CRACKED BABIES AND THE PARTIAL BIRTH OF A NATION: MILLENNIALISM AND FETAL CITIZENSHIP

This essay explores whether fetal protection cases concerning ‘partial birth’ and ‘crack babies’ reflect an undercurrent of millennialism that characterizes anti-abortion violence. Because the dichotomized millennialist worldview of pure and impure domains easily corroborates racialist ideas that there are pure and impure races, discussions of fetal protection may also accommodate race-specific assumptions or implications. Fetuses involved in ‘partial birth’ abortions are routinely portrayed as purely innocent, whole, and intact babies worthy of the privileges of citizenship that will save them from death. But ‘crack babies’, who are explicitly presumed to be black, are routinely portrayed as impure, tainted, and polluted babies who are a liability to society and from whom the tax-paying citizenry should be saved. Viewed comparatively, these legal disputes may be seen as unwittingly reinscribing the racialist tenets of far-right groups that consider abortion to be the apocalyptic end times of white America.     

由“强制引产胎儿”事件引发的法学思考

结合陕西安康发生的"强制引产胎儿"事件,对"引产"进行了法理分析。认为:"强制引产"应属行政违法和行政侵权行为。强制引产行为的产生既有执法者主观方面的原因,如政治意识、法律观念、道德观念欠缺等,又有客观方面的原因,如一定社会环境中法制、经济状况的影响等。其中,执法者的"傲慢"和"偏见"是重要原因。就此提出了完善立法、依法行政、严格责任、体现以人为本的理念等建议,以解决计划生育行政执法难题。     

Marital Status and Social Well-Being: Are the Married Always Better Off?

This study uses pooled cross-section time-series data, over the years 1982, 1992 and 2000, to estimate the impact of various restrictive abortion laws on the demand for abortion. This study complements and extends prior research by explicitly including the price of obtaining an abortion in the estimation. The empirical results show that the real price of an abortion has a statistically and numerically significant negative impact on abortion demand. Over the period 1982–2000 approximately 20% of the decline in the incidence of abortion was due solely to the increase in the real price of obtaining an abortion. A state Medicaid funding restriction of abortion and a parental involvement law reduce the abortion demand, but a state waiting period and a mandatory counseling law have no statistically significant impact on the abortion demand. The empirical results also provide support for the hypothesis that increases in abortion costs not only reduce the number of abortions, but also reduce the number of pregnancies by altering women’s sexual/contraceptive practices.

选择与限制:生育过程中的终止妊娠措施——基于规范和实践层面的价值权衡

终止妊娠问题在规范层面一是作为对于违反计划生育规定生育子女的行为所采取的纠正措施之一而存在的;二是对基于非医学需要性别鉴定/选择的终止妊娠的禁止,但存在当事人终止妊娠的动机难以确定、控制性别比例的初衷难以实现、对符合生育条件的妇女与不符合生育条件的妇女区别对待、缺乏设定行政许可的上位法依据等问题。在实践层面上,选择性别的终止妊娠未得到真正禁止。规范与实践层面问题背后的出路在于厘清问题所涉及到的权利冲突,并对其进行价值权衡。     

State Policy Restrictions on Abortion

Abstract

Although abortion remains legal and available to women, access to services is limited by restrictive factors such as parental consent and notification laws, mandatory delay requirements, insurance regulations/bans, and postviability testing requirements. This study employed a hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) with all states over a six-year period 1988-2000. It found the variable parental consent statistically significant. Consistent with its focus on social justice, social workers should be aware of and informed about social policies that appear to discriminate against oppressed populations such as young women, low-income women, and women of color.     

Abortion,Partial-Birth Abortion,and Adolescent Access to Abortion: An Overview for Social Workers

Although the U.S Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973, intense controversy over access, legality, and morality has persisted ever since that landmark decision. National opinion data collected from 1975 to 2007 show that a majority of Americans support a woman's right to an abortion, but this right is increasingly under attack, and recent proposed changes to abortion access are not in line with how most Americans feel. This paper considers public opinion trends in the sharply divided arenas of abortion, partial-birth abortion, and adolescents' rights to access abortion with a critical eye to social work practice. We explore several opportunities for social workers to advocate for clients, including legislative advocacy, reform through litigation, social action, and social policy analysis.     

超声在药物流产中的应用

利用超声在药物人工流产前、中、后进行适时监护、跟踪、随访 ,结果发现超声不仅在流产前能及早发现异位妊娠及其它器质性疾病 ,准确地筛选适合药物流产的对象 ,还能通过影像学表现为临床处理、治疗提供可靠依据。事实证明超声在提高药物流产成功率、减少副作用及并发症上有其实用价值     

A pooled time-series analysis of abortion demand

This study estimates the demand for abortion in the United States using state data pooled over years 1992 and 1982. The empirical results showed that the price elasticity of abortion demand ranged from -0.70 to -0.99 and an income elasticity between 0.27 and 0.35. The demand for abortion was found (1) not to be statistically related to a woman's educational level; (2) to be higher the greater a state's taste for abortion; (3) coincident with the business cycle; and (4) not to be related to the level of a state's welfare payment.     

The dependent tax exemption,abortion availability,and US fertility rates

The impact of the personal income tax dependent exemption, abortion availability, and other factors on fertility rates is analyzed. US time series data for 1915–88 are used in the empirical model. The results indicate that greater abortion availability in the USA is associated with lower fertility. A higher value of the dependent exemption generally is associated with higher fertility, but the magnitude and significance of the effect is sensitive to specification choice. The results suggest that restricting abortion availability in the USA will increase the fertility rate, but a change in the tax value of the dependent exemption will have a less predictable impact on fertility.     

The Inverse Relation Between Risks and Benefits: The Role of Affect and Expertise

Although risk and benefits of risky activities are positively correlated in the real world, empirical results indicate that people perceive them as negatively correlated. The common explanation is that confounding benefits and losses stems from affect. In this article, we address the issue that has not been clearly established in studies on the affect heuristic: to what extent boundary conditions, such as judgments’ generality and expertise, influence the presence of the inverse relation in judgments of hazards. These conditions were examined in four studies in which respondents evaluated general or specific benefits and risks of “affect‐rich” and “affect‐poor” hazards (ranging from investments to applications of stem cell research). In line with previous research, affect is defined as good or bad feelings integral to a stimulus. In contrast to previous research, affect is considered as related both to personal feelings and to social controversies associated with a hazard. Expertise is related to personal knowledge (laypersons vs. experts) as well as to objective knowledge (targets well vs. poorly known to science). The direct comparison of the input from personal and objective ignorance into the inverse relation has not been investigated previously. It was found that affect invoked by a hazard guides general but not specific judgments of its benefits and risks. Technical expertise helps to avoid simplified evaluations of consequences as long as they are well known to science. For new, poorly understood hazards (e.g., stem cell research), expertise does not protect from the perception of the inverse relation between benefits and risks.