18693 research outputs found
Sort by
The Role of Parental Rights in Abortion and Gender-Affirming-Care Decisions for Minors
No full textThe American legal system presumes that children’s interests are best protected by their parents and, secondarily, by the state’s parens patriae authority. Yet this structure falters when parental authority and state power are infused with political and ideological agendas. This Essay examines how these dynamics have distorted decision-making authority in two contexts—minors’ access to abortion and gender-affirming medical care—and allowed children’s welfare and autonomy to be sacrificed to partisan aims. The law is inconsistent on the role of parental rights—typically empowering parents to grant or withhold consent to a minor’s abortion but categorically stripping them of the power to consent to gender-affirming care for a minor. This inconsistency exposes “parental rights” as a selectively invoked political tool rather than a stable legal principle. Moreover, even a consistent approach to parental rights and decision-making for minors would likely fail to account sufficiently for the unique, lifelong consequences of denying access to abortion or gender-affirming care.
Part I situates these departures within the broader legal framework governing conflicts among parents, children, and the state, illustrating how minors’ interests rarely prevail absent independent constitutional protection or statutory intervention. Part II explores how abortion and gender-affirming care laws have been shaped less by coherent doctrine than by partisan ideology, resulting in idiosyncratic approaches to these particular decisions with the potential for lasting harmful consequences. Part III argues that while fidelity to conventional principles would represent an improvement, at least with respect to gender-affirming care decisions, those principles may simply be inadequate to safeguard children’s autonomy in life-altering decisions. The Essay concludes by urging reconsideration of how the legal system conceptualizes minors’ self-determination, pro-posing that more attention be paid to how decisions might affect children’s well-being than to who has the right to make them
Scaling Survivor Restoration through Data Science
No full textInternational Justice Mission (IJM) has identified and service over 50,000 survivors of human trafficking around the world. This data-informed approach uses Assessment of Survivor Outcomes (ASO) captured in the case-tracking system called Justice Data Solution to support Aftercare managers around the world in their care of survivors. The approach centers on critical, time-sensitive needs for survivors at the point of rescue, at the mid-point of their restoration journey, and at end of their time with our Aftercare program. During this program, survivors are engaged in community events, health services, and legal proceedings. Using the data from the ASO and the services/events, insights can be draw on the Aftercare program and where more value can be created for survivors to allow them to quickly be restored in their community. The analysis reveals the optimal time for survivors to be in the Aftercare program, the specific indicators in the initial ASO that highlight survivors requiring more support, and how we might optimize delivery of services and train partner organizations on the same. This analysis allows local IJM teams to scale efforts to restore survivors and empower local survivor leaders in the fight for justice
Courage in Context: An Ethic of Leadership in a Changing Church
No full textIt is my belief that the Church universal, and the United Methodist Church in particular, are both living within a very vulnerable period. Increasingly, reports suggest that there are more people who consider themselves non-religiously affiliated than there are members of religious groups. More specifically, the United Methodist Church has been experiencing a slow decline in membership since its creation. And perhaps worse than church members losing their religion, some younger clergy are leaving the ministry, while other younger church members are resisting a potential call to ministry in the first place. Meanwhile, the average age of United Methodist clergy is at an all-time high according to statistics from the Lewis Center of Church Leadership
Quantum Chemical Methods And Multiscale Modeling In Computer-Aided Drug Design
No full textComputer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) leverages a diverse toolkit of computational methods to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics. Among these, quantum chemical calculations provide unparalleled accuracy in understanding molecular interactions, albeit at a higher computational cost. This accuracy is crucial for identifying and quantifying fundamental interactions that dictate drug efficacy and selectivity, as exemplified by our investigation of ruthenium polypyridyl complexes. These metal-based compounds are model systems for studying covalent coordination bonds between ruthenium and its ligands and noncovalent interactions with DNA and protein targets. Local Mode Vibrational Theory emerges as a powerful lens within this framework, enabling the assessment of drug candidates by probing their intrinsic stability and interaction strengths with intended targets. This analysis utilizes local mode force constants and their correlations with other chemical properties to provide a detailed picture of molecular behavior. Deep learning models significantly enhance this framework by accelerating conformational sampling in protein dynamics simulations, enabling more efficient exploration of the vast conformational landscape.
Furthermore, introducing mechanical forces through mechanochemistry offers a unique avenue for influencing chemical reactions, potentially leading to more efficient and controlled synthesis of drug molecules. By integrating quantum chemical calculations, Local Mode Vibrational Theory, mechanochemical simulations, and data-driven approaches like machine learning, we aim to establish a comprehensive and multi-scale theoretical framework for drug discovery. This approach, encompassing everything from the quantum interactions of drug molecules to the dynamics of protein targets, paves the way for designing more effective and targeted therapies