A widow is battling to use sperm taken from the body of her dead husband, in a British legal first. The woman, who cannot be named, wants to use sperm taken from her husband after he died unexpectedly during a routine hospital operation last year. The mother-of-one applied for an emergency court order allowing his sperm to be taken shortly after he died and it is now being stored in a clinic. The law allows sperm only to be used with the written consent of the donor.
This paper is a critical analysis of the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece; I will discuss the way that a consensus reached in the legislative committee among liberal and conservative jurists on the matter of compensation of surrogate mothers was undermined by intra-party populism in the Greek parliament which banned it to avoid commodification; inevitably the law fell into disuse leading to a new law which allowed government-defined compensation, not the one agreed by the parties; the regulation of surrogate motherhood in Greece is a typical example of the deleterious effects of the combination of legal formalism and legal moralism in contemporary Greece.
A lesbian couple has won a landmark case against a Californian clinic, where doctors allegedly cited their religious beliefs as grounds to refuse the couple IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment. Guadalupe Benitez, 36, of Oceanside, and her spouse, Joanne Clark, sued doctors Douglas Fenton and Christine Brody, at North Coast Women's Medical Group in Vista for discrimination in 2001. The doctors treated Ms Benitez with fertility drugs and provided her guidance about self-insemination but allegedly told her they would not inseminate her, due to their religious objections. The couple was, however, referred to another clinic by the North Coast doctors, which they were told would have no moral objections. Ms Benitez underwent treatment and the couple have since had three children. The discrimination case was finally settled after eight years for undisclosed sum of money.
Drawing upon psychological and feminist theory to explore the notion of reproductive autonomy, central to my analysis is that its value lies in its instrumentality in fostering basic human needs and one’s sense of self. Exploring the value of reproductive autonomy by reference to human needs not only underpins the importance of that value, but also fleshes out ideas as to why protection of one’s physical integrity in the reproductive realm constitutes such an extreme situation, and is particularly commanding of our respect. Such an account is not only key to exploring important aspects of the nature and limits of the concept of reproductive autonomy, but also provides us with a promising and honest framework for addressing cases like Evans 2004, those involving third-party challenges to abortion decision-making, and perhaps most significantly of all, for reconciling these difficult cases with our equal respect for all reproductive desires, whether to reproduce or to avoid reproduction.
Most law school courses approach reproductive rights law from a purely domestic perspective, as an extensive survey of casebooks and course material reveals. The authors argue that a transnational perspective can enhance the teaching of sexual and reproductive health in all of the law school courses and doctrinal settings in which this topic in treated. While the topic of “Global Sexual and Reproductive Rights” can be presented in a free-standing course, transnational perspectives should also be integrated across the curriculum where sexual and reproductive rights are discussed. Expanding reproductive rights pedagogy to address transnational perspectives will aid in exposing a wide range of students to transnational material, will expand students’ preparedness to analyze such materials, and will better reflect the debates on sexual and reproductive health currently taking place outside of law school classrooms.
Despite appearances in public debate, there is a surprising amount of consensus across the political spectrum on two basic components of reproductive rights: the O.S.I. (the offspring selection interest) and the B.I.I. (the bodily integrity interest). In this article, Colb suggests that it is important to keep these two often-overlapping interests distinct in thinking about calls for reproductive rights. To illustrate the pitfalls of conflating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I., Colb takes up frozen embryo disputes between sperm and egg donors and intra-couple conflicts about abortion. She concludes that although opponents on the abortion issue are unlikely to reach a consensus, the scope of their disagreements can be narrowed and better defined by treating the O.S.I. and the B.I.I. as the independent and severable interests that they truly are.
Three women in Namibia are suing the state for allegedly being sterilised without their informed consent after being diagnosed as HIV positive. The women say the doctors and nurses should have informed them properly about what was happening. The rights group representing them, the Legal Assistance Centre, says it has documented 15 cases of alleged HIV sterilisation in hospitals since 2008. A march in their support is taking place in Windhoek as the case begins.
The UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) is investigating websites that match up sperm donors with women who want to conceive, to see whether they may be breaking the law. The move by the HFEA follows the conviction at Southwark Crown Court in London of Ricky Gage and Nigel Woodforth, who made £250 000 (€295 000; $400 000) from their company Fertility 1st, which couriered sperm from donors to women who were trying to conceive. The pair face a possible jail term when they are sentenced in October. They fell foul of a law that makes the procurement of gametes, including human sperm, illegal without a licence from the HFEA.
SAN JOSE — Costa Rica, a nation that takes pride in its respect for civil liberties, is being sued for failing to lift a ban on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), as it remains the only country in the Americas that prohibits the procedure. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said on Monday it will take Costa Rica to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights for not legalizing IVF after the commission twice extended its previous deadline for the country to do so. In-vitro fertilization was banned in Costa Rica in 2000 under pressure from the Catholic Church. Some couples have taken their cases to the Inter-American Court, which is based in Washington, and 50 couples have joined to file the petition. President Laura Chinchilla has made efforts to prevent the case from reaching the court, but she was met with sluggish action on the part of Costa Rican lawmakers.
Days after an Israeli court made a landmark ruling allowing the family of a deceased 17-year-old girl to harvest and freeze the eggs from her ovaries, the family has apparently bowed to domestic pressure to drop efforts to push ahead with the procedure. The family of Chen Aida Ayish, who was gravely injured in a car crash 10 days ago, had appealed to the court to extract her eggs after doctors declared her brain dead, Israeli media had reported. The court's ruling was unprecedented in Israel, and possibly globally, but immediately sparked a backlash from religiously conservative communities in Israel, a source familiar with the case said yesterday, prompting the family not to take the case any further. Ms Ayish, 17, fell into a coma after she was hit by a car 10 days ago. Doctors at the Kfar Saba hospital pronounced her brain dead last Wednesday, and her parents decided to donate her organs, and probe the possibility of harvesting her eggs.
In the case of V.C. v. Slovakia the Court found a violation of the prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment and of the right to respect for private and family life concerning the sterilisation of a young Slovakian woman of Roma origin.