Category: Health and healthcare

Pregnancy, Choice, and the Lessons of the Past

Gender, Health, Health and healthcare, Human rights, Law and Legal, Police and Policing, Punishment, USA, Women

Mikki headshotDr Michelle Brock is an Assistant Professor of History at Washington and Lee University, specialising in British History. In this second guest post for the Global Justice Academy, Mikki tackles the current controversy in the US around abortion and the politicisation and policing of women’s bodies – drawing striking parallels with early modern Europe. 

In the United States, the last decade has witnessed a growing cacophony of calls from pro-life advocates seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision to legalise a woman’s right to an abortion. Every single current Republican candidate for president, fourteen men and one woman, has declared his or her opposition to abortion in most or all cases.

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Ebola: Judging Reactions and Responses. What Happens Next?

Africa, Health, Health and healthcare, Human rights, Impact, Law and Legal, Local-Global Connections, Medicine, Response, UN, USA, WHO

LG Ebola 27 Oct 2014

The University of Edinburgh’s Global Academies have announced their Autumn 2014 Ebola Series in response to the current global crisis. In this short post, Dr Harriet Cornell from the Global Justice Academy reflects on how the global response to Ebola has unfolded in the press, and criticisms that have been voiced by experts in the field.

This evening’s Ebola headlines are divided between pleas for world help from Liberia’s President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and blame for the spread and devastation of the outbreak been laid squarely at the doors of the world’s supranational bodies: the World Health Organisation, and the United Nations. Then there is the intersect between the outbreak of the disease in West Africa, and the western media response, with The Guardian running a comment piece entitled ‘The problem with the west’s Ebola response is still fear of a black patient’.

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