This conference, and anticipated edited volume, will aim to: (1) identify the various ways in which law intersects with religion and health care in the United States; (2) understand the role of law in creating or mediating conflict between religion and health care; and (3) explore potential legal solutions to allow religion and health care to simultaneously flourish in a culturally diverse nation.
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 note that this list is not meant to be exhaustive; we hope to receive abstracts related to the conference’s general theme even if a particular topic was not specifically listed here. However, proposals that lack a clear linkage to all three aspects of the conference – law, religion, and health care – will not be considered. Law will be treated broadly to include governmental policy decisions more generally. Abstracts must propose or outline an argument/position, rather than merely stating a topic, in order to enable us to evaluate them.
In an effort to encourage interdisciplinary and international dialogue, we welcome submissions from legal scholars and lawyers, of course, but also from bioethicists, philosophers, scholars of religion and religious studies, clinicians, government officials and staff, international scholars and regulators discussing how their systems have handled these issues, and others who have a meaningful contribution to make on this topic. We welcome submissions from advocacy organizations, think tanks, and others outside academia, but emphasize that this is a scholarly conference, and abstracts/papers will be held to academic standards of argumentation and support.
How to Participate
Abstract submission deadline: December 1, 2014
Full paper submission date: April 3, 2015
Event Date: 05/8/15 to 05/9/15
If you are interested in participating, please send a 1-page abstract of the paper you would plan to present to [email protected].Please note that presenters are expected to attend the conference for its full duration. We will pay travel expenses for presenters who must travel to Cambridge; co-authored papers must name a single presenter.
For any further query contact:
Please contact Holly Fernandez Lynch, Executive Director, Petrie-Flom Center, with any questions:[email protected], 617.384.5475.
Venue:
Wasserstein Hall, Milstein East BC
1585 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
How to Register