MI Lunchtime Seminar: Federalism in the US in the wake of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization - Stephen Latham

The Mason Institute Lunchtime Seminar Series 2022/23 kicks off with Dr Stephen Latham, Senior Research Scientist and Director, Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics

Federalism in the US in the wake of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization

About the seminar
The US Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the 50-year-old precedent of Roe v Wade has freed states to permit, regulate or ban abortions, as they see fit. Novel legislation from anti-abortion states and responsive legislation from pro-choice states have opened up a number of pressing legal questions about the continuing structure of American federalism. At issue are both questions about the relations among states with conflicting abortion laws (e.g., Can abortion-banning states prosecute their own citizens, or license private civil suits against their own citizens, based on the fact that the citizen(s) received or helped someone else receive a legal abortion in another state? Can abortion-providing states hold citizens of abortion-banning states harmless against such suits, or refuse to provide medical information to abortion-prosecuting states?) and about the nature and scope of the supremacy of US federal law over state law (can a state where abortion is illegal interfere with the delivery, through the federal mails, of a federally-approved abortifacient drug? Can federal laws requiring hospitals to stabilize all patients who present to the hospital in emergent conditions override state anti-abortion laws that make no exceptions for abortions to save the life of the mother?). In this talk I will discuss a group of federalism-related lawsuits that have arisen since the decision in Dobbs, speculate about their probable resolutions, and comment on their relationship to other, non-abortion-related bioethics issues.

 

About the speaker
Stephen Latham, JD, PhD, is Director of Yale’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, a program of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He has published widely in health law and bioethics, with particular emphasis on the legal regulation of novel medical technologies and of human and animal research. He also has a strong interest in philosophical argumentation in bioethics. He is a former board member of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, which gave him its distinguished service award; and a contributing editor of the Hastings Center Report.

 

 

This event is free and open to all, no registration necessary.