#Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

northcarolinaprelawland-blog · 3 years ago

Text

A Brief History Of Supreme Court Abortion Cases

By Isabella Ahn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Class of 2024

June 2, 2022

1965: Griswold v. Connecticut

Estelle Griswold and C. Lee Buxton challenged a Connecticut law passed in 1879 which banned the use of contraceptive drugs and medical instruments that facilitate contraception.[1] Although a “right to privacy” is not explicitly delineated in the Constitution, the Supreme Court held in a 7-2 decision that its protection can be derived from the Bill of Rights. Justice Douglas’ majority opinion inferred the right to privacy from overlapping scopes of the First, Third, Fourth and Ninth Amendments’ provisions. Justices Goldberg, Warren and Brennan agreed with the majority but diverged on the position that privacy is clearly established by the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments rather than simply implied. Justices Harlan and White likewise concurred but employed only the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to reach this conclusion.[2] The boundary which Griswold set between the state and intimate matters such as pregnancy and childbirth became a crucial precedent for Roe.

1973: Roe v. Wade & Doe v. Bolton

Using the pseudonym “Jane Roe,” Norma McCorvey challenged a Texas state law which prohibited all abortions excluding lifesaving cases. With her companion case, Sandra Cano fought a similar regulation in Georgia under the pseudonym “Mary Doe.”[3] Drawing on Griswold, Justice Blackmun wrote for the majority that the “fundamental right of single women and married persons to choose whether to have children is protected by the Ninth Amendment, through the Fourteenth Amendment.”[4] To gauge the appropriate legal limitations on abortion and state interest throughout the term of a pregnancy, Justice Blackmun created a three-tier system of strict scrutiny—each tier corresponding with one trimester or about 12 weeks. His landmark opinion held that, until the end of the second tier, the state must protect the health of the mother and abortion may only be regulated out of concern for her health. Only in the third tier does the state’s responsibility to “potential life” emerge, when the fetus reaches viability.[5]

1989: Webster v. Reproductive Health Services

Webster attempted to overturn Missouri abortion restrictions which asserted that human life “begins at conception,” prevented public employees and facilities from assisting with non-necessary abortions, prohibited abortion encouragement and counseling, and allowed for viability tests on women beginning in their twentieth week of pregnancy. A controversial 5-4 decision upheld all provisions of the Missouri statute.[6] The outcome set the stage for stricter anti-choice regulations and further erosion of Justice Blackmun’s three-tier framework from Roe.

1992: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey

Another divisive decision, this case dealt with a challenge to 24-hour waiting periods, informed consent requirements, parental or guardian notification requirements for minors, and spousal notification requirements in Pennsylvania. Though the core protection of pre-viability choice upheld in Roe was affirmed, all the requirements but spousal notification were ruled constitutional. And the court rejected the original trimester framework, instead adopting the less rigid “undue burden” test.[7] An undue burden imposed by legislation is unconstitutional and exists if it places “a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.”[8] This re-evaluation fundamentally weakened the protection Roe initially afforded women by creating an opening for states to argue that their interest in potential life may extend throughout the first and second tiers of pregnancy in addition to the third.

2000: Stenberg v. Carhart (Carhart I)

In Stenberg, the court overruled a Nebraska ban on all “partial birth abortions”—an abortion procedure beginning with partial delivery of the unborn child—unless necessary to save the mother’s life. This statute failed the undue burden test because its vague language compromised the most common of second-trimester abortion procedure methods.[9]

2007: Gonzales v. Carhart & Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (Carhart II)

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was passed and signed into law in 2003. Citing Stenberg, multiple plaintiffs challenged the federal ban. However, the court effectively rescinded its earlier decision and upheld the legislation in a contentious 5-4 decision.[10] The majority found the act did not constitute an undue burden, nor was it unconstitutionally vague because it specified the “intact D&E” (“dilation and evacuation”) or “D&X” method rather than the more common D&E procedure. The lack of an exception for women’s health in the ban was also sustained—on the grounds of some medical uncertainty over the D&X procedure’s necessity.[11] As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her dissent, joined by Justices Souter, Stevens and Breyer, the majority ruling clearly departed from a tenet of Roe that “the State cannot proscribe an abortion procedure when its use is necessary to protect a woman’s health.”[12] Failing to disallow the country’s first federal ban on abortion techniques blurred the line “firmly drawn in Casey, between previability and postviability [sic] abortions”[13] and perceptibly emboldened states to pass increasingly restrictive abortion regulations of their own.

2022: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization

This case deals with a Mississippi law that would ban almost all abortions after the fetus has reached 15 weeks of gestational age. The only licensed abortion facility remaining in Mississippi challenged the “Gestational Age Act” in federal district court, which ruled to prohibit enforcement of the law based on insufficient evidence that a fetus reaches viability at 15 weeks.[14] The U.S. Court of Appeals maintained this position as well, but Mississippi petitioned its appeal and now the Supreme Court will adjudicate on a pre-viability abortion ban for the first time since 1973.[15] A leaked draft of Justice Alito’s sweeping majority opinion calls Roe “egregiously wrong from the start”[16] and invokes the Tenth Amendment to allow states to reach their own verdicts on abortion rights.

Looking Forward

The path of Supreme Court abortion cases over the past half century has been one of sporadic backpedaling. The right to pre-viability choice was first established under a standard of strict scrutiny—the highest form of judicial review that a court may employ to evaluate constitutionality—with Justice Blackmun’s three-tier system. This was then replaced by the weaker “undue burden” standard, with the right to choose termination before a fetus reaches viability being reasserted but alongside a reduction of constraints on state abortion legislation. The first Supreme Court case which handled a ban on methods of abortion overruled the law in question, but this was reversed in under a decade and obscured the scope of Roe and Casey. Coupled with the current 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the implications of this trajectory are substantial on expectations for the final Dobbs decision—anticipated to come out at the end of this month or early July. Assuming the court makes an anti-choice ruling, the fate of precedents from Roe and Casey are still up in the air. Chief Justice Roberts, a conservative but occasionally liberal previous swing vote, may join the dissent in a 5-4 split. Or a watered-down version of Justice Alito’s hardline opinion may secure the 6-3 majority. Contingent on the possibility of one or more conservatives flipping their votes, the precedent of pre-viability choice may be revoked altogether, or the court will continue to pare down the rights of women supplied by Roe.

______________________________________________________________

[1] Hannah Daniel, Lindsay Nicolet Brent Leatherwood, and Policy Staff, “The 6 Most Important Supreme Court Abortion Cases,” Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (Southern Baptist Convention, March 4, 2022), https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/the-6-most-important-supreme-court-abortion-cases/.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “A History of Key Abortion Rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project (Pew Research Center, May 30, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/01/16/a-history-of-key-abortion-rulings-of-the-us-supreme-court/.

[4] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 122 (1973)

[5] Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 163 (1973)

[6] “A History of Key Abortion Rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project (Pew Research Center, May 30, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/01/16/a-history-of-key-abortion-rulings-of-the-us-supreme-court/.

[7] “Timeline of Important Reproductive Freedom Cases Decided by the Supreme Court,” American Civil Liberties Union, February 2, 2009, https://www.aclu.org/other/timeline-important-reproductive-freedom-cases-decided-supreme-court.

[8] Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 878 (1992)

[9] “Timeline of Important Reproductive Freedom Cases Decided by the Supreme Court,” American Civil Liberties Union, February 2, 2009, https://www.aclu.org/other/timeline-important-reproductive-freedom-cases-decided-supreme-court.

[10] “A History of Key Abortion Rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project (Pew Research Center, May 30, 2020), https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2013/01/16/a-history-of-key-abortion-rulings-of-the-us-supreme-court/.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Gonzales v. Carhart, 505 U.S. 169 (2007)

[13] Gonzales v. Carhart, 505 U.S. 171 (2007)

[14] Hannah Daniel, Lindsay Nicolet Brent Leatherwood, and Policy Staff, “The 6 Most Important Supreme Court Abortion Cases,” Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (Southern Baptist Convention, March 4, 2022), https://erlc.com/resource-library/articles/the-6-most-important-supreme-court-abortion-cases/.

[15] Kevin Breuninger, “Supreme Court Conservatives Look Ready to Gut Roe v. Wade during Arguments in Mississippi Abortion Case,” CNBC (CNBC, December 1, 2021), https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/01/sotomayor-supreme-court-liberals-sound-alarm-in-fight-to-overturn-roe-v-wade.html.

[16] Ibid.

0 notes

coochiequeens · 2 years ago

Text

"Like many people who go through surrogacy, Cathy said it was not a choice; it was their only option." While I feel bad for what Cathy went through surrogacy was NOT her only option. Adoption is also possible.

By Kate McDonald

As a bill that seeks to regulate aspects of surrogacy goes before cabinet, Prime Time spoke to families who have used international surrogates.

"My house was silent. When you have a stillborn baby, your house is silent." Cathy Wheatley was seven months pregnant when she had a spontaneous uterine rupture. Her daughter, who she named Helen, died at birth and Cathy found out she could not carry any more pregnancies. "I lost my little girl," Cathy said. Despite their devastating loss, Cathy and her husband Keith Wheatley, from Co Wicklow, were determined to have their family.

Like many people who go through surrogacy, Cathy said it was not a choice; it was their only option."When a doctor mentions surrogacy, your first reaction is, people like me don't do that. You know what I mean? Like, we're just ordinary, everyday people on a farm in Wicklow. "But when they looked into it, they found that there were Irish couples doing it.

"You have to be very careful to make sure that you do all your research so that you know that you're doing the best that you possibly can for your babies, but also for your surrogate, because without your surrogate, you wouldn't have your babies," Cathy said.

The Wheatleys decided to go to a clinic in Ukraine, where they met Ivanna, who would eventually carry and give birth to their twins Ted and Elsie.

"It's the biggest thing in the world to give your babies to somebody to carry and to mind until they can give them back to you," Cathy said.

"I love those kids but I don't love them as my own; those are different feelings. Like it’s my nephew or cousins, not like my son or my daughter," Ivanna said.

Ivanna told Prime Time she became a surrogate mother after the birth of her second son.

"That is something I wanted to do because I love helping people, I love the feeling of being pregnant and I thought why, why don’t I help?" Ivanna said.

Cathy and Keith Wheatley remortgaged their house to front the cost. They paid just under €40,000 to their clinic in Ukraine, of which €14,000 was compensation for their surrogate Ivanna.

"I’m pregnant for nine months. I don’t work. But I have two kids. And my kids have basic needs" Ivanna said.

"They needed food, they needed education, they need dresses – everything that a normal kid needs. If I am surrogate, I am pregnant, I can’t work. It’s not like you are getting a lot of money with that - not like you decide 'I need money’ so I’ll go and get a baby for somebody. [It’s] not like many people think it is."

With legal fees, flights and accommodation, their total spend was €70,000.

"They don’t pay you for being pregnant in Ukraine, they compensate for your time," Ivanna said.

The Wheatleys and Ivanna developed a deep relationship and kept in touch after the twins’ birth.

When Russia invaded Ukraine two years ago, the Wheatleys brought Ivanna and her children to live with them in Ireland.

"If we talk about what happened in my country now, they came and they saved my life and they saved the life of my kids because four years ago I gave life to their kids," Ivanna said.

Brian and Kathy Egan had always planned to have four children. But after having her first son, Harry, Kathy had six miscarriages and she said she knew a larger family wasn't to be.

"It obviously gets harder every time to pick yourself up after it and try again. But we still felt very strongly that we'd be able to do this."

Kathy had no issue getting pregnant but couldn’t sustain the pregnancies. After another two miscarriages, the Egans began to consider surrogacy.

"Because it's new to you, you're second-guessing everything, you really want to make sure you have the right information. It's going to be the right clinic, the right surrogate, and everything is right in every way," Brian said.

Kathy and Brian Egan

The cost of surrogacy in the US and Canada ruled that region out for them, so they began looking elsewhere. They decided to go with a clinic in Lviv, Ukraine.

"Within a month, we were matched with a surrogate who matched my blood type, and we went ahead. But unfortunately, at the 20-week scan, we discovered there was a fatal fetal abnormality within the heart."

That first surrogate pregnancy ended in miscarriage, but the Egans then found a second surrogate.

"We did Zoom or Skype calls with Mariana, our surrogate. Her first response after every checkup was, 'now, can we tell Kathy & Brian?'"

"She's a very strong lady and quite business-like too. She was in no doubt that this was helping us both," Brian said.

Baby Luke arrived in May 2019 while Brian, Kathy and big brother Harry were at home in Kilkenny. They travelled through the night to get to Lviv.

"You cannot get there quick enough. You'd swim there," Kathy said.

"He was tiny. He was four weeks early, but he looked like Harry looked when he was born. So, I knew straight away which one to walk over to."

"You feel like, you know, you've been talking to him for months and praying and hoping to meet him, but it's like no other feeling," Kathy said.

The entire process cost the Egans about €100,000, they said.

Two years later, in June 2021, the family were stunned when Brian was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer.

"I didn't know what to say, really. That ‘cancer’ word anyway, you're all over the place," Brian said.

Eleven days after he was diagnosed, Brian’s prostate was removed. The surgery was a success, but his next blood test indicated the cancer had spread.

"At that stage I genuinely felt I didn't have long left. I was looking at Luke, he was two, didn't know if he was going, I was going to see him being three."

Brian received radiotherapy treatment and is still getting hormone treatment, which he says is going well.

However, due to the lack of regulation around the legal status for parents of children born through surrogacy, the Egans were left in a precarious situation.

Current Irish legislation does not cover legal issues that arise in surrogacy. The legal status and rights of all people involved are covered by the laws dealing with non-surrogate births.

This means the surrogate mother, who gives birth to the child, is the child's legal mother under Irish law. In the Egan’s case, Kathy is not Luke’s legal parent, although genetically he is her son as he was born using Kathy’s egg and Brian’s sperm.

"We just realised, if I pass away prematurely, Luke is effectively an orphan of the state." said Brian. "Kathy is just his legal guardian. He would not have a parent, he has different rights to Harry."

Brian and Kathy decided to take a case to the High Court, saying the State had failed to recognise Kathy as Luke’s mother.

The Egans were in court in April but have recently paused their action after hearing assurances that long-promised surrogacy legislation will be brought before the Oireachtas soon.

Under proposed terms of the Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022, parents of children born through surrogacy will be recognised as legal parents, if they meet certain criteria in the jurisdiction in which the surrogacy is intended to take place, and also the criteria to be specified in the Irish legislation.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney and her husband Dave tried to have a baby via IVF.

"We did 13 rounds.... I was pregnant on five occasions...unfortunately, they all resulted in a miscarriage," she said.

"We're a very close couple, but it's a very, very stressful experience. All my life... I wanted to be a mother. I wanted my own child," she said.

Mary initially thought that surrogacy was for well-off people: "My view was Elton John did surrogacy, really rich people did surrogacy. We were ordinary people, already indebted from all of the IVFs we had done."

When she began researching, she initially relied on Google. She said the most impressive website she found was for a clinic in Kyiv.

"We flew over, we gave them €12,000 upfront, and nothing came of that," she said.

Senator Mary Seery Kearney

After that experience in Ukraine, Senator Seery Kearney and her husband found a clinic in India and a surrogate who would carry their child.

"We were so grateful to this woman, and I also felt a huge responsibility for her," Mary said.

They said they sent gifts every couple of weeks and engaged with the surrogate mother all the way through. When the pregnancy reached the 20-week mark, they allowed themselves to hope it would be a success.

"I have to say, right up until the moment we stood outside the theatre, I didn't really believe. I believed that something was going to go wrong. Because you, you carry that trauma into the experience," she said.

But when they were called inside they knew it was real.

"I literally ran, I screamed and ran, 'this is my little girl,' handed into my arms," she said.

Now advocating in the Oireachtas for changes to made to Irish surrogacy legislation, Mary thinks 'goodwill' payments should be made to the surrogate to cover their costs during the pregnancy, but does not agree with commercial surrogacy: in which an agency takes a fee and passes on a portion of it to the surrogate.

"Throughout the process you have doctors paid, clinicians paid, you have the travel agent's paid, you have the lawyers paid.

"The only person that isn't entitled to any goodwill gesture at all is the person who's giving birth, who's carrying the pregnancy and giving birth. And that there is no reason why a goodwill payment could not be made to that surrogate," she says.

#Ireland #Surrogacy is not an only option #Adopt #Don't rent out a women and buy a kid #Irish couples had no trouble finding kids to adopt when the government and catholic church ran the Magdalen laundries #Irish couples exploiting Ukrainian women #At least the Wheatleys looked after the surrogate mother and her kids after the war broke out #Many other purchasing parents just grad the kid and don't look back at the woman #And how she's recovering from pregnancy and childbirth in a warzone #Health (Assisted Human Reproduction) Bill 2022 #Why are Irish parents using surrogates if the laws don't recognize both parents?#Don't they stop and think about what will happen to the kid in the event if a tragedy?#13 rounds of IVF? When there are so many kids to adopt?

6 notes · View notes

coochiequeens · 1 year ago

Text

Countries that ban commercial surrogacy but allow altruistic surrogacy are by default allowing would be reproductive purchasers to guilt trip young women into inconveniencing herself for over a year when they could look into adopting.

MAY 31, 2024 - 1:10PM

Ireland has mummy issues. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the upcoming Assisted Human Reproduction Bill. The proposed legislation, which passed through the Dáil on Wednesday, would allow those who have been resident in Ireland for two years to hire women from a list of approved countries to serve as surrogates, gestating and giving birth to babies who will then be handed over to them.

The main body of the bill concerns the licensing of agencies engaged in international surrogacy and the establishment of new legal frameworks. So-called “intended parents” will have legal rights, even where the baby is born abroad, provided the child has a “genetic link to at least one” of them.

While the ban on commercial surrogacy remains in place, a “reasonable sum” can be offered, and it seems entirely likely this will open the door to pregnancy-as-employment. For example, legitimate expenses will include the loss of income by the surrogate mother for up to one year and the salary of a cleaner for the duration of the pregnancy. There are a range of safeguards in place to ensure that prospective surrogate mothers are not exploited, but whether these will be respected in jurisdictions outside Ireland remains questionable.

With fertility rates plummeting across the world, the baby-making business is set to boom; in 2022 the surrogacy industry was valued at $14 billion. Given the swelling commercial clout, it seems likely smaller countries will cave to domestic and international pressure by loosening laws.

The Irish bill will bring the country closer to the UK, which allows for altruistic surrogacy. Notably, while Russia and Ukraine have lax laws and effectively allow surrogate mothers to be paid, all forms of the practice are outlawed across much of Europe, including Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

Many of the bill’s proponents have heralded it as marking progress toward equality between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, toward a forward-looking Ireland free from the scandals of its Catholic past.

The bill’s righteous and progressive aims were cemented in January when the Pope called surrogacy “a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs.” “A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract,” he added.

Chair of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, Alan Farrell TD, swelled with pride during a debate on the bill as he reflected: “We have seen dramatic changes in women’s rights and LGBT rights in Ireland, led by the public and pursued by the Government. This bill is the latest where successive governments have sought to build on that progress and deliver real change that reflects more understanding and an equal country.”

A spokesperson from the LGB rights group “Not All Gays” told me that opposition to the legislation has been framed as “anti-LGBTQIA”. “When will they stop weaponising LGB’s struggles and genuine homophobia to push for ethically dubious laws that could be plucked straight out of Gilead?” she asked. “We are not your shield to be used to silence reasonable debate or opposition to laws that seek to erode the rights and civil liberties.”

Just as with the dissolution of women’s rights at the hands of trans activists, this most recent threat to women’s dignity, health and happiness has come cloaked in the rainbow flag. But in reality, it signifies nothing more than a social shift toward the commercialisation of women’s bodies.

It is a triumph of market forces, of the state-sanctioned use of wombs for the production of a designer accessory. Provided the mother meets the minimum requirements, couples and individuals who have commissioned babies will be able to pose with them for Instagram snaps as soon as the mother has given birth.

The bill will probably pass into law, and Ireland will become a land where virgins may indeed become mothers. It is conceivable that future generations will look back on the period of legalised surrogacy with horror as we now do the brutal homes where unmarried mothers had their infants ripped from their care.

Josephine Bartosch is a freelance writer and assistant editor at The Critic.

In the meantime

#Ireland #Anti surrogacy #Assisted Human Reproduction Bill #in 2022 the surrogacy industry was valued at $14 billion #Commissioning babies while 5500 children are in state care #Babies are not commodities #Surrogacy exploits women

9 notes · View notes