In recent years, there has been great debate about access to contraception, particularly the hormonal birth control pill. In 1957, […]
Pregnancy Is Bad for Women’s Health
By Ginny Engholm
Our sentimentalizing of pregnancy, combined with our faith in modern medicine, have contributed to a backlash against birth control, encouraging us to see pregnancy as low risk and to lose sight of its dangers and perils. Contraceptives — and legal access to them — continue to be a source of controversy, political wrangling, and ideological posturing because the political and cultural discussion surrounding them focuses on issues of personal choice and sexual mores rather than questions of health. The recent Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby reflects this view of birth control as a matter of religious conviction and personal choice rather than reproductive health. If pregnancy is so natural, so low risk for women, then preventing pregnancy is not a medical issue, but rather a personal decision. Even efforts to argue that women use birth control for other health reasons, such as treating PMS or endometriosis, miss the point that limiting, preventing, and spacing pregnancies are medical reasons to use birth control. The backlash against contraceptives stems, in part, from our current misguided view of pregnancy as a low risk medical event for women. The problem with this view is that pregnancy is dangerous, and medical science has a long history of revealing its risks and perils for women.
Save Our Sisterhood: Reflecting on Single-Sex Education Ten Years Later
By Sarah Handley-Cousins
Ten years ago, on October 2, 2004, Wells College, a tiny, women’s liberal arts college in rural New York State, announced its decision to become coed. Frustrated and angry, many Wells Women — myself included — protested by holding a sit-in at the main academic building in hopes of compelling the college board of trustees to reverse its decision. We refused to leave. We slept in our classrooms; we chanted and sang; we lined up from one end of the building to the other, arm-in-arm, our mouths gagged with black fabric to symbolize how we had been silenced by the Wells administration.
Sunday Morning Medicine
By Jacqueline Antonovich
-£7.5 trillion for slavery.
-Bette Davis on sexism.
-Vaccinated mosquitos?
-A history of body snatching.
-“What Women Want”: a history.
-How science still gets race wrong.
Adventures in the Archives: The Dangers of Legal Abortion
This summer I worked with Professor Carolyn Herbst Lewis and three other students on a research project in which we […]