Word: harmfulness
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...controversial legal concept: fetal rights. This notion also underlies one of the most important cases before the Supreme Court during its current term. At issue are "fetal-protection policies" used by many companies to forbid fertile female employees from taking jobs that might expose them to substances that could harm an unborn child. Fetal-rights advocates say such policies are needed to protect the unborn. Critics say they are an intrusion into the lives of women and a false comfort for a society that fails to offer adequate prenatal care for all women or workplace safety for all workers...
Courts in the U.S. have recognized that third parties -- for instance, a drunk driver who injures a pregnant woman -- can be sued for doing harm to a fetus. More recent is the notion that expectant mothers can be held criminally responsible for problems suffered by their fetuses. Even pregnant women who are resigned to the legalisms pervading American life might wince to learn that the child forming inside them is also a budding legal entity, possessing rights that may put it at odds with its mother even before it emerges into the world. But the idea has gathered support with...
With some researchers estimating that each year as many as 375,000 newborns in the U.S. could suffer harm from their mothers' prenatal abuse of illegal drugs, district attorneys are tempted by what looks like the quick fix of pregnancy prosecution. "You have the right to an abortion. You have the right to have a baby," says Charles Molony Condon, prosecutor for the Charleston, N.C., area. "You don't have the right to have a baby deformed by cocaine." Courts have given a mostly skeptical reception to the attempt to apply existing drug laws in such a novel fashion...
...Carolina, notes that women seem to be less vulnerable than men to high levels of LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, and more vulnerable to low levels of HDL, the "good" cholesterol. Diets that reduce both levels, such as the one promoted by the American Heart Association, may actually harm women, Crouse argues. The dearth of data on women and heart disease may also have contributed to an alarming problem: women are significantly more likely than men to die after they undergo heart-bypass surgery. One reason, suggested a study last spring, is that doctors are slower to spot serious...
...resident and allegedly came on to him and touched him. (The gay student says he twice asked the younger man to dance, nothing more.) The younger man told his friends about the incident, and the friends then allegedly assaulted the gay man, shoving him and threatening him with physical harm...