Groningen Centre for Health Law

Dean M. Harris - Anti-abortion groups and politicians in the US have been using misleading information about abortion laws in other countries. Their goals include convincing the US Congress to enact a federal law that would generally prohibit abortion in all US states after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Dominique Mollet, Brigit Toebes - The following poster has been presented on 5 May 2023 at the 17th World Congress on Public Health taking place in Rome, Italy, emphasizing the need to break the silo of oral health and push this topic forward on public health agendas.

Michael Woldeyes - The Horn of Africa is dealing with a severe drought. The United Nations (hereafter UN) reported that this drought threatened 13 million people with hunger. The UN news report reads: “Three consecutive failed rainy seasons in Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia have decimated crops and caused abnormally high livestock deaths, while, shortages of water and pasture are forcing families from their homes and triggering conflict between communities”.

Dean M. Harris - Former US President Donald Trump is out of the White House--at least for now. However, one of his legacies is an extremely right-wing Supreme Court. With its new right-wing majority, the Supreme Court overruled the longstanding abortion precedent of Roe v. Wade . On June 24, 2022, the Court held that the US Constitution does not include a right of access to abortion. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Org ., 142 S.Ct. 2228 (2022). Therefore, state governments may prohibit or severely restrict abortion, as many states have already done. 

Suliyat Omotolani Olapade - In October, 2022, authors from over 260 academic health journals endorsed a Comment in The Lancet Global Health by African health journal editors calling for urgent action for Africa and the world on climate change. The Comment repeated the moral and practical reasons for urgent action now, yet overlooked compelling legal arguments.

Gabriel Armas-Cardona - One of the major questions we are asking ourselves now is what have we, as policymakers, as global health actors, as humanity, learned from the pandemic. There has been a deluge of scientific research on COVID-19 in the last 2.5 years, vastly increasing our knowledge of the disease and its impacts. But, have we incorporated the lessons learned into global and domestic policy?

Suliyat Omotolani Olapade - At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, some high-income countries (HICs) enacted laws and undertook other measures that resulted in restricted access to COVID-19 vaccines and related commodities in low-income countries (LICs). It was reported, for example, that the United Kingdom enacted laws to prevent the exportation of essential medicines, the European Union curbed exports of hospital supplies, and the USA restricted PPE [personal protective equipment] exports.

Pepijn Tukker & Dominique Mollet - For the past two years, there has been increased attention for (public) health-related topics among policy makers. However, due to new global crises, such as the war in Ukraine, Covid-19 is no longer the headliner of daily news and newspapers, and policymakers’ focus is shifting away: public health appears to lose its momentum as a topic for discussion. 

Thom Geertsema - Het onlangs gepresenteerde ‘Nationaal actieplan versterken zoönosenbeleid’ van de Ministeries van Volksgezondheid, Welzijn en Sport (VWS) en Landbouw, Natuur en Voedselkwaliteit (LNV) is een goede stap om het gevaar en de risico’s van zoönosen onder de aandacht te brengen. Het nationaal actieplan zoals dat er nu ligt is ambitieus. Dit komt mede vanwege de diverse partijen met elk hun eigen rol in de aanpak van zoönosen. Het is daarom zeker een stap vooruit om deze kwestie vanuit een One Health benadering aan te pakken.

Brigit Toebes - On 12-13 May, the Groningen Centre for Health Law and the European Scientific Network on Law and Tobacco organized a conference entitled ‘Tobacco, Law and Human Rights’. The event marked the finalization of our project funded by the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF) entitled ‘the rights of children to a tobacco-free environment’, which started in 2016.