The health reform legislation enacted in 2010 requires workplace health insurance plans to include coverage for contraceptives. In a massive mobilization, more than 40 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts around the country challenging that provision. A number of plaintiffs in these suits are commercial, secular businesses, whose owners claim that they should be [...]
We have recently seen two long-overdue victories in the area of trans* health. Most notably, Stockholm’s Administrative Court of Appeals finally struck down Sweden’s indefensible–and remarkably culturally incongruous–law (text available in Swedish only) requiring that trans* people be sterilized before the government would issue them identity documents with their preferred sex indicated. This welcome ruling [...]
The Canadian Supreme Court ruled today in R. v. Mabior [2012 SCC 47] that the law criminalizing failure to disclose HIV positive status to a sexual partner was constitutional only in situations where a realistic risk of transmission could be proved. In a 1998 decision, the court had ruled that failure to disclose vitiated the [...]
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), through the ASEAN Inter-governmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), has issued a draft Human Rights Declaration. Although in many respects it reflects accepted international human rights norms, protection against sexual orientation or gender identity-based discrimination is a glaring shortfall in the instrument. Draft Article 2 of the Declaration names [...]
In a case we discussed last month, the Ninth Circuit has granted a preliminary injunction against Arizona House Bill 2036; this unconstitutional and potentially dangerous measure would curtail women’s reproductive rights at 20 weeks of pregnancy. On July 30th, US District Judge Teilborg upheld the law based on the problematic findings that (1) the few weeks [...]
Ruling en banc, the Eighth Circuit has upheld a South Dakota law that requires doctors to distribute written statements that abortion causes “increased risk of suicidal ideation and suicide.” Amazing. The ruling came in Planned Parenthood v. Rounds, a lawsuit that has been bouncing between the District Court and Court of Appeals for seven years. Irin [...]