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Declarations and terminations of public health emergencies are performative utterances that shift the balance of governmental power and can change our world. They can provide and then extinguish the ability to provide grants andfunding, deploy the military, waive and modiht regulatory requirements, and curtail civil liberties, many times with limited legislative oversight. But public health emergency laws at every level are inconsistent at best and are being legislated in a reactionary manner that may limit the ability to effectively respond in juture public health emergencies. With such high stakes and during a time when executive agency authority is evolving, appropriate guidance on the felicity conditions for these performative utterances is thus urgently needed. Instead of simply accepting lengthy unfettered executive public health emergency powers or enacting strict legislative limitations on executive authority that could hinder an efective public health response in the future, this Article focuses on a singular first step in calling for a diverse, multi-disciplinary team of scholars and stakeholders to examine the existing web of public health emergency legislation and provide input and guidance on felicity conditions for declaring, continuing, and terminating specific public health emergencies that build in mechanisms for accountability and relevant, appropriate checks and balances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intrusive state has long viewed women as fetal containers. The Dobbs decision goes further, essentially causing women to vanish when fetuses are abstracted from their relationships to pregnant persons. The ways in which women are first controlled and then made invisible are clearly connected with the move from obedience to omission that has historically affected black Americans. When personal decisionmaking and participation in democracy are regarded as threats, those threatened restrict decisional freedom and political power, deepening structural injustices relating to sex, race, and poverty. Fear of Dobbs has health effects on conditions unrelated to pregnancy and connects with erasures of human value that are not health-related. We reaffirm solidarity as a countering influence. Taking account of the richly relational context in which issues like abortion and political representation arise should lead to better, more meaningful policies, making so many people impossible to unsee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A successful quarantine requires a high rate of compliance by individuals with potential exposure to a communicable disease. Many individuals would be reluctant to comply with a quarantine because they fear that contact with government officials will place them in legal, personal, or economic jeopardy. These include undocumented immigrants and individuals with a substance use disorder. For a quarantine to succeed, individuals must be granted temporary immunity from arrest, deportation, or similar adverse consequences, but doing so will be politically unpopular. We argue that public health considerations must take precedence over politics in protecting the health of the public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the legal and ethical aspects of the use of electronic informed-consent (e-consent) in America's hospitals and medical care industry as of 2015, and it mentions the author's claim that e-consent could negatively impact the patient-physician relationship by increasing paternalism, replacing face-to-face interaction, and failing to address the individual needs of a patient. State laws in America are assessed, along with patient autonomy and self-determination.

An essay is presented on patient-centered health care approach relative to the mandatory influenza vaccination policies enforce by health care employers in the U.S. It says that opponents of the said policies argue that mandatory vaccination limit employees' personal freedom and autonomy. It mentions that the mandatory vaccination has received tension with the concept of informed consent. It adds that coercion in medicine is unethical in the context of patient-centered movement.

An editorial is presented which argues that U.S. President Donald Trump's isolationist policies are a threat to public health in places such as America, and it mentions Trump's views about the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement, the construction of a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and restrictions on the entry of immigrants and refugees into America. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's strategies are examined, along with quarantines and an Ebola virus crisis.

Our paper examines what is required to protect and promote effective public discussion and policy development in the current climate of divisive disagreement about many public policy questions. We use abortion as a case example precisely because it is morally fraught. We first consider the changes made by Dobbs , as well as those which led up to the Dobbs decision, accompany it, and follow from it.