Medical law international
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Medical law international · Jan 2001
Historical ArticleA time to regulate? Possible implications of European human rights law on abortion in Northern Ireland.
Since the introduction of the Abortion Act 1967 the legality and status of abortion in Northern Ireland, being excluded from the provisions of the 1967 Act, has remained shrouded in uncertainty. In light of the introduction of the Human Rights Act 1998, this article will explore whether this inconsistency in the UK is in breach of the provisions laid down in Articles 8 and 14. It will be shown that while compelling arguments can be built under these provisions, perhaps the most persuasive arguments in favour of law reform are the inequities that the current legal regime has perpetuated.
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Since March 1999 there have been three inquiries concerned either in whole or in part with the removal of human tissue from bodies during post-mortem examinations and its retention thereafter. Two of these at least have had to consider the law relating to the matter, and a commissioned paper and a submission about it to one, the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry, have been mounted on the Inquiry's Web site. The main part of this article consists of the slightly revised text of a submission to the Inquiry by way of comment on these. Among the major points made in this submission are that (a) insufficient consideration has been given to the present status of the common law right of a person arranging a funeral to have the body of the deceased given Christian burial in the burial ground of the parish in which he or she died or of which he or she was a parishoner; (b) insufficient account has been taken of the scope of permissible modes of dealing with a dead body; and that (c) the implications this has for the common law offence of preventing Christian (or decent) burial have not been fully explored.
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Medical law international · Jan 1999
The living will: does an advance refusal of treatment made with capacity always survive any supervening incapacity?
There is a widespread consensus in law and medical ethics that living wills have to be obeyed by the physician if the patient was competent when the medical directive was signed and if, after the patient becomes incompetent, additional conditions occur which were considered by him. According to this viewpoint, the effectiveness of living wills is a direct consequence of the patient's right of self-determination. As the British Law Commission has recently put it: "An advance refusal made with capacity simply survives any supervening incapacity." However, this opinion does not take into account the empirical fact that the formerly competent person's critical interests (at t1) do not necessarily correspond wit his experiential interests after incompetency is established irreversibly (at t2). The author's goal is to answer the question of whether there can be cases which do not allow the formerly competent person's critical interests to prevail over the incompetent patient's experiential interests.