To look at abortion as murder the court decided that a fertilized egg should have the same traits as a full term baby. The court looked at the principal of privacy and the fourteenth amendment and did not extend the rights to an unborn fetus. The court in Roe V. Wade turned to medical evidence this evidence led them to a three-tiered approach. In this approach they separated a pregnancy into three trimesters. The first trimester is when most abortions occur.
Gonzales v. Raich The case was about a patient who used marijuana for medical purposes that was recommended by her physician. In the state of California under their laws it’s permitted. California passed an act called the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 which permits people who live in California may use marijuana for medical purposes; Raich claimed that Gonzales and the courts violated the control substance law when the local police the DEA and the FBI raided her home and destroyed her plants so Ms. Raich hired an attorney and sued Gonzales as well as the Administrators of Drug Enforcement Administrations; however the appellate court found that the patient did not demonstrate that she would likely succeed in obtaining injunctive relief. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California denied plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction but the plaintiffs appealed the decision. The Courts of Appeals which was vacated and the case were remanded for further proceedings.
Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U.S. 702 (1997) Petitioners: State of Washington and the State Attorney General Respondent: Harold Glucksberg, MD et al who practices medicine in the state of Washington and treats terminally ill patients Facts: The state of Washington passed a law that made it a crime to assist in a suicide that takes place within the state. The crime is listed as “promoting a suicide attempt” and is classified as a felony offense. In order for a person to be convicted of this crime it has to be proven that the defendant knowingly caused or aided another person in an attempt to commit suicide. In January 1994 Dr. Glucksberg along with four other doctors, three terminally ill patients who died before the case reached the Supreme Court and Compassion in Dying, a nonprofit group that aids terminally patients who wish to commit suicide filed a suit in the US District Court against the state of Washington and the State Attorney General on the grounds that the law is unconstitutional. The Respondents argument was that people have a liberty interest which is protected by the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause and it should extend to terminally ill patients who are mentally competent and wish to take part in doctor assisted suicide.
Goldring was dismissed from the case, and the trial proceeded against just Medlantic. The jury found Medlantic liable for breach of confidential relationship and awarded damages in the amount of $250,000 (Doe, 2003). The jury found against Doe on the invasion of privacy claim because Goldring’s disclosure was not within the scope of Goldring’s employment with Washington Health Center (Doe, 2003). The jury also found that the lawsuit was filed within the one-year limitation periods. This verdict was then reversed by the trial court in favor of Medlantic.
Groupe Roussel-Uclaf has announced its intention to distribute RU-486 in the US. There are only two modes of legitimate entry to the market: drug approval through FDA or qualification under an importation exemption for “life-saving” medications. If made available in the US, RU-486 will make abortion more accessible, a trend which runs counter to the Republican’s pro-life platform and the administration’s desire to eliminate use of federal monies for abortion-related activities. A Republican appointee, FDA Commissioner Young must prevent RU-486 from entering the market. He can do so by employing regulatory tactics such as exercising authority, traditional bureaucratic “red tape,” and anti-abortion regulations; codifying these decisions, hence
According to the essay, published in January the woman weighed only 80 pounds and told the doctor, Let`s get this over with. He then gave her 20 milligrams of some morphine and watched her die just as he had calculated.The state`s attorney`s office sought to subpoena the journal, known as JAMA, so that the doctor could be found and possibly prosecuted.AMA General Counsel Kirk Johnson called Daley`s response to Friday`s ruling`disturbing particularly because the AMA journal had agreed to abide by whatever ruling the judge made. He said that prosecutors could investigate by other means, but ``they didn`t describe anything they had done to find the doctor on their
During testimony, he called her a mere "collection of organs" and an "artifact of technological medicine." Nancy's parents petitioned a lower court to order the Missouri Rehabilitation Center at Mount Vernon to starve their daughter. The court granted the petition, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the lower court decision, ruling that a decision to withhold or refuse treatment must be an "informed" one, and, most importantly, that the State's interest in human life does not depend on the quality of that life. On appeal, the Cruzan v. Director of Missouri Department of Health case became the first to directly address the question of euthanasia at the United States Supreme Court level. The Court essentially held that the states do not have to yield to family member's demands when a patient's wishes cannot be concretely determined.
On March 6, 1996, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Compassion in Dying v. Washington held that preventing a competent adult from seeking physician assistance in committing suicide interfered with an individual's liberty interest and, therefore, violates an individual's substantive due process rights. Less than a month later in a similar case, the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Quill v. Vacco held that the New York statute criminalizing assisted suicide violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court reasoned that the state has no rational or legitimate interest in preventing a mentally competent terminally ill patient in the final stage of his or her illness from taking a lethal dose of a physician-prescribed medication. Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned both decisions; the Washington case became known as Washington v. Glucksberg. On June 27, 1997, the Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on suicide is rationally related to a legitimate government interest and therefore there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide; however, states are free to decide for themselves whether to allow physician-assisted suicide.
Hustler V. Falwell The case of Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine, and Flynt Distributing Co. vs. Jerry Falwell is an assertion that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures and public officials from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress by reason of the publication of a caricature. Jerry Falwell, a nationally known minister and commentator on political issues, sued Larry Flynt of Hustler Magazine for an ad parody he published in Hustler Magazine in 1983. The decision by the United States Supreme Court held a unanimous 8-0 vote in favor of Flynt. After two honorable discharges from the military, Flynt used his savings to buy a serious of bars and eventually established the Hustler Club, which was the first arena to feature nude hostess dancers. He proceeded to open Hustler Clubs in popular cities like Cleveland, and so began his fame.
Proposition 8 was a 2008 California ballot measure that outlawed same-sex marriage. It undid a decision by the state Supreme Court from earlier that year that found an earlier ban to be illegal. Since its passage, Proposition 8 has been the subject of court actions and has continued to be one of the central battlefields in the fight over same-sex marriage in the United States. In August 2011, a federal district judge found that Proposition 8 — passed by California voters by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent — violated the equal protection rights of two same-sex couples that brought the suit. The proposition placed a specific prohibition in the State Constitution against marriage between two people of the same sex.