Do HIV-positive pregnant women who plan on carrying their children to ter...

[AAsch at aol.com]

In a message dated 1/4/2006 1:32:43 PM Pacific Standard Time,  
VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu writes:

If the  mother plans on
carrying the child to term -- of producing a born,  rights-bearing human
being who might carry a deadly disease because of  exposure through the
mother -- why isn't mandating treatment of the mother  at least as
constitutionally permissible as mandating  vaccination?


I haven't read New Jersey Division of Youth & Family Servs. v.  L.V., so 
forgive me if my point is in the text of that case. I have,  however, done 
extensive research on reproductive rights in NJ, and one  consideration you may be 
missing is an equal protection issue under the NJ state  constitution making it 
difficult to treat women differently depending on  whether they want an 
abortion or want to carry a child to term. See, for  example, the NJ Supreme Court 
in Planned Parenthood v. Farmer, 165 N.J.  609 (2000) describing how NJ courts 
have "decided that the State's  equal protection guarantee barred 
discrimination against a particular class of  pregnant women because it could not be 
justified by a compelling state  interest.  ...That holding, consistent with New 
Jersey's more  expansive constitutional provision, gave women seeking to 
exercise their right  to choose greater protection than the protection afforded in 
Harris v.  McRae." Full text of Planned Parenthood v. Farmer is at  this 
link/address:
 
_http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/courts/supreme/a-52-99.opn.html_ 
(http://lawlibrary.rutgers.edu/courts/supreme/a-52-99.opn.html) 
 
Allen Asch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/private/conlawprof/attachments/20060104/c0018130/attachment.htm