Call for Abstracts: Law, Religion, and American Health Care

Date: 

Fri - Sat, May 8 to May 9, 8:00am - 5:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Law School, Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East BC, 1585 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

The Petrie-Flom Center is excited to announce our 2015 annual conference topic:­ "Law, Religion, and American Healthcare." ­ The conference will be held May 8-9, 2015 at Harvard Law School.

You can register here

We are now soliciting abstracts, which are due on December 1, 2014

We welcome submissions on both broad conceptual questions and more specific policy issues.  Potential topics might include:

  • Analysis of the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and other federal, state, and local legal provisions that come into play at the intersection between religion and health care
  • The Affordable Care Act and employer-based health care coverage, including the contraceptives mandate and related court decisions
  • Legal obligations and accommodations of religious health care organizations
  • Protection (or not) of health professional conscience
  • Health care decision-making for minors with religious parents
  • Religious objection v. discriminatory behavior
  • Informed consent and information flow, e.g., religious objection to providing certain information, inclusion of religious information in consent disclosures, etc.
  • "Medicalization" of religious beliefs, e.g., regulation of homosexual conversion therapy
  • Abortion policy, including clinic protests and protections, and its relationship to religion
  • Embryonic stem cell policy and its relationship to religion
  • End-of-life care, including assisted suicide, and its relationship to religion
  • Complicity as both a legal and religious concept 
  • Comparative analysis, e.g., between professions, health care practices, countries, etc.

Please forward the call to anyone who might be interested, post on your blogs, newsletters, etc.  See attached document below...additional information is available on our website.  

petrie-flom_2015_conference_announcement_and_call_for_proposals.pdf136 KB