Spring Break
Guest lecturer discusses civil rights
Natasha Pande
Issue date: 2/6/09 Section: News
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"Each year we bring in a visiting scholar to visit some of our campuses so Patricia Williams is our 2009 visiting scholar, and I am coordinating her visit here at Drexel," Rose Corrigan, director of the Women Studies Program, said.
The lecture, held in the A.J Drexel Picture Gallery, included a discussion of the case of Ashley X and connects it with her lecture in terms of identity and basic rights.
"Ashley X, also known as the pillow baby, had a case of encephalopathy, which meant that her brain would not develop past the age of eight months. Her parents decided that she was in for a hard life, so they asked the doctors to do a series of operations to keep her the same size for the rest of her life," Williams said.
After listing a series of procedures that they carried out on Ashley X, she discussed the serious side effects from which the child might have suffered. Williams touched on the ethical limits of this procedure and said they would have violated the Nuremberg conventions.
"What startles me even more is that my law students think it is just fine because they read the parents description and assume that the parents' best interest and the child's wants as one and hence come with a conclusion to saying that it is okay," Williams said.
Williams also discussed how the doctors would think twice about doing the surgery.
"If Ashley X was a male, it would have been different because the field of medicine is largely dominated by males till today," Williams said.
Williams argued other cases such as a woman who had in-vitro fertilization and consequently gave birth to eight children with low birth weights, despite being told this was a dangerous option by her doctor. Williams added that this woman was a single mother who did not have a job and was living with her parents, with six other children aside from the eight that were recently born. She stated that though a family can suggest decisions, individuals alone have their own rights.
"Only 8 percent of women were in law school when I started out. When I joined Columbia I was the seventh woman there," Williams said.
She said the presence of women has evolved and developed since her own years of school.
Williams, a professor at Columbia School of Law, received her B.A. from Wellesley College and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. She is also a columnist for The Nation magazine titled "Diary of a Mad Law Professor."
The University is part of the Greater Philadelphia Women Consortium, which is a group of thirteen schools that collaborate in programming events related to gender and society.
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