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Ira W. DeCamp Bioethics Seminars
ABSTRACT: A critical reading of the rhetoric in legal cases reveals underlying values and narratives used by courts, impacting the discourse on reproduction practices. Lawyers deploy rhetoric to sway the court, courts’ rulings shape public discourse, and their symbolic narratives influence policy decisions. We'll examine this in recent rulings that address the constitutionality of restricted access to reproductive practices. The first, from Israel, establishes the eligibility of same-sex couples and single men for domestic surrogacy services after years of ineligibility and the second is Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. We will consider the importance of using women-focused narratives to discuss reproductive practices performed on women’s bodies, and the ramifications of the failure to do so.
Sharon Bassan is a legal scholar with expertise in (bio)ethics, health policy, innovation, and information technology law and ethics. She is a visiting assistant professor at Kline School of Law, Drexel University. Her research interest is the regulation of innovative technology. She has focused on two areas: big data practices and transnational reproductive practices. Although these technologies are situated in quite distinct fields, they share similar elements: first, both raise ethical challenges or conflicts of interest. Second, they are typically accompanied by a lack of a clear regulatory authority to govern them internationally, and hence are subject to market forces. For the most part, this interdisciplinary research falls within the boundaries of law (health law, digital law, contracts, transnational law, family law), public policy, (bio)ethics, political theory, philosophy, STS, and human rights.
Respondent: Shatema Threadcraft, Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellow