Partial Birth Biopolitics
Partial Birth Biopolitics
Joshua E. Perry, J.D., M.T.S., 11 DePaul J. Health Care L. 247 (2008)
The Court’s decision in Carhart opens new doors for future politicized governmental interference in the lives of patients and their doctors. Regulation of physician practices that protects public health and safety is a legitimate and worthwhile legislative pursuit. The Court’s decision in Carhart, however, is troubling because the Act regulates medical practices on the basis of legislative repugnance regarding procedural details of a specific and complicated abortion method. Moreover, the Court’s Carhart decision fails to distinguish between appropriate governmental regulation premised on a public safety concern and legislative intervention motivated by moral outrage that threatens a recognized liberty interest of individual citizens. Those concerned with biopolitics–the use of governmental power to regulate and control the personal and private space of one’s health care decisions–have new reasons to be worried about the future of reproductive freedoms and the exercise of clinical medical judgment.