Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T06:04:23.454Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Revisiting the Ethics of Circumvention Tourism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 November 2022

Jeremy C. Snyder
Jeremy C. Snyder*
Affiliation:
SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, BURNABY, BC, CANADA.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the context of medical tourism, circumvention tourism consists of traveling abroad with the intention of participating in a health-related activity that is prohibited in one’s own country but not in the destination country. This practice raises a host of legal and ethical questions that focus on how the traveler should be treated once they have returned home. Joshua Shaw1 deftly shows that the question of whether circumvention tourists should be punished in their home countries is not something that can be answered in principle and without reference to the prima facie morality of the prohibition. This implicates formalist accounts of circumvention tourism developed by Pennings2 and Huxtable3 that argue against punishing travelers who access fertility treatments and medical assistance in dying abroad on the grounds that civic peace and stability require opportunities for individuals to travel internationally to access domestically prohibited medical services.

Keywords

Circumvention TourismAbortionMedical Assistance in DyingFairnessMedical Tourism
Type
Independent Articles: Commentary
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 50 , Issue 3: Transgender Health Equity and the Law , Fall 2022 , pp. 563 - 565
Copyright
© 2022 The Author(s)

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Shaw, J., “The Flaw in Formalist Accounts of Circumvention Tourism,” Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 50, no. 3 (2022): 551–562.Google ScholarPubMed
Pennings, G., “Reproductive Tourism as Moral Pluralism in Motion,” Journal of Medical Ethics 28, no. 6 (2002): 337–41, at https://doi.org/10.1136/jme.28.6.337.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Huxtable, R., “The Suicide Tourist Trap: Compromise Across Boundaries,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 6, no. 3 (2009): 327–36, at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11673-009-9170-5.Google Scholar
Cohen, I., Patients with Passports: Medical Tourism, Law, and Ethics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).Google Scholar
Ward, P., “‘Medical Tourists’ Are Travelling the World in Search of the Elixir of Life,” The Guardian, May 5, 2022, available at <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/05/medical-tourists-are-travelling-the-world-in-search-of-the-elixir-of-life> (last visited August 4, 2022).+(last+visited+August+4,+2022).>Google Scholar
Jackson, C., Snyder, J., Crooks, V. A., and Lavergne, M. R., “‘I Didn’t Have to Prove to Anybody That I Was a Good Candidate’: A Case Study Framing International Bariatric Tourism by Canadians as Circumvention Tourism,” BMC Health Services Research 18, no. 1 (2018): 573, at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-018-3385-2.Google ScholarPubMed
Zernike, K., Smith, M. H., and Ploeg, L. Vander, “Oklahoma Legislature Passes Bill Banning Almost All Abortions,” The New York Times, May 19, 2022, available at <https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/19/us/oklahoma-ban-abortions.html> (last visited August 4, 2022).+(last+visited+August+4,+2022).>Google Scholar