A University College London scientist has accused lawyers in the US of misusing his groundbreaking work on the brain to justify the dismantling of Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationally in America.
Giandomenico Iannetti said his research, which used imaging to understand the adult brain’s response to pain, had been wrongly interpreted to make an anti-abortion argument.
Last week an unprecedented leak of a draft legal opinion showed a majority of supreme court judges support overturning Roe v Wade and ending federal protections for abortions, in a move that could result in 26 states banning it. The court is considering a case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, which challenges Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks gestation.
Anti-abortion lawyers in that case argued that scientific understanding has moved on since the court’s 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, and it was no longer accurate to say foetuses cannot feel pain before 24 weeks.
Their argument relied heavily on a controversial discussion paper on foetal pain published in the Journal of Medical Ethics in 2020 by Dr Stuart Derbyshire, a British associate professor of psychology at the National University of Singapore. » | Anna Fazackerley | Sunday, May 8, 2022
Women who fought for US abortion rights in the 70s call for mass global protests: Veteran activists say the overthrow of Roe v Wade would equate to murder, and should send warning signals around the world »
Le patron de l'OMS lance un appel en faveur du droit à l'avortement : Le directeur général de l'Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) a lancé mercredi 4 mai un appel en faveur du droit à l'avortement, au moment où la juridiction suprême des États-Unis semble prête à le remettre en cause. »
Abortion in Jewish Law: The traditional Jewish view does not fit conveniently into the major "camps" in the current debate. »
