McGill University’s joint LLM-bioethics program

Terry Tomsick is an attorney and retired judge from Colorado.  She received her B.A. in Philosophy with honors from Stanford University in 1973 and her J.D. from the University of Colorado in 1976.  She has an AV Martindale Hubbell rating.  In 2004, she enrolled full-time in McGill University’s joint LLM - bioethics program.  She anticipates completing her thesis in the fall of 2007 on “Ectogenesis:  Legal, ethical and slippery slope issues.” In her McGill program, she has written the following papers:  “Starson v. Swayze:  Psychiatric Ethics Run Amok; Morality: Explored by Parrhesia”; “Joint Canadian and American Code of Clinical Bioethics and Responsibility”; “Asperger Syndrome in Women”; “Terri Schiavo and Neurotheology”; and “Complementary and Alternative Medicine versus Randomized Clinical Trials: A Truce?”

Women have been watching as two new cases affecting reproductive choices have been decided:  one from the European Court of Human Rights (Case of Evans v. United Kingdom decided April 10, 2007) and the United States Supreme Court (Gonzales v. Carhart decided April 18, 2007)  How do these two cases differ?  Are they helpful in further delineating reproductive choices? What do they say about the tenor of the highest courts and their views of the rights of embryos and nonviable fetuses?  Should women and men be concerned or reassured by these cases?  What’s next?  What are the foreseeable issues and fallout from both of these cases?  Linda MacDonald Glenn, J.D., LLM (McGill, bioethics) and Terry Tomsick, J.D. (LLM, bioethics, fall 2007) explore these two cases and other United States cases in discussing the divergent tacks these two courts seem to be taking.