Abortion by telemedicine in Northern Ireland: patient and professional rights across borders

The uneasy legal and political settlement regarding abortion in Northern Ireland has long relied on the outsourcing of aspects of reproductive health care. While local health services offer only highly restricted access to termination procedures, women travel to access abortion services elsewhere. However, technological changes, in particular the development of abortifacient medicines, are revolutionising this aspect of reproductive healthcare. Rather than women having to travel to a service, today that service can travel to women through the postal supply of abortion pills, sourced via the internet. While online supply of pharmaceuticals can pose potential public health risks, at least two groups offer safe and effective telemedical services to women in Northern Ireland. Women on Web and Women Help Women each supply abortion pills, under prescription from a doctor based in another country, to women who wish to end a pregnancy of nine weeks or less. Here, we consider the extent to which the telemedical abortion services that they offer are protected by transnational law, in particular, EU provisions on cross-border services. This offers new and hitherto unexplored lines of legal argument (including defences against criminal prosecution and challenges to a state's attempts to restrict the flow of services). Through claiming the autonomy-based legal relationships implicit in transnational law and the power that flows therefrom, we suggest, women may challenge regulatory arrangements which seek to limit their reproductive rights

Abortion by telemedicine in the European Union

This paper analyses an important set of legal issues raised by the telemedical provision of abortion pills. Focusing on the case of EU law, it suggests that a properly accredited doctor seeking to treat a patient with abortion pills is entitled, in principle, to rely on EU rules of free movement to protect her access to patients in other member states and women facing unwanted pregnancies likewise have legal rights to access the services thus offered. EU countries seeking to claim an exception to those rules on the basis of public health or the protection of a fundamental public policy interest (here, the protection of fetal life) will face significant barriers

The immediate futures of health law after Brexit: Law, ‘a-legality’ and uncertainty

The European Union (EU) is a rules-based international organisation with an exceptionally dense legal system. Likewise, the ways in which EU law has effects in domestic law are determined by (constitutional) law. The legal rights and obligations entailed for state and ‘third sector’ entities, companies and human beings of some 45 years of membership have had significant effects on domestic health law across the United Kingdom, even though health per se is a national competence. That said, the EU’s relationships with national legal orders are also determined by the politically possible. We therefore sketch the key legal questions for UK health law, and health law in each of the ‘devolveds’, in two possible immediate post-Brexit futures. By immediate future, we mean after 29 March 2019, the date on which the Article 50 TEU notification period ends. It will not be possible to answer these legal questions until the politics have crystallised into legal texts, which is not the case at the time we write. We go on to argue that the ways in which UK health law, policy and practice are currently determined by the UK’s membership of the EU, coupled with the short time frame within which the future EU-UK relationship must be determined, mean that law may be expected to be less of a determinant in immediate post-Brexit futures than it is at present. Our principal conclusion is that the uncertainties that surround the process of Brexit mean that at a level of specific policy and practice, such as in areas of health law, we might expect a period of ‘a-legality’, where the legal position of actors does not necessarily determine or explain their actions

THE FAIRNESS PROJECT: DOING WHAT WE CAN, WHERE WE ARE

The legal profession, in common with other professions, does not represent the diverse society it serves. In England and Wales, it is significantly more difficult to become a lawyer if you are not white, male, middle class, privately and Oxbridge educated: this is also true for other protected characteristics, such as disability, sexual orientation and age. The students we teach are fundamentally and structurally disadvantaged. This article reports on the aims and objectives of The Fairness Project, and the consequent design of its learning materials. Structural inequalities are all- pervasive and long-standing. No one project, no one generation, will secure equality, more diversity and fairness in the legal profession. But that is not a reason to do nothing. As educators and as human beings, who ourselves are relatively advantaged, we have a moral and pedagogical imperative to do what we can, where we are. That is what The Fairness Project is all about

Reflecting on ‘Supporting health systems in Europe: added value of EU actions?'

Many in the health policy community are highly critical of the European Union and its involvement in health. Clemens et al’s paper is a refreshingly balanced analysis and assessment. It summarises the ‘standard narrative’ of the detrimental impacts of EU law and policy on national health systems. But it also illuminates an important counterbalance of ‘hidden’ aspects of EU health policy. These have the potential to improve health across the EU, even in the post-crisis era of public spending austerity. The conclusion – that on balance ‘EU involvement can add biases and problems previously unknown at national levels’ (Clemens et al, 2014) – is thus more persuasive than that in other analyses

The Fairness Project: the role of legal educators as catalysts for change. Engaging in difficult dialogues on the impact of diversity barriers to entry and progression in the legal profession

This article provides a critique of The Fairness Project, a learning and teaching project on equality and diversity in the legal profession and its impact on employability, delivered over three years across three university law schools. The Fairness Project builds on current literature on lack of equality and diversity in the legal profession, by adopting a student perspective. Barriers to entry and progression within the legal profession occur because of a range of issues including social class, gender, ethnicity, initial education, university education and gaining work experience in a law firm. We explore whether, and to what extent, we can educate law students from a range of diverse backgrounds and social identities about the “diversity barriers” entrenched in the legal profession, and thus influence their own career trajectories to access the profession. Our results show that – at least to some extent – we can. The data suggests that The Fairness Project helped prepare law students to tackle the inequalities that exist in the legal profession. The learning benefits of The Fairness Project are transferable to other law schools and could be adapted for use with law students in other jurisdictions, or for students in other disciplines where “diversity barriers” may exist

Going it alone: health and Brexit in the UK

When the UK left the single market, it marked the end of the application of European law and institutions which underpinned many elements of health and health care in the UK. Regulations on medicines and devices, laws on the buying and selling of care, trade agreements, and rules on migration which had previously worked across most of a continent, were repatriated to the UK. This report, an interim output from the Health and International Relations Monitor project funded by the Health Foundation, considers the impact of leaving the EU and changing international relations for health. It considers changes in health across six key areas: medicines and devices, international trade agreements, devolution, procurement, workforce and Northern Ireland. In the full report to be published in the Spring, we intend to examine two of the building blocks of health most affected by Brexit - workforce and living standards

Telling stories about European Union Health Law: The emergence of a new field of law

The ideational narrative power of law has now solidified, and continues to solidify, ‘European Union health law’, into an entity with a distinctive legal identity. EU health law was previously seen as either non-existent, or so broad as to be meaningless, or as existing only in relations between EU law and health (the ‘and’ approach), or as consisting of a body of barely or loosely connected policy domains (the ‘patchwork’ approach). The process of bringing EU health law into being is a process of narration. The ways in which EU health law is narrated (and continues to be narrated) involve three main groups of actors: the legislature, courts and the academy