This Piece responds to The New Abortion by Dov Fox and Mary Ziegler by critically examining their legal history of in vitro fertilization (IVF) regulation and their proposals for federal regulation to stave off regressive regulation. First, while admiring the value of their historical analysis, this Piece challenges the authors to delve more deeply into the internal dynamics of reproductive rights advocacy during the twentieth century...
Reproductive Justice
In vitro fertilization (IVF) presents a neglected puzzle. IVF is used to create nearly one in forty babies born in the United States each year. But it remains deeply underregulated and has rarely been subject to the usual wrangling on matters of reproduction. IVF’s regulatory vacuum gets chalked up to America’s polarization over abortion. Yet for half a century, our laws and politics have treated these practices nothing alike. Abortion’s...
This Article interrogates the current and future role of employer-sponsored health insurance in reproductive autonomy, revealing the impact that employers’ coverage choices have on access to reproductive care and the legal infrastructure that prioritizes employer choice over individual autonomy.
Over half of the population depends on employers for health insurance. Laws regulating employer plans give employers exceptionally wide latitude...
In Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology Are Remaking Reproduction and the Law, Dov Fox schematizes the concept of “reproductive negligence” (also called “reproductive wrongs”) into three categories: procreation imposed, procreation deprived, and procreation confounded. This Book Review aims to extend Fox’s analysis by looking beyond the law of torts, which is Fox’s primary focus. This Review observes that...