JURIST - Paper Chase: Sunday, August 12, 2012

[JURIST] A judge for Australia's Queensland District Court [official website] has, for the first time in Australian jurisprudence, defined the term "conception" as the act of getting pregnant. Judge Leanne Clare defined "conception" [attorney blog post] Wednesday as "the commencement of the pregnancy, which involves an active process within a woman's body," rather than the moment of fertilization. In this case, an embryo had been created years before the surrogacy arrangement, but it was not implanted into the mother's uterus until after the arrangement was created. This was important because the Queensland Surrogacy Act of 2010 [text, PDF] requires that arrangements be signed "before the child is conceived." Therefore, because the moment of conception did not take place until the embryo was placed in the woman's body and pregnancy was commenced, Clare ruled that the arrangement was created before conception.

Although Clare was the first to rule on the meaning of the word "conception," deciding on a definition may soon become an issue in US courts as well, as many states have recently considered or passed anti-abortion laws that define life as beginning at conception. In February, Oklahoma became the latest state to pass a bill [JURIST report] granting personhood to the unborn beginning at the moment of conception. A week earlier, the Virginia House of Delegates [official website] passed a similar bill [JURIST report] defining life as beginning at conception. Voters in Mississippi, however, in November rejected [JURIST report] an amendment to the state's constitution that would have redefined the words "person" or "persons" to mean "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof."

[JURIST] Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] reported [HRW report] that French authorities raided two camps inhabited by Romanian Roma early Thursday morning and evicted all of the more than 200 residents, leaving them without homes. The same day, 240 Romanian Roma who had been previously evicted from camps were flown from France to Romania. French officials claim the dismantling of the camps was due to unsanitary conditions and "tensions" between the Roma and the local population. They also said that the 240 Roma who were flown back to Romania agreed to do so on a voluntary basis after being paid 300 Euro. HRW European and Central Asia Advocacy Director Veronika Szente Goldston [offical profile], however, believes the raids are "just the latest manifestation of France’s notorious expulsion policy targeting Eastern European Roma." HRW also believes a French immigration law enacted last year targets Eastern European Roma and is in violation of France's obligations under the European Union's (EU) [official website] free movement and human rights standards. Goldston said that "rather than trying to get rid of unwanted Roma while no one is watching, the government should take a critical look at its sorry record in this area, and act to rectify abuses."

France has a history of alleged human rights abuses against its Roma population. In 2010, rights groups challenged [JURIST report] France's collection of DNA samples from Roma migrants, alleging that it was unlawfully subjecting the migrants to this when they had not been arrested or charged. The EU had previously threatened [JURIST report] the country with legal action if it did not follow EU regulations in its treatment of Roma migrants. Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] also urged all members [JURIST report] of the EU to stop forcibly deporting Roma migrants for fear that they could face persecution upon their return to Romania. This came after France began considering a new immigration bill [JURIST report], which was later passed, that would make it easier to deport illegal immigrants and take away French citizenship from immigrants accused of a violent crime.

[JURIST] Lebanon should stop police from using anal examinations to determine suspects' sexual behavior, Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] urged [press release] Friday. The announcement came on the heels of a recent arrest of 36 men at a gay cinema in July, which saw all the suspects subjected to anal examinations by forensics doctors to determine if they were guilty of violating Article 534 [UNHCR backgrounder] of the Lebanese penal code, which criminalizes "sexual relations against nature" and is used to prosecute homosexuality. According to Rasha Moumneh, a Middle East and North Africa researcher at HRW:

Forensic anal examinations of men suspected of homosexual contact, conducted in detention, constitute degrading and humiliating treatment. These "tests of shame," as local activists call them, should stop immediately—the state has no business punishing and degrading its citizens for consensual sexual conduct.

Helem [advocacy website, in Arabic], Lebanon's most prominent LGBT rights group, reported in June that that even when the examinations produce no evidence, it does not vindicate the suspect [press release], as doctors report the suspect to the Attorney General regardless.

Discrimination against LGBT-citizens remains widespread in many parts of the world, with several countries criminalizing homosexual conduct. Earlier in the month, the UN voiced its concern over Liberia drafting a law criminalizing homosexuality [JURIST report]. In June Uganda [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] announced [JURIST report] that it will ban at least 38 non-governmental organizations that are accused of promoting gay rights and recruiting children to homosexuality. In February Amnesty International (AI) [advocacy website] had condemned [JURIST report] the shut down of an LGBT workshop by advocacy group Freedom and Roam, declaring it illegal and trying to arrest the leader. That same month Uganda had reintroduced [JURIST report] legislation that would make certain homosexual activities punishable by death. In contrast Malawi [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] President Joyce Banda in May announced a proposal [JURIST report] to decriminalize homosexual acts. In January UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon [official profile] said [JURIST report] in a statement to the African Union Summit that Africa must honor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [text] by ending discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

[JURIST] US President Barack Obama signed into law the Presidential Efficiency and Streamlining Act [legislation, PDF] Friday, which permits some senior government positions to be filled by the president without requiring Senate confirmation. The bill exempts 170 minor executive posts and 2,800 posts in the US Public Health Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Officer Corps [official websites] from requiring congressional confirmation. The bill also lessens the paperwork requirement for any nominee, streamlining the application forms. The bill had been approved in the Senate [JURIST report] by a 79-20 margin over a year ago and was only just passed in the House 261-116 in July.

Obama has been criticized for circumventing the traditional appointment process of submitting names for a House and Senate vote, although his defenders state that due to Senate and House pushback [JURIST op-ed], he has been left with no other options. In January Obama made a number of recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and was met with a constitutional challenge from business organizations [JURIST reports]. JURIST guest columnists have argued both sides of the issue, with James Kennedy, formerly of the NLRB arguing they were constitutional and Glenn Taubman of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation arguing that they were unconstitutional [JURIST comments].