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United States and Israel The Right to Privacy: A Comparative Legal Analysis Marking the End to US Legal Exceptionalism
- Edited by Robin Fretwell Wilson, University of Illinois, June Carbone, University of Minnesota
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- Book:
- International Survey of Family Law 2023
- Published by:
- Intersentia
- Published online:
- 03 April 2024
- Print publication:
- 31 October 2023, pp 335-354
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Summary
Résumé
Dans cet article, l’auteur soutient que si l’affaire Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health concerne le droit à l’avortement, sa portée est exponentiellement plus large. Elle marque la fin de l’exception juridique américaine, telle que personnifiée dans la sanctification du droit au respect de la vie privée. Contrairement à ceux qui soutiennent que le droit à l’avortement aurait dû être fondé sur le droit à l’intégrité corporelle, à l’égalité ou à l’autonomie, l’auteur affirme que le juge Blackmun a eu tout à fait raison dans la décision Griswold v. Connecticut : seul le droit au respect de la vie privée peut protéger l’individu des interrogatoires et de l’humiliation et conférer ainsi aux citoyens le droit d’être « laissés en paix » en tenant l’État à distance. L’invocation du droit au respect de la vie privée est particulièrement pertinent en matière familiale, cette dernière constituant le principal domaine dans lequel ce droit est protégé. L’affaiblissement du droit au respect de la vie privée aura très certainement des répercussions dans les nombreuses situations dans lesquelles il est mis en balance avec une vie potentielle, y compris en-dehors de l’avortement : contrôle des naissances, droits des femmes en matière de soins et de santé pendant la grossesse, poursuites pénales contre les femmes enceintes, hypothèses de vie et de naissance illicites, gestation pour autrui et PMA, pour n’en citer que quelquesuns. Un tel affaiblissement aura également, en toute logique, des répercussions sur les cas dans lesquels le droit au respect de la vie privée n’est pas seulement mis en balance avec une vie potentielle, mais avec la vie réelle des enfants. En effet, en matière d’éducation, de soins, de santé et d’autres décisions ayant des conséquences sur les enfants, l’affaire Dobbs provoque également, aux États-Unis, un affaiblissement des prérogatives liées au droit au respect de la vie privée des parents. Bien que cela puisse être bénéfique à certains égards, notamment en ce que cela permet à l’État de protéger les droits des enfants, il en résulte également un paternalisme lourd, un État qui contrôle tout et impose une vision unique de l’intérêt supérieur des enfants.
Pour parfaire cette analyse, l’auteur oppose le système juridique américain sur l’avortement et les droits parentaux, au système juridique beaucoup plus interventionniste et paternaliste d’Israël, dans lequel les décisions en matière d’avortement sont prises par un comité devant lequel les femmes doivent comparaître.
4 - Muller v.|Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908)
- from Part II - The feminist judgments
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- By Andrea Doneff, Professor at Atlanta's John Marshall Law School (AJMLS)., Pamela Laufer-Ukeles, Professor of Law at the University of Dayton School of Law.
- Edited by Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger, Bridget J. Crawford
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- Book:
- Feminist Judgments
- Published online:
- 05 August 2016
- Print publication:
- 02 August 2016, pp 78-97
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Summary
INTRODUCTION
Allowing the State of Oregon to enact workplace legislation protecting only women, the U.S. Supreme Court in Muller v. Oregon accepted women's greater need for protection as a fact established by social science research. Muller is important to the history and theory of feminism for two reasons. First, it is known for the Brandeis brief filed on behalf of the State of Oregon by then-attorney and later U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. A Brandeis brief emphasizes social science research to bolster the factual argument made in support of the legal analysis. While it is common today to make policy arguments based on non-legal research or to provide expert analysis of surrounding facts, it was not nearly so common before Muller.
Second was Muller's acceptance of the state's argument that it could use its police powers to create protectionist laws for women based on the facts of women's weaker nature and man's historical domination and role as protector of women. The feminist dissent by Professor Pamela Laufer-Ukeles, writing as Justice Laufer-Ukeles, points out that protecting workers based on sweeping generalizations cannot be justified at the expense of equality for women.
THE ORIGINAL OPINION
In Muller, a laundry owner was fined for violating an Oregon law limiting the number of hours women could work in factories or laundries to ten hours per day. Oregon justified the use of its police power on the basis that working long hours in laundries was bad for women's health, safety, and morals. Oregon's brief spent just a few of its more than 100 pages discussing the law; the rest of the brief presented research and quotes from a wide variety of experts on the impact of long hours of factory work on women, especially its effects on their ability to bear and raise children and care for their families.
The brief cited and quoted numerous reports and statements from around the world. For example, one report entitled the Specific Evil Effects on Childbirth and Female Functions found that “[t]he evil effect of overwork before as well as after marriage upon childbirth is marked and disastrous.” The brief asserted that shorter hours were the only possible protection against such harms because “[a] decrease in the intensity of exertion is not feasible.”
Reproductive Choices and Informed Consent: Fetal Interests, Women's Identity, and Relational Autonomy
- Pamela Laufer-Ukeles
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- Journal:
- American Journal of Law & Medicine / Volume 37 / Issue 4 / December 2011
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 06 January 2021, pp. 567-623
- Print publication:
- December 2011
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In this Article, I describe and examine the severe shortcomings in women's autonomy in the context of reproductive choices in the medical arena. The reproductive choices I explore are those choices that involve gestation: abortion, fertility treatments, and interventions during pregnancy. Due to state and medical interests in the fetus, I describe how information conveyed to patients making reproductive choices is biased towards fetal interests, relies on female stereotypes, and is still conveyed with the objective authority of the medical profession. Moreover, reproductive choices implicate women's values and identity interests that reach beyond medical concerns, which are not part of the informed consent doctrine at all. The narrow, individualistic informed consent torts doctrine intended to protect patient autonomy does not do enough in this context to balance bias nor does it mandate discussion of important identity interests and values. Accordingly, I argue that when faced with reproductive choices, women are not provided the balanced and comprehensive information needed to promote their autonomy.
In response to the breakdown in patient autonomy I describe, instead of leaving women alone to make choices or regulating in order to protect them from their choices, a broader framework for supporting reproductive choices should be established. In light of the interdependence of woman and fetus, as well as the broader social context shaping these decisions, I argue that a more contextual, relational perspective of autonomy should be the goal of informed consent in the context of reproductive choices. I suggest a number of reforms that aim to optimize patient autonomy from a relational perspective. I suggest a broad, deliberative doctor-patient consultation and legal reforms that create more balance between the pull towards intervention and fetal protection on the one hand, and non-intervention and protection of women's personal identity interests on the other.