Three excellent guests this week. First, and well-known to the TWIHL listener is Rachel Rebouché, Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Research at Temple University where she teaches Family Law, Health Care Law, and Contracts. Patty Skuster is a Senior Legal Advisor at Ipas, a non-profit dedicated to improving reproductive rights. She is also a Fellow at Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research. Last but not least Adrienne Ghorashi is a Program Manager at the Center for Public Health Law Research. Her work focuses on the intersection of laws and reproductive and sexual health, including the regulation of abortion in the U.S. and globally. Our discussion centered around new abortion restrictions issued as part of state responses to COVID-19. For example, in Texas Gov. Abbott issued an executive order banning nonessential medical services. Subsequently, his attorney-general interpreted that order as applying to all abortions. Planned Parenthood successfully applied for a TRO in the district court, only for the Fifth Circuit to lift the stay.

182. Abortion Exceptionalism. Guests, Rachel Rebouché, Patty Skuster, and Adrienne Ghorashi.

Nicolas Terry and his guests discuss the significant health law and policy issues of the week

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Health & Fitness

Sarah de Guia of ChangeLab Solutions is joined by Sharon Terman from legal aid at work, and Danilo Trisi from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The participants have a broad-ranging discussion about the safety net, what the Biden administration has achieved so far, and what are some of the priorities that remain.

241. Safety Net Support for Children and Families.

Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, Lori Tremmel Freeman is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), and Jill Krueger, the director of the Network for Public Law’s Northern Region Office discuss the various attempts to restrict, reallocate, or otherwise diminish traditional public health powers and the implications. The panelists discuss recent state laws reducing public health emergency powers, ALEC, & where things stand now.

240. State Efforts to Restrict Public Health Powers.

I am joined by Professor Anniek de Ruijter Professor of European Law at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Professor Andrew Noymer, University of California, Irvine, and Professor Nils Hoppe, the Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences at Leibniz University Hannover. Our discussion begins with the lessons learned or not learned in various countries and regions and then explores issues such as vaccine intellectual property and vaccine passports. BTW, Anniek has an interesting new paper on EU health solidarity, Sharon Baute & Anniek de Ruijter (2021) EU health solidarity in times of crisis: explaining public preferences towards EU risk pooling for medicines, Journal of European Public Policy, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2021.1936129

239. International Lessons Learned.

Jorge Contreras, Professor of Law, University of Utah, Brook Baker, Professor of Law, Northeastern University, and Ana Santos Rutschman, Professor of Law, Saint Louis University discuss vaccine access, What are the technical obstacles to increasing vaccine access? How are Intellectual Property, primarily patent and trade secret, laws restricting access and keeping prices high?

238. Global Vaccine Sharing.

Professor Scott Burris, Temple Law School, Professor Wendy Parmet, Northeastern University School of Law, and Professor Lance Gable, Wayne State College of Law discuss the “shadow docket,” the hundreds of cases (emergency orders and summary decisions) decided by the Supreme Court each year outside of its far smaller, normal or merits docket. Specifically, the discussion focuses on how public health decisions, such as (particularly free exercise) challenges to government mitigation mandates have been handled by the shadow docket, the possible deprecation of Jacobson deference and the implications for public health powers and law. As always for more information about public health law and the pandemic see Vol.2 of our COVID-19 Policy Playbook, Legal Recommendations for a Safer, More Equitable Future.

182. Abortion Exceptionalism. Guests, Rachel Rebouché, Patty Skuster, and Adrienne Ghorashi.

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