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...
Tort Law
Congress passed the Periodic Payment Settlement Act of 1982 to incentivize structured settlements. The Act sought to encourage tort victims with serious injuries to agree to settlements that offered the best prospect of long-term financial security. But Congress failed to predict the development of a robust secondary market for settlement payment streams: Since the early 1990s, factoring companies have aggressively and unscrupulously...
Law should help direct—and not merely constrain—the development of artificial intelligence (AI). One path to influence is the development of standards of care both supplemented and informed by rigorous regulatory guidance. Such standards are particularly important given the potential for inaccurate and inappropriate data to contaminate machine learning. Firms relying on faulty data can be required to compensate those harmed by that data use—and...
An approaching shortage of OBGYNs threatens the demands of a growing population of reproductive-age women. This threat is exacerbated by a shaky medical–legal structure that places a disproportionate burden on the OBGYN profession—a burden that patients are ultimately left to share. This Note explores the delicate interaction between medical malpractice litigation, the high-risk OBGYN profession, and patients’ access to healthcare. It then...
Introduction The concept of reproductive negligence is probably not unfamiliar to men and women of child-bearing or child-begetting age. Many a restless hour has been spent worrying about the consequences of a skipped pill, an abandoned condom, or some other form of contraceptive carelessness. The general rule in such circumstances is that the injured party […]
Introduction The best laid plans of mice and men go oft astray. For many years, John and Mary have carefully used birth control in order to pursue their joint careers as rising academics, and at the same time, realize (in summertime getaways) their major passions for exploring ancient civilizations and sites of Renaissance art and […]
Introduction Professor Dov Fox’s comprehensive, deeply meditated essay, Reproductive Negligence, argues convincingly that the laws of tort, contract, and property severally and jointly fail to govern the promises and perils of modern reproductive technologies in an acceptable way. Our “legal system . . . treats heedlessly switched sperm, lost embryos, and misdiagnosed fetuses not as misconduct that it […]