Crawford v. Kirk: Wrongful Pregnancy and Traditional Tort Law Principles

Thirty-five jurisdictions uniformly recognize the validity of a wrongful pregnancy claim. Texas, however, is not one of those jurisdictions. The majority of Texas courts recognize the validity of a wrongful pregnancy cause of action and award damages to the parents for an unwanted child, while other Texas courts do not. This Comment argues that Texas should recognize a wrongful pregnancy cause of action for two reasons: (1) all but one Texas court explicitly recognizes a wrongful pregnancy claim; and (2) a wrongful pregnancy claim is merely a descriptive label for medical malpractice. Moreover, the damages for such a claim should consist of (1) the medical damages associated with the pregnancy and birth, (2) damages in excess of a mother\u27s medical expenses, and (3) financial expenses for education and maintenance of the normal, healthy child until the age of majority. Therefore, in a wrongful pregnancy cause of action, Texas should follow the Full Recovery Rule that permits parents to prove all damages proximately resulting from a negligent sterilization including child-rearing costs. Part I of this Comment will evaluate whether Texas should recognize a wrongful pregnancy cause of action. Part II will evaluate the three common methods of calculating and awarding damages in a wrongful pregnancy claim; Limited Recovery, Full Recovery, and the Benefits Rule. Finally, this Comment concludes that allowing parents to prove and recover child-rearing damages strengthens the family unit, maintains the best interest of the child, and is the best method to advance the goals of tort law and Texas public policy

The Windfall Profit Tax-Poor Tax Policy? Poor Energy Policy?

The author discusses the Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax Act of 1980, explaining the Act\u27s component parts and its interrelationship Act in relation to its purposes, the author concludes that the Act, although severely deficient in many areas, is a positive step toward achieving the nation\u27s energy objectives

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Carbon Pricing Initiatives in Western North America: Blueprint for Global Climate Change Policy

In the absence of effective international and federal initiatives to combat the impacts of global climate change, many state, local and regional jurisdictions are passing or proposing measures to curb carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. The province of British Columbia, Canada, as well as the cities of San Francisco, California and Boulder, Colorado have carbon taxes in place, and similar actions have been proposed in the Oregon and Washington state legislatures. The state of California and the province of Québec have linked together in a joint cap-and-trade system. This Article will examine the fundaments of carbon taxation, including identification of the tax base (the pollutant) and taxpayer (consumer, manufacturer, etc.), rates of taxation, measurement standards for tax assessment, exemptions, and use of revenue, and then compare them to cap-and-trade systems. It will assess this family of market initiatives based on the following criteria: (1) administerability, (2) political feasibility, (3) revenue generation, (4) efficiency, (5) equity, and (6) efficacy. Lastly, the Article considers the constitutional, practical, and political challenges to reform. The Article concludes that all states and provinces in North America should link together in a strict cap and-trade system while local jurisdictions within the region should pass broad-based carbon taxes. Any revenue generated from these market mechanisms can be recycled to low-income taxpayers and used for carbon sequestration and other “green” purposes. Although the urgency for binding law on a national and international scale is apparent but not immediately forthcoming, regional, state and municipal initiatives can serve as blueprints for innovative and effective climate policy change

Developing and using a rubric for evaluating evidence-based medicine point-of-care tools

Objective: The research sought to establish a rubric for evaluating evidence-based medicine (EBM) pointof- care tools in a health sciences library. Methods: The authors searched the literature for EBM tool evaluations and found that most previous reviews were designed to evaluate the ability of an EBM tool to answer a clinical question. The researchers' goal was to develop and complete rubrics for assessing these tools based on criteria for a general evaluation of tools (reviewing content, search options, quality control, and grading) and criteria for an evaluation of clinical summaries (searching tools for treatments of common diagnoses and evaluating summaries for quality control). Results: Differences between EBM tools' options, content coverage, and usability were minimal. However, the products' methods for locating and grading evidence varied widely in transparency and process. Conclusions: As EBM tools are constantly updating and evolving, evaluation of these tools needs to be conducted frequently. Standards for evaluating EBM tools need to be established, with one method being the use of objective rubrics. In addition, EBM tools need to provide more information about authorship, reviewers, methods for evidence collection, and grading system employed

Heavenly Mother in the Vernacular Religion of Latter-Day Saint Women

Creativity is one of the few culturally appropriate ways that Latter- day Saint women seek for and learn about Heavenly Mother. In my research, I draw on twenty-six interviews with women ages 21 to 55 from around the world who self-identified as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or “Mormon.” According to their interviews, these women seek Heavenly Mother because She is the manifestation of their potential, a topic I will discuss in more detail. Their beliefs and practices—which I define as vernacular beliefs, that is, personal rather than official expressions of religion—are centered around the idea that creativity is a uniquely female power. For example, some women drew on visual art and music as a vehicle for interacting with the female divine, while others feminized scripture, adopting female pronouns and imagery where women were otherwise absent from the scriptural canon. As such practices are unofficial and have been discouraged at times by the Latter- day Saint Church hierarchy, many informants expressed their fears surrounding unsanctioned practices, most particularly the fear of praying directly to the divine Mother. However, I have found that creativity—both physical art forms and more abstract forms of creativity, such as childbirth—offers women greater freedom to create and express their personal theologies

Transformable Wheelchair

This report includes the development, design, and analysis of a transformable wheelchair. There was a need to design and build a wheelchair that transformed to be pushed, pulled, or self-propelled. This design meets the need of physically restricted wheelchair users who frequent simple hiking trails without needing to move to a secondary off-road capable device. Documentation for concepts, analysis, and completed design details follows

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