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The Body
The Case Against Reason-Based Abortion Bans
Gray Sutton
B.A., The University of Chicago, 2020; J.D. Candidate, The University of Chicago Law School, 2023.

This Comment wouldn’t exist without the prodding guidance of Professor Geoffrey Stone, nor the incredible support from Kathleen Schmidt, Kimberly Johnson, and the rest of the staff of The University of Chicago Legal Forum.

Absent from the docket, and flying under the public’s radar, was another, different form of abortion restriction: the reason-based abortion ban. This Comment will focus on the possible constitutional justifications for these laws and subsequently undermine them.

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The Body
Reconstructing Embryos: The Legal Ramifications of iPSC Technology and the Dickey-Wicker Amendment
Nicholas Riley
B.F.A., summa cum laude, Southern Methodist University; J.D. Candidate 2023, The University of Chicago Law School.

I would like to thank Professor Lior Strahilevitz for his helpful guidance. I am also indebted to the Board of the Legal Forum for their comments and insight. Finally, I am grateful to Professor Henry T. Greely for his inspiring conversation.

Ultimately, this Comment will argue that the embryoids created from iPSCs should not be considered embryos for purposes of federal law. Instead, their use in research should be subject only to state and federal cloning laws.

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The Body
Menstrual Product Deprivation in Prison: A Sex-Neutral Litigation Strategy
Avery Broome
B.A., The University of Chicago, 2018; J.D. Candidate; M.A. SciencesPo, 2020; The University of Chicago Law School, 2023.

My sincere thanks to Professor Hubbard for his excellent guidance and help shaping this paper, along with the staff of The University of Chicago Legal Forum for their hard work and editorial support. 

Prisons at both the state and federal levels routinely deny or severely restrict access to menstrual supplies for those who need them. Detainees and prisoners alike are left to bleed onto their clothes and the floor of their cells.

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The Body
Fixing the Powerhouse of the Cell: Challenging the FDA's Prohibition of Mitochondrial Replacement Therapy
Kendall Bryant
B.S., Florida State University, 2019; J.D. Candidate, The University of Chicago Law School, 2023.

I would like to thank Professor Emily Buss and the former and current staff of the Legal Forum for their thoughtful feedback and guidance on this piece. I am also grateful for the support from my friends and family along the way.

Many women long to be mothers one day. Motherhood can take different forms; it can be adopting children, birthing biological children, or nurturing a stepchild, to name a few options. Some women who want biologically related children run a high risk of their children being born with an incurable disease, endangering their chance for biological children to lead healthy lives.

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Article
The Body
"Long-COVID," Bodily Systems as ADAAA Major Life Activities, and the Social Model of Disability
Leslie P. Francis
J.D., Ph.D., Distinguished Alfred C. Emery Professor of Law and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Utah.
Michael Ashley Stein
J.D., Ph.D., Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School since 2005.

We are grateful to Zachary Ascherl, J.D., University of Utah 2020, and Megan Glasmann, 3L at the University of Utah, for their invaluable research support.

Social understandings of the body and disability, congruent with the ADAAA, ought to counter misleading reductionism about ambiguously diagnosed conditions as disabilities, including long COVID.

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The Body
No Money Allowed
Kimberly D. Krawiec
Charles O. Gregory Professor of Law and Sullivan and Cromwell Professor of Law, University of Virginia.

Observers have long debated the propriety of certain market exchanges involving the body, including prostitution, organ and gamete selling, commercial surrogacy, and blood and plasma markets, so called “contested commodities” or “taboo trades.” Although such disputes about the nature of market boundaries are long-standing, particularly in the context of the human body, recent years have seen a renewed focus on the ways in which attitudes about the proper scope of commercial exchange shape markets—and, indeed, dictate whether exchange for money occurs at all.

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The Body
Involuntary Reproductive Servitude: Forced Pregnancy, Abortion, and the Thirteenth Amendment
Michele Goodwin
Chancellor’s Professor of Law & Founding Director, Center for Biotechnology & Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine.

Much appreciation to the Chicago Legal Forum editors and staff for their thoughtful editorial contributions. My gratitude to the research librarians at Georgetown University Law Center who assisted in my data collection. My appreciation to Dorothy Brown, David Cruz, Victoria Nourse, Dorothy Roberts, Gregory Shaffer, Allison Whelan, Mary Ziegler.

The balance of this Essay describes and analyzes originalism from a different point of view, centering the experiences of Black women and girls. It then argues that the Court's selective canvassing of history exposes a serious fault in the legitimacy, integrity, and character of not only Dobbs, but also its supposed application of originalist methodology.

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The Body
Borrowed Wombs: On Uterus Transplants and the "Right to Experience Pregnancy"
Glenn Cohen
Deputy Dean and James A. Attwood and Leslie Williams Professor of Law, Harvard Law School. Faculty Director, Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology & Bioethics.

I thank Vrushab Gowda and Jessica Cianci for excellent research assistance pertinent to this article. I thank Alex Chen, participants at the University of Miami’s Legal Theory Workshop, and participants in the Forum’s symposium for their comments.

In December of 2017, the first birth from a uterus transplant in America occurred in Dallas, Texas. This article's focus is to compare uterus transplants to other ways to achieve parenthood, to evaluate what kinds of rights claims those who seek to use uterus transplants are making against the state and offer some tentative thoughts on how those claims should be treated.

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The Body
Donorsexuality After Dobbs
Mary Anne Case
Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law at The University of Chicago Law School.

A version of this paper will appear in Enticements, edited by Joseph Fischel and Brenda Cossman, forthcoming NYU Press 2023. Versions have also been presented in Kim Krawiec’s podcast Taboo Trades, Michele Goodwin’s 2022 Baby Markets, and a University of Chicago Law School Faculty workshop, as well as at the Legal Forum’s 2021 Symposium on The Body.  I am grateful to participants in these events as well as to Susan Appleton, Erez Aloni, Will Baude, Brian Bix, June Carbone, Jessica Clarke, Caroline Mala Corbin, Bridget Crawford, Elyse Dayton, Liz Emens, Chip Lupu, Julia Mahoney, Sara McDougall, Ali Miller, Darren Rosenblum, Zalman Rothschild, Elizabeth Scott, Sonia Starr, Glenn Wallach, Tobias Barrington Wolff, and Ezra Young for brainstorming assistance and comments on drafts; as well as to Elizabeth Aiken, Franchesca Alamo, Alvin Cheung, Elena Prieto, and particularly Malavika Parthasarathy for research assistance.

For the better part of a century, the United States Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions, “the underlying premise of [which is] that the Constitution protects ‘the right of the individual . . . to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into . . .

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The Body
Managing and Monitoring the Menopausal Body
Naomi R. Cahn
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy Distinguished Professor of Law, the Nancy L. Buc ’69 Research Professor in Democracy and Equity, and Director of the Family Law Center at the University of Virginia School of Law.
Bridget J. Crawford
University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Law at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.
Emily Gold Waldman
Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Faculty Development at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University.

The co-authors have written three articles exploring different aspects of menopause and the law. To reflect the collaborative effort, each article adopts a different position for the three coauthors’ names. The other two articles are Bridget J. Crawford, Emily Gold Waldman & Naomi R. Cahn, Working Through Menopause, 99  Wash. U. L. Rev. 1531 (2022) and Emily Gold Waldman, Naomi R. Cahn & Bridget J. Crawford, Contextualizing Menopause in the Law, 45 Harv. J. L. & Gender (2022).

This Essay explores how menopausal bodies are managed and monitored in contemporary U.S. culture. The focus is on two distinct aspects of that management and monitoring: menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) and the burgeoning market for technology-driven menopause products and services.

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The Body
Abortion Experts
Aziza Ahmed
Professor of Law and R. Gordan Butler Scholar of International Law at the Boston University School of Law

I would like to thank Mary Anne Case, Jonathan Masur, and the editors of the University of Chicago Legal Forum for including me on this symposium and for their helpful comments. I am also grateful to the participants of the Baby Markets 2022 with special thanks to Michele Goodwin and Antwann Simpkins for comments provided at the workshop.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has intensified the fight for access to medication abortion. I argue that conservative and progressive advocacy over medication abortion are windows into how courts legitimize and delegitimize different types of expertise in the service of political goals.