Sally Sheldon
Biographic Data
| ID | 192582 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sally Sheldon |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sally |
| FAMILY NAME | Sheldon |
| SIGNATURE | SHELDON S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Keele University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5472-9655 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
A descriminalização do aborto
Embora o aborto seja agora oferecido como parte da rotina dos modernos serviços de saúde reprodutiva financiados pelo NHS[1], a estrutura legal que o regulamenta continua enraizada nos valores punitivos e conservadores da era vitoriana. Este artigo argumenta que essa estrutura precisa de uma reforma fundamental para modernizá-la de acordo com a ciência clínica e os valores morais do século XXI. Ele avalia a atual estrutura estatutária que regulam…
Contextual legal pedagogy
This is an introduction to the Special Issue on ‘Contextual Legal Pedagogy’. It introduces the themes of the Special Issue and offers summaries of the papers in the collection. The introduction considers whether, and how, contextual legal pedagogy can still be radical, and how addressing pedagogical issues also necessarily involves addressing vital theoretical issues
Decriminalising Abortion in the UK
application for Judicial Review by the [2018] UKSC
Decriminalising Abortion in the UK
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. The public and parliamentary debate about UK abortion law reform is often diverted away from key moral and political questions by disputes regarding basic questions of fact. And all too often, claims of scientific ‘fact’ are ideologically driven. But what effect would decriminalisation be likely to have on women’s health? What would be the impact on the incidence of abortions? Would decriminalisation …
Too Much, too Indigestible, too Fast’? The Decades of Struggle for Abortion Law Reform in Northern Ireland
In July 2019, the UK Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority for fundamental reform of Northern Ireland's archaic abortion laws. Regulations implementing the reform came into effect on 25 March 2020. Drawing on extensive archival resources and a small number of interviews, we locate this extraordinary political moment in a broader historical context. We explore the factors that blocked the possibility of reform in either Westminster or Storm…
The Abortion Act (1967)
In this paper, we set out what it means to offer a 'biography' of a law, illustrating the discussion through the example of the Abortion Act (1967), an important statute that has regulated a highly controversial field of practice for five decades. Biography is taken as a useful shorthand for an approach which requires simultaneous attention to continuity and change in the historical study of a law's life. It takes seriously the insight that writt…
The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on
Empowerment and Privacy? Home Use of Abortion Pills in the Republic of Ireland
Early reports heralded the development of abortion pills as promising a reproductive revolution. Some twenty-five years on, this article considers the extent to which this promise has been fulfilled in the context of the Republic of Ireland. It focuses in particular on the work of two online collectives, Women on Web and Women Help Women. Drawing on a small number of interviews with activists, support groups, service providers, doctors, and gover…
British Abortion Law
This paper analyses the poor alignment of the aging statutory framework and modern understandings of medical best practice in the context of abortion services. With a particular focus on medical abortion, it assesses the significant challenges that the gulf between the two poses for clinicians, service providers, regulators and the courts. Law is said to be at its most effective where there is a shared regulatory community that accepts and endors…
How can a state control swallowing? The home use of abortion pills in Ireland
Evidence suggests that there is widespread home use of abortion pills in Ireland and that ending a pregnancy in this way is potentially safer than the alternatives available to many women. This paper argues that there is a strong case for women with unwanted pregnancies to be offered truthful and objective information regarding the use of abortion pills by trusted local professionals and, further, that this is possible within existing law. A move…
After the ‘need for … a father’
The law governing assisted conception in the United Kingdom (UK) (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990) mandates through section 13(5) that clinicians make ‘child welfare’ assessments before proceeding with treatment. In the 1990 Act, section 13(5) stated that assessment should take into account ‘the need ... for a father’, but in section 13(5) of a revised Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 2008 the words ‘a father’ were replac…
Supportive Parenting’, Responsibility and Regulation
Section 13(5) of the H uman F ertilisation and E mbryology A ct 1990 requires fertility clinics, before offering regulated treatment services, to take account of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment and any other child affected by that birth. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study examining the impact on practice of the controversial reform of this section in 2008. While the broad values underpinni…
Assessing child welfare under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
This article reports on a study with staff working in assisted conception clinics in the UK about making welfare of the child (WOC) assessments pre-conception. This aspect of infertility treatment is obligatory under section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which was amended in 2008. The aim of the study was to find out how this change to the law had impacted on practice. In describing what we found, we also make a contributio…
EmilyJackson, Law and the Regulation of Medicines, Oxford
Dummy Article Title
The extent to which English law remedies injury to autonomy (ITA) as a stand-alone actionable damage in negligence is disputed. In this article I argue that the remedy available is not only partial and inconsistent (Keren-Paz in Med Law Rev, 2018) but also gendered and discriminatory against women. I first situate the argument within the broader feminist critique of tort law as failing to appropriately remedy gendered harms, and of law more broad…
No Father Required”? The Welfare Assessment in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008) and the Tenacity of the Sexual Family Form1
The new parenthood provisions set out in Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 have been attacked as dangerous and radical, offering a 'lego-kit model of family life' and a 'magical mystery tour' in how legal fatherhood is to be determined. In this paper, we explain what is innovative about these new provisions but also explore what they owe to deep-rooted traditional assumptions about the family. Relying both on published doc…
From ‘absent objects of blame’ to ‘fathers who want to take responsibility’
Unmarried fatherhood has long been seen as presenting a problem to be managed by government, with intervention necessary either to enforce men's (financial) responsibilities or, alternatively, to support and enable the relationships with children that men want, deserve and are unfairly denied. This most recent of a long chain of governmental initiatives in this regard is the reform of the Births and Deaths Registration Act (1953), proposed as par…
Reproductive technologies and the legal determination of fatherhood
Fragmenting Fatherhood
Reproductive technologies offer the potential to break down parenthood into a number of constituent parts. These disruptive possibilities mean that the regulation of reproductive technologies holds important potential for study, providing a significant resource that has been little analysed with regard to fatherhood. This study attempts to remedy that lacuna through consideration of a range of recent developments in this area of English law. It r…
Gender Equality and Reproductive Decision-Making
Unwilling Fathers and Abortion
There is broad agreement across the western industrialised world that men who father children outside of marriage share in an obligation to support their offspring financially. Against this consensus, some men's groups have claimed that if women are accorded control over the decision to continue or to terminate a pregnancy then it is unfair to hold genetic fathers financially liable for child support. This paper assesses the merits of this claim …
Unmarried Fathers and Parental Responsibility
Delivering Democracy to Abortion Politics
ReConceiving Masculinity
It is not just women’s bodies which can pose risks to the foetus but also those of men, with the quality of sperm playing an important role in foetal health. This article assesses why male antenatal behaviour has received such scant attention. It focuses on the regulation of liability for congenital disability and foetal protection legislation and policies, in order to uncover the received understandings of male and female reproductivity which ha…
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008) and the Tenacity of the Sexual Family Form1
The new parenthood provisions set out in Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 have been attacked as dangerous and radical, offering a 'lego-kit model of family life' and a 'magical mystery tour' in how legal fatherhood is to be determined. In this paper, we explain what is innovative about these new provisions but also explore what they owe to deep-rooted traditional assumptions about the family. Relying both on published doc…
Who is the mother to make the judgment
Empowerment and Privacy? Home Use of Abortion Pills in the Republic of Ireland
Early reports heralded the development of abortion pills as promising a reproductive revolution. Some twenty-five years on, this article considers the extent to which this promise has been fulfilled in the context of the Republic of Ireland. It focuses in particular on the work of two online collectives, Women on Web and Women Help Women. Drawing on a small number of interviews with activists, support groups, service providers, doctors, and gover…
How can a state control swallowing? The home use of abortion pills in Ireland
Evidence suggests that there is widespread home use of abortion pills in Ireland and that ending a pregnancy in this way is potentially safer than the alternatives available to many women. This paper argues that there is a strong case for women with unwanted pregnancies to be offered truthful and objective information regarding the use of abortion pills by trusted local professionals and, further, that this is possible within existing law. A move…
The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on
Assessing child welfare under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
This article reports on a study with staff working in assisted conception clinics in the UK about making welfare of the child (WOC) assessments pre-conception. This aspect of infertility treatment is obligatory under section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which was amended in 2008. The aim of the study was to find out how this change to the law had impacted on practice. In describing what we found, we also make a contributio…
The Abortion Act (1967)
In this paper, we set out what it means to offer a 'biography' of a law, illustrating the discussion through the example of the Abortion Act (1967), an important statute that has regulated a highly controversial field of practice for five decades. Biography is taken as a useful shorthand for an approach which requires simultaneous attention to continuity and change in the historical study of a law's life. It takes seriously the insight that writt…
From ‘absent objects of blame’ to ‘fathers who want to take responsibility’
Unmarried fatherhood has long been seen as presenting a problem to be managed by government, with intervention necessary either to enforce men's (financial) responsibilities or, alternatively, to support and enable the relationships with children that men want, deserve and are unfairly denied. This most recent of a long chain of governmental initiatives in this regard is the reform of the Births and Deaths Registration Act (1953), proposed as par…
British Abortion Law
This paper analyses the poor alignment of the aging statutory framework and modern understandings of medical best practice in the context of abortion services. With a particular focus on medical abortion, it assesses the significant challenges that the gulf between the two poses for clinicians, service providers, regulators and the courts. Law is said to be at its most effective where there is a shared regulatory community that accepts and endors…
ReConceiving Masculinity
It is not just women’s bodies which can pose risks to the foetus but also those of men, with the quality of sperm playing an important role in foetal health. This article assesses why male antenatal behaviour has received such scant attention. It focuses on the regulation of liability for congenital disability and foetal protection legislation and policies, in order to uncover the received understandings of male and female reproductivity which ha…
No Father Required”? The Welfare Assessment in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
Reproductive technologies and the legal determination of fatherhood
Gender Equality and Reproductive Decision-Making
Unwilling Fathers and Abortion
There is broad agreement across the western industrialised world that men who father children outside of marriage share in an obligation to support their offspring financially. Against this consensus, some men's groups have claimed that if women are accorded control over the decision to continue or to terminate a pregnancy then it is unfair to hold genetic fathers financially liable for child support. This paper assesses the merits of this claim …
Unmarried Fathers and Parental Responsibility
Too Much, too Indigestible, too Fast’? The Decades of Struggle for Abortion Law Reform in Northern Ireland
In July 2019, the UK Parliament voted by an overwhelming majority for fundamental reform of Northern Ireland's archaic abortion laws. Regulations implementing the reform came into effect on 25 March 2020. Drawing on extensive archival resources and a small number of interviews, we locate this extraordinary political moment in a broader historical context. We explore the factors that blocked the possibility of reform in either Westminster or Storm…
Fragmenting Fatherhood
Reproductive technologies offer the potential to break down parenthood into a number of constituent parts. These disruptive possibilities mean that the regulation of reproductive technologies holds important potential for study, providing a significant resource that has been little analysed with regard to fatherhood. This study attempts to remedy that lacuna through consideration of a range of recent developments in this area of English law. It r…
Subject Only To the Attitude of the Surgeon Concerned
In this article, through discussion of the more important cases involving the regulation of abortion which have been faced by the English courts, I show how in becoming constructed as a medical matter, abortion is removed from the public sphere into a private realm where it can be regulated by experts who can lay claim to specialist medical knowledge. I deal first with prosecutions for the unlawful procurement of miscarriage under 58 of the Offen…
Who is the mother to make the judgment
Women's Daily Lives and Equal Opportunity Policies
Subject Only To the Attitude of the Surgeon Concerned
In this article, through discussion of the more important cases involving the regulation of abortion which have been faced by the English courts, I show how in becoming constructed as a medical matter, abortion is removed from the public sphere into a private realm where it can be regulated by experts who can lay claim to specialist medical knowledge. I deal first with prosecutions for the unlawful procurement of miscarriage under 58 of the Offen…
Multiple pregnancy and reproductive choice R v. Queen Charlotte Hospital, Professor Phillip Bennett, North Thames Regional Health Authority and Social Services of Brentford and Hounslaw LBC, ex parte …
Delivering Democracy to Abortion Politics
ReConceiving Masculinity
It is not just women’s bodies which can pose risks to the foetus but also those of men, with the quality of sperm playing an important role in foetal health. This article assesses why male antenatal behaviour has received such scant attention. It focuses on the regulation of liability for congenital disability and foetal protection legislation and policies, in order to uncover the received understandings of male and female reproductivity which ha…
Unmarried Fathers and Parental Responsibility
Unwilling Fathers and Abortion
There is broad agreement across the western industrialised world that men who father children outside of marriage share in an obligation to support their offspring financially. Against this consensus, some men's groups have claimed that if women are accorded control over the decision to continue or to terminate a pregnancy then it is unfair to hold genetic fathers financially liable for child support. This paper assesses the merits of this claim …
Gender Equality and Reproductive Decision-Making
Reproductive technologies and the legal determination of fatherhood
Fragmenting Fatherhood
Reproductive technologies offer the potential to break down parenthood into a number of constituent parts. These disruptive possibilities mean that the regulation of reproductive technologies holds important potential for study, providing a significant resource that has been little analysed with regard to fatherhood. This study attempts to remedy that lacuna through consideration of a range of recent developments in this area of English law. It r…
From ‘absent objects of blame’ to ‘fathers who want to take responsibility’
Unmarried fatherhood has long been seen as presenting a problem to be managed by government, with intervention necessary either to enforce men's (financial) responsibilities or, alternatively, to support and enable the relationships with children that men want, deserve and are unfairly denied. This most recent of a long chain of governmental initiatives in this regard is the reform of the Births and Deaths Registration Act (1953), proposed as par…
No Father Required”? The Welfare Assessment in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (2008) and the Tenacity of the Sexual Family Form1
The new parenthood provisions set out in Part 2 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 have been attacked as dangerous and radical, offering a 'lego-kit model of family life' and a 'magical mystery tour' in how legal fatherhood is to be determined. In this paper, we explain what is innovative about these new provisions but also explore what they owe to deep-rooted traditional assumptions about the family. Relying both on published doc…
Dummy Article Title
The extent to which English law remedies injury to autonomy (ITA) as a stand-alone actionable damage in negligence is disputed. In this article I argue that the remedy available is not only partial and inconsistent (Keren-Paz in Med Law Rev, 2018) but also gendered and discriminatory against women. I first situate the argument within the broader feminist critique of tort law as failing to appropriately remedy gendered harms, and of law more broad…
EmilyJackson, Law and the Regulation of Medicines, Oxford
Assessing child welfare under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
This article reports on a study with staff working in assisted conception clinics in the UK about making welfare of the child (WOC) assessments pre-conception. This aspect of infertility treatment is obligatory under section 13(5) of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act, which was amended in 2008. The aim of the study was to find out how this change to the law had impacted on practice. In describing what we found, we also make a contributio…
After the ‘need for … a father’
The law governing assisted conception in the United Kingdom (UK) (the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990) mandates through section 13(5) that clinicians make ‘child welfare’ assessments before proceeding with treatment. In the 1990 Act, section 13(5) stated that assessment should take into account ‘the need ... for a father’, but in section 13(5) of a revised Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act in 2008 the words ‘a father’ were replac…
Supportive Parenting’, Responsibility and Regulation
Section 13(5) of the H uman F ertilisation and E mbryology A ct 1990 requires fertility clinics, before offering regulated treatment services, to take account of the welfare of any child who may be born as a result of the treatment and any other child affected by that birth. This paper presents the findings of an empirical study examining the impact on practice of the controversial reform of this section in 2008. While the broad values underpinni…
British Abortion Law
This paper analyses the poor alignment of the aging statutory framework and modern understandings of medical best practice in the context of abortion services. With a particular focus on medical abortion, it assesses the significant challenges that the gulf between the two poses for clinicians, service providers, regulators and the courts. Law is said to be at its most effective where there is a shared regulatory community that accepts and endors…
How can a state control swallowing? The home use of abortion pills in Ireland
Evidence suggests that there is widespread home use of abortion pills in Ireland and that ending a pregnancy in this way is potentially safer than the alternatives available to many women. This paper argues that there is a strong case for women with unwanted pregnancies to be offered truthful and objective information regarding the use of abortion pills by trusted local professionals and, further, that this is possible within existing law. A move…
The Abortion Act (1967)
In this paper, we set out what it means to offer a 'biography' of a law, illustrating the discussion through the example of the Abortion Act (1967), an important statute that has regulated a highly controversial field of practice for five decades. Biography is taken as a useful shorthand for an approach which requires simultaneous attention to continuity and change in the historical study of a law's life. It takes seriously the insight that writt…
The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on
Empowerment and Privacy? Home Use of Abortion Pills in the Republic of Ireland
Early reports heralded the development of abortion pills as promising a reproductive revolution. Some twenty-five years on, this article considers the extent to which this promise has been fulfilled in the context of the Republic of Ireland. It focuses in particular on the work of two online collectives, Women on Web and Women Help Women. Drawing on a small number of interviews with activists, support groups, service providers, doctors, and gover…
Decriminalising Abortion in the UK
application for Judicial Review by the [2018] UKSC
Political science (25 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (15 works) · Abortion (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Pregnancy (7 works) · Biology (6 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (6 works)