reproductive Health
After its approval by the Standing Committee on Social Affairs, Rwandan Member of Parliament Ignatienne Nyirarukundo has brought a proposed Rwandan reproductive health law before the Rwandan Chamber of Deputies for consideration. The bill is reported to have been initiated five years ago, and is apparently an improved version of a bill that was criticized for violating human rights, contradicting the Rwandan Constitution, and for being so badly translated that its provisions were sometimes given different meanings in different languages. That bill was rejected by the Rwandan senate.
Nonetheless, the English text of the present bill3 continues to suffer from defects like incoherence and inconsistency that may be the product of poor translation. In addition, it include provisions that are likely to be controversial for various reasons. [Full text]
Irish Bishops’ briefing note on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013
The Catholic bishops of Ireland have sent a briefing note to the Oireachtas (Irish parliament) concerning the controversial Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013. Among the criticisms of the bill was the following reference to the bill’s protection of conscience provision:
3. The Bill also creates a number of serious moral, legal and Constitutional conflicts in the area of freedom of conscience and religious belief, notably:
A. The Bill provides for conscientious objection by ‘any medical practitioner, nurse or midwife’ only. It excludes others who may be obliged to co-operate in providing abortion services against their conscience or religious belief. This is in contrast to the wording of the proposed Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill 2001, which provided for conscientious objection by ‘any person’ carrying out or assisting in an abortion. The operation of this clause is also unacceptable because it involves a form of co-operation in evil by obliging those who conscientiously object to knowingly put the patient in to the care of medical personnel who will carry out an abortion. In effect, therefore, medical personnel are being given no choice but to cooperate in an abortion. This is in contrast to the practice in many other countries which ask only that the patient be handed over to the care of other medical personnel. Limiting the scope of conscientious objection in this way is potentially in conflict with Article 44.2.3 of the Constitution, which states that: “The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status”, with the general direction of legal interpretation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and with recent UK based cases such as Doogan & Anor v NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board [2013] ScotCS CSIH 36.
B. Article 44.2.3 also raises important questions of principle about the application of the Party Whip system to oblige members of the Oireachtas to vote in favour of this legislation, against their religious conscience. It may even open the possibility of a Constitutional challenge to the legislation itself on the basis of an un-constitutional legislative process.
C. The obligation on ‘appropriate institutions’ identified by the Minister to provide abortion services may be in conflict with existing legal arrangements and, in some cases with Article 44.2.5 of the Constitution, which states that: “Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes”.