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Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act (1921)
In November 1921, US Congress passed the National Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, also called the Sheppard-Towner Act. The Act provided federal funds to states to establish programs to educate people about prenatal health and infant welfare. Advocates argued that it would curb the high infant mortality rate in the US.
Format: Articles
Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (1994)
On 26 May 1994, US President Bill Clinton signed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in to law, which federally criminalized acts of obstruction and violence towards reproductive health clinics. The law was a reaction to the increasing violence toward abortion clinics, providers, and patients during the 1990s. That violence included clinic blockades and protests, assaults on physicians and patients, and murders. The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act established
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Frazer v. Schlegel (2007)
On 20 August 2007, in Frazer v. Schlegel, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit decided that researchers Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou owned the rights to the vaccine patent for Human Papillomavirus, or HPV, instead of a research team led by Richard Schlegel. Frazer v. Schlegel reversed the decision that the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences had previously made, awarding the patent to Schlegel on the basis that Frazer’s patent application contained inaccurate science.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Technologies
The Case of Lydia Fairchild and Her Chimerism (2002)
In 2002, after applying for government assistance in the state of Washington, Lydia Fairchild was told that her two children were not a genetic match with her and that therefore, biologically, she could not be their mother. Researchers later determined that the genetic mismatch was due to chimerism, a condition in which two genetically distinct cell lines are present in one body. The state accused Fairchild of fraud and filed a lawsuit against her.
Format: Articles
Gonzales v. Carhart (2007)
In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007), the US Supreme Court held in a five-to-four decision that the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by the US Congress was constitutional. Although the Court previously ruled in Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) that a Nebraska law that prohibited partial-birth abortions was unconstitutional, Gonzales reversed this decision. Gonzales created the precedent that anyone who delivers and kills a living fetus could be subject to legal consequences, unless he or she performed the procedure to save the life of the mother.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (2007)
Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood) was the 2007 US Supreme Court case in which the Court declared the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 constitutional, making partial birth abortions illegal. In 2003, the US Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which prohibited an abortion technique called partial birth abortion. A partial birth abortion is similar to, but not the same as, a Dilation and Extraction or D&X abortion, which is what the Ban was intended to prohibit. Gonzales v.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
California Proposition 71 (2004)
The California Stem Cell Research and Cures Act, also called Proposition 71, was a ballot
initiative proposed by California voters in 2004 to allocate three billion dollars of state
funds for stem cell research over ten years. Endorsed by California scientists and
patient-advocates, Prop 71 passed on 2 November 2004, amending the state constitution to make
stem cell research a constitutional right. In addition, Prop 71 led to the creation of the
California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), in San Francisco, California to allocate
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Weber v. Stony Brook Hospital (1983)
The New York Court of Appeals' 1983 case Weber v. Stony Brook set an important precedent upholding the right of parents to make medical decisions for newborns born with severe congenital defects. A pro-life New York attorney, Lawrence Washburn, attempted to legally intervene in the case of Baby Jane Doe, an infant born with disorders. When the infant's parents chose palliative care over intensive corrective surgery, Washburn made repeated attempts to have the New York courts force through the surgery.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
The US President's Council on Bioethics (2001-2009)
The US President's Council on Bioethics was an organization headquartered in Washington D.C. that was chartered to advise then US President George W. Bush on ethical issues related to biomedical science and technology. In November 2001, US President George W. Bush created the President's Council on Bioethics (PCB). Convened during a nationwide cloning and embryonic stem cell research debate, the Council stated that it worked to address arguments about ethics from many different perspectives.
Format: Articles
Subject: Organizations, Legal, Ethics
Buck v. Bell (1927)
In 1927, the US Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell set the legal precedent that states may sterilize inmates of public institutions because the court argued that imbecility, epilepsy, and feeblemindedness are hereditary, and that the inmates should be prevented from passing these defects to the next generation. On 2 May 1927, in an eight to one decision, the US Supreme Court ordered that Carrie Buck, feebleminded daughter of a feebleminded mother and herself the mother of a feebleminded child, be sterilized under the 1924 Virginia Eugenical Sterilization Act. Buck v.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
1901 Arizona Comstock Law
In 1901, the Arizona Territorial Legislature codified territorial law that illegalized advertising, causing, or performing abortions anywhere in Arizona. The 1901 code, in conjunction with the federal Comstock Act, regulated the advertisement and accessibility of abortion services and contraceptives in Arizona. The Federal Comstock Act of 1873 had illegalized the distribution of material on contraceptives and abortions through the US Postal Services by labeling contraceptive and abortive material as obscene.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Sterilization Act of 1924
The passage of the Virginia Sterilization Act of 1924 demonstrates how science has been used to drive policy throughout history. In the case of the Virginia sterilization law, the science used to draft the law was based on the principles of eugenics. With the help of Harry Laughlin's Model Sterilization Law, the state of Virginia was able to pass its own law allowing sterilization of the feebleminded, expressing sterilization as a health issue that needed to be protected from the public.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
“Improving Women’s Health”: Section 3509 of the Affordable Care Act of 2010
In 2010, US Congress enacted section 3509 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or ACA, to target issues relating to women’s health. The ACA, signed into law by US President Barack Obama, aimed to increase people’s access to high-quality healthcare in the United States.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Assisted Human Reproduction Act (2004)
The Assisted Human Reproduction Act (AHR Act) is a piece of federal legislation passed by the Parliament of Canada. The Act came into force on 29 March 2004. Many sections of the Act were struck down following a 2010 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on its constitutionality. The AHR Act sets a legislative and regulatory framework for the use of reproductive technologies such as in vitro fertilization and related services including surrogacy and gamete donation. The Act also regulates research in Canada involving in vitro embryos.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction, Ethics
Title X Family Planning Program (1970–1977)
The Family Planning Services and Public Research Act of 1970, often called Title X Family Planning Program, is a US federal law that provides federal funding for family planning services to low income or uninsured families. The US federal government passed the law, Public Law 91-572, in 1970 as an amendment to the Public Health Services Act of 1944. The Act created the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) under the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (here called the Secretary).
Format: Articles
Subject: Reproduction, Legal
Whitner v. South Carolina (1997)
In the case Whitner v. South Carolina in 1997, the South Carolina State Supreme Court defined the concept of a child to include viable fetuses. This allowed grounds for prosecution of a pregnant womanÕs prenatal activity if those activities endangered or could potentially endanger the fetus within her. The case brought the issue of fetal rights versus pregnant womenÕs rights to light.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Reproduction
Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (1972)
In 1972, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania decided the case of Pennsylvania Association for Retarded Citizens (PARC) v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, hereafter PARC v. Pennsylvania. The court ruled that the state could not deny an individual's right to equal access to education based on an intellectual or developmental disability status. PARC brought the case against the state of Pennsylvania on behalf of fourteen families with intellectually disabled children who were unable to access to public schools based on their child’s disability.
Format: Articles
Harry Clay Sharp (1870-1940)
Harry Clay Sharp was a surgeon who performed one of the first recorded vasectomies with the purpose of sterilizing a patient. Sterilization is the practice that makes a person unable to reproduce, and vasectomy accomplishes that by severing the vasa deferentia, the sperm-carrying tubes in the male reproductive system. Historically, sterilization procedures have varied in techniques, goals, and risks, but Sharp’s method of vasectomy allowed restriction of a patient’s reproductive functions without significantly affecting other bodily functions.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal, Ethics, People, Organizations, Technologies
Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia (1972)
In Mills v. Board of Education of District of Columbia (1972), the United States District Court for the District of Columbia held that students with disabilities are entitled to an education, and that education cannot be denied based on the accommodations’ additional cost to the school. Mills was a class action lawsuit brought to the court on behalf of seven children denied public education by the District of Columbia School District because of their disabilities and the cost of accommodations the school would incur to educate them.
Format: Articles
Tucson Woman's Clinic v. Eden (2004)
The case Tucson Woman's Clinic v. Eden (2004) established that some of Arizona's abortion clinic laws violated physicians' and patients' rights to privacy, and it required those laws to be rewritten. The laws required most abortion providers to be licensed with the Arizona Department of Health Services and to submit to all the regulations the Department established for abortion clinics. The regulations allowed the state to search abortion clinics without warrants and to access patient records and ultrasound prints, among other provisions.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Kass v. Kass (1998)
In Maureen Kass v. Steven Kass (1998), the Court of Appeals of New York in Albany, New York, ruled that the state should generally consider IVF consent forms signed by participants in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) program valid, binding, and enforceable in the event of a dispute. The court indicated that decisions regarding the handling of cryopreserved pre-zygotes, often called preembryos, contained within these consent forms should be upheld.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Title 1, Subtitle B, Parts I, II, and III of the “National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993” (1993)
In 1993, the NIH published the Revitalization Act that established guidelines for minorities’ and women’s participation in clinical research. Before the 1990s, investigators largely excluded women from their research based on the 1979 guidance from the US Food and Drug Administration, or FDA. The FDA urged investigators to exclude any woman who was or could become, pregnant to protect the woman and any developing fetuses from harm.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Isaacson v. Horne (2013)
In the 2013 case Isaacson v. Horne, the US Court of Appeals in the Ninth Circuit ruled that Arizona House Bill (HB) 2036, which prohibited abortions after twenty weeks of gestation, was unconstitutional. The Arizona State Legislature passed the law in 2012, which was then challenged by three physicians who filed a lawsuit against the state, arguing that the law violated women's constitutionally protected rights to abortions, rights that may only be infringed once fetuses are viable outside of the womb.
Format: Articles
Subject: Legal
Barry Morris Goldwater (1909–1998)
Barry Morris Goldwater was a Republican Arizona Senator and US presidential candidate in the twentieth-century whose policies supported the women's reproductive rights movement. Goldwater, a businessman and Air Force reservist, transitioned into politics in the 1950s. He helped align popular support for a conservative Republican Party in the 1960s. Throughout his life, he worked to maintain personal liberty and to limit governmental intrusion into citizens' private lives. Goldwater, influenced by his wife Margaret (Peggy) Goldwater, supported women's rights to abortions.
Format: Articles
Subject: People, Reproduction, Legal, Religion