US abortion advocates claim victory in state ballot measures
US voters in California, Michigan, Kentucky and Vermont Tuesday voted in favor of abortion rights in four state ballot measures. Results from Montana’s vote remain inconclusive, but abortion advocates are poised to win. In June, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with Dobbs v. Jackson Women Health Organization and ruled there is no [...]
Explainer: How Sharia Law is More Progressive Than the US Supreme Court on Abortion
On June 24, 2022, in the landmark Dobbs v. Jackson decision, the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a 5-4 decision, posing a risk to the reproductive rights of millions of American women. Though of course, the debate is limited in many ways to US constitutional laws and practices, it also draws on [...]
Spain antitrust agency fines US pharmaceutical company 39M euros for market abuse
Spanish anitrust agency Comisión Nacional de los Mercados y la Compentencia (CNMC) Tuesday fined US pharmaceutical company Merck Sharp and Dohme (MSD) 39 million euros for abuse of the market. The agency claims that MSD took unjustified legal action against its Spanish competitor Insud Phrama under the false pretense of protecting its patent. According to [...]
Texas federal judge rules HIV preventative-care mandate violates private employer's religious rights
A Texas federal judge Wednesday ruled that private employers do not have to provide health insurance coverage for HIV prevention drugs (PrEP drugs) and other preventative care if it violates their religious rights. The ruling means private employers can now offer health insurance plans that exclude or limits coverage of PrEP drugs, contraception, the HPV [...]
For nearly a century, many progressives have seen the Constitution, and especially the Supreme Court, as allies in the effort to make our political and economic life more democratic. For a long time, this trust seemed warranted. The initially reactionary New Deal Court came to embrace the power of the national government to limit corporate [...]
US District Judge Wesley Hendrix Tuesday enjoined the enforcement of guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortions, ruling that the guidance went beyond what is allowable under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). This decision came from the US District Court for the Northern [...]
Explainer: How a Recent Supreme Court Judgment Blurs the Lines of Canadian Sexual Assault Law
A recent decision by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has had a subtle but important impact on Canadian sexual assault law, particularly as it pertains to the issues of consent and fraud. The case of R v Kirkpatrick involved a man accused of failing to wear a condom during sex with the complainant against [...]
The Demise of Roe Threatens the Privacy of a Woman’s Entire Reproductive Health Record
The 1996 federal law that protects the privacy of our medical records –the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act or HIPAA – has from the outset contained a carefully crafted exception for personal health information that might bear directly on the commission of a crime. But with the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the [...]
US President Joe Biden Wednesday signed an executive order protecting the right of American women to travel across state lines for abortion care and directing the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to protect abortion and reproductive healthcare access. Biden signed the order in a video call to the first meeting of the Interagency [...]
US senators introduce bipartisan bill to codify abortion rights
A bipartisan group of Senators Tuesday proposed legislation Tuesday to codify the right to abortion, formally established in Roe v. Wade, in federal law. The bill is sponsored by Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) and Susan Collins (R-ME) and is the first senatorial proposal to have broad bipartisan support. The [...]
