Life and Death Decisions Midterm
Fetal Viability
ability of the fetus to survive outside of the uterus
Griswold v. Connecticut
(1965) Supreme Court ruled that a state's ban on the use of contraceptives violated the right to marital privacy.
Stemberg v. Carhart
(2000) a case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States dealing with a Nebraska law which made performing "partial-birth abortion" illegal, without regard for the health of the mother.
Aubrey Strode
-Author of Virginia's Sterilization Law -acted as legal counsel to the Board of Directors of the Virginia State Colony -represented the Board in each of the appeals of Carrie Buck's case. -drafted two successfully passed bills designed to protect Priddy: 1) required the state to cover legal costs for superintendents 2) retroactively deemed legal the commitments of all current inmates at state mental institutions - made three main arguments, anticipating longstanding objections by those who opposed eugenic sterilization: 1) Virginia's law did not impose cruel and unusual punishment 2) the law afforded inmates due process of law 3) it represented a valid exercise of police power, which stemmed from the state's obligation to protect the public's health and safety
Admissions Advisory Committee
-Determined who would be chosen from the initial pool (chosen by the Medical Advisory Committee) for kidney dialysis at the Seattle Artificial Kidney Center. Made up of lawyer, housewife, official state of government, banker, minister, labor leader and surgeon; assessed the relative worth of a candidate to their family and the community in terms of the degree of dependence of others upon the candidate's continuing existence, and the rehabilitative potential and moral value or worth of the candidate. (Committee replaced random selection and first come, first-served strategies.)
Roe v. Wade
-History revealed wide variation -Right to Privacy Established in Previous Cases -Fetus was not a person under the Constitution -Health of Mother is Compelling State Interest -Life of Unborn is Compelling State Interest -Both Interests varied as Pregnancy Developed -Point of Viability is significant -Trimester Division of Rights
Crystallizing Events (4 events that led to bioethics movement, events influencing Roe v. Wade)
-Tuskegee experiments (syphilis victims untreated for 40 years) -Willowbrook State School (treatment of children and mentally ill) -University of Cincinnati radiation experiments -Experiments on fetuses
Harry Laughlin
-a leading American eugenist in the first half of the 20th century -influenced American eugenics policy, especially sterilization legislation
Carrie Buck
-plaintiff in Buck v. Bell -first person involuntarily sterilized under Virginia's eugenics laws -Buck moved in with a foster family and in 1923 became pregnant, claiming that the foster family's nephew raped her -Buck was adjudged epileptic and feebleminded -Buck was believed to have had inherited her feeblemindedness from her mother and that her daughter showed signs of slow mental development as well. -1927: The Supreme Court ruled that Virginia's law was constitutional and that Buck should be sterilized
Texas House Bill 2 (HB2)
1.) Abortion doctors must have "admitting privileges" in a hospital within 30 miles of an abortion clinic 2.) Abortions after 20 weeks are prohibited 3.) Drugs used for abortions must be approved by FDA 4.) After taking drugs for an abortion, a follow-up check up is required
Oscar McCulloch
1888-speech entitle The Tribe of Ishmael: A Study in Social Degradation -compared to family parasites
Sherri Finkbine
1962 Actress who requested an abortion after taking sleeping pills that unknowingly contained Thalidomide, which can cause extreme defects in babies. Was not granted immunity in Arizona court, had to go to Sweden to get abortion.
San Francisco Nine
1966, highly respected obstetrician/gynecologists affiliated with leading medical institutions in San Francisco suddenly found themselves threatened with the loss of their licenses. The California Board of Medical Examiners decided to prosecute them for "professional misconduct" because they had been performing hospital-based abortions on women who had been infected with rubella (German measles) which can lead to birth defects.
Born Alive Protection Act
Charles T. Canady's proposed legislation that an infant will be considered to have been born alive, and thus a person under law, if she is completely extracted from her mother and breathes and has a heart beat and pulse or definite movement of voluntary muscles
Walter Mondale
???Vice president under Jimmy Carter who
Charles Darwin
Charles is best known for his work as a naturalist, developing a theory of evolution to explain biological change
Beilenson's Bill
Amended California law to allow abortions in cases of rape or incest, when a doctor deemed that the birth was likely to impair the physical or mental health of the mother, or when there was 'substantial risk' that the child would be born deformed.
Partial Birth Abortion Act of 2003
Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit any physician or other individual from knowingly performing a partial-birth abortion, except when necessary to save the life of a mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, illness, or injury.
Section 504 of Rehabilitation Act of 1973
American legislation that guarantees certain rights to people with disabilities. It was the first U.S federal civil rights protection for people with disabilities.
Texas House Bill 15
An ultrasound is required before an abortion
Lynchburg Colony
Asylum for epileptics and feeble-minded people; Carrie Buck housed there (considered feeble-minded); conducted forced sterilizations on people there Colony established in 1910
Cold Spring Harbor
City in New York in which is the initial starting place for the Eugenics Movement. The Eugenics Record Office is located here. A policy committee ( to explore questions related to "human improvement by a better selection of marriage mates and the control of the reproduction of the defective classes.") was established here, in which Harry Laughlin chaired.
Bernard Nathanson
Cofounder of NARAL (National Association for the Repeal of ABortion Laws), director of largest abortion clinic in NY. Eventually joined forces with right to life movement. narrator of The Silent Scream.
The Silent Scream
Dr. Bernard Nathanson, former abortionist and founder of NARAL, teaches the audience about the specifics of suction abortion, followed by an actual abortion of an 11- week old fetus as seen through ultrasound
Trolley Problem
Ethics experiment involving a moral dilemma and a runaway trolley with people on tracks
Eugenics Movement and Sterilization in the US
Focused on punishing feebleminded individuals by placing forced sterilization upon them. Movement in which citizens were told to either improve or disprove society. In order to improve, they attempted to remove genetically inferior people from society. Emphasis on survival of the fittest.
Bioethics Movement
Formal codification of moral principles applied nationally to medical research and practice
Albert Priddy
From the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded, filed a petition to his Board of Directors to sterilize Carrie Buck, an 18-year-old patient at his institution who he claimed had a mental age of 9.[5] maintained that Buck represented a genetic threat to society.
Leo Alexander
He was a key medical advisor during the Nuremberg Trials. wrote part of the Nuremberg Code, which provides legal and ethical principles for scientific experiment on humans.
Social Worth
Idea that some lives are more worthy of being lived than others Used to resolve ethical/moral dilemmas regarding life and death (who lives, who dies, who decides) Culturally bound; changes over time; boundaries that are drawn among groups of people regarding their value; value of their lives
Buck v. Bell
Ruling that allowed compulsory sterilization of the "unfit" for the betterment of the country
Constitutional Penumbras
The present case (Griswold v. Connecticut), then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law ...forbidding the use of contraceptives... Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms.
Eisenstadt v. Baird
U.S Supreme Court case that established the right of unmarried people to possess contraception on the basis as married couples
Seattle Artificial Kidney Center
World's first out-of- hospital dialysis provider. Noted for "The Life or Death Committee." Determination process for who should have access to dialysis machine
Army of God
a Christian terrorise anti- abortion organiation that has engaged in the use of violence in the U.S to fight abortion.
Paul Hill
a former Presbyterian minister and fervent anti-abortionist, used a shotgun to kill Dr. John Bayard Britton and his bodyguard, retired Lt. Col. James Herman Barrett, as they drove into a Pensacola abortion clinic in 1994. He was sentenced to death and rejected any effort to appeal the verdict. became the first killer of an abortion clinic doctor to be executed.
Herbert Spencer
an English sociologist, took Darwin's theory and applied it to how societies change and evolve over time. Spencer took the theory of evolution one step beyond biology and applied it to say that societies were organisms that progress through changes similar to that of a living species.
Irving Whitehead
an experienced lawyer, a former colony board member, and a sterilization supporter, agreed to defend Carrie Buck.
Human rights
are moral principles or norms that describe certain standards of human behavior, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law.
Joseph Scheidler
created the film No Greater Joy, depicted volunteers at work carrying bibles, rosaries, and models of fetuses participating in "sidewalk counseling". film included grotesque images of late-term aborted fetuses.
Cultural Lag
cultures take time to catch up with technological innovations; social problems can arise from this lag.
Estelle Griswold and Lee Buxton
director of planned parenthood and yale medical school dude convicted (1965) for giving married couple medical advice on how to prevent conception and prescribing means of contraception
Baby Doe Regulations
disabled infants with life- threatening conditions receive the '...appropriate nutrition, hydration, and medication, which in the treating physician's...reasonable medical judgement will be most likely to be effective in ameliorating or correcting all such conditions'
Cicely Saunders
driving force behind what eventually became the international Hospice Movement, known for its embrace of the dying process and its dedication to honoring the alleviation of suffering. "we do not have to cure to heal"
Comstock Laws
federal act passed by the United States Congress on March 3, 1873, designed to limit pornography, sexual promiscuity and contraception
Paul and Judie Brown
head of the National Right to Life Committee. branched off to form the American Life League, then the Pro-Life Action League.
Baby Jane Doe
mandates that states receiving federal money for child abuse programs develop procedures to report medical neglect, which the law defines as the withholding of treatment unless a baby is irreversibly comatose or the treatment for the newborn's survival is "virtually futile." Assessments of a child's quality of life are not valid reasons for withholding medical care.
Anthony Comstock
politician who criticized obscene material in literature and other forms of expression
John Hart Ely
questioned legitimacy of supreme court ruling on roe v. wade. "the court needed to make a connection with constitutional issues and not ground their findings in personal values or policy preferences"
Nuremberg Principles
set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War. -The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential-
Justice Warren Berger
set up a committee to screen cases and recommend which were controversial enough to be postponed until a full 9 member court could be convened
Belmont Report and Principles of Biomedical Ethics
summarizes ethical principles and guidelines for research involving human subjects. Three core principles are identified: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. Three primary areas of application are also stated. They are informed consent, assessment of risks and benefits, and selection of subjects.
Willow brook State School
the biggest state-run institution for people with mental disabilities in the United States.[1] Conditions and questionable medical practices and experiments prompted Sen. Robert Kennedy to call it a "snake pit."[2] Public outcry led to its closure in 1987, and to federal civil rights legislation protecting people with disabilities.
George Tiller
the medical director at Women's Health Care Services- one of the first clinics to provide later-term abortions. murdered.
Tribe of Ishmael
tightly knit nomadic community of African, Native American, and 'poor white' descent, estimated to number about 10,000. Fugitives of the South, they arrived in the central part of the Old Northwest at the beginning of the nineteenth century, preceding the other pioneers. After a century of fierce culture conflict with the majority society, the tribe was forcibly dispersed. Camp sites became nuclei of present-day black communities, and Ishmaelites of the diaspora participated in the rise of black nationalism, perhaps even contributing memories of African Islam to the new Black Muslim movements."
Doe v. Bolton
was a decision of the United States Supreme Court overturning the abortion law of Georgia. The Supreme Court's decision was released on January 22, 1973, the same day as the decision in the better-known case of Roe v. Wade
Margaret Sanger
was an American birth control activist, sex educator, writer, and nurse. Sanger popularized the term "birth control", opened the first birth control clinic in the United States, and established organizations that evolved into the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Baby K
was an anencephalic baby who became the center of a major U.S. court case and a debate among bioethicists.
Paul Ramsey
wrote The Patient as Person, extended and enriched the human rights principles in the Nuremberg code. "founding preaching and scriptures of the field of bioethics"
Oliver Wendell Holmes
wrote the 8-1 majority opinion in Buck v. Bell case that upheld the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck who was claimed to be mentally defective
