In 1929, a young woman entered Koch Hospital in St. Louis, Missouri. Her symptoms may have included coughing, difficulty breathing, […]
Can every baby be a Gerber Baby? A century of American baby contests and eugenics
In 2018, Gerber made headlines for selecting baby Lucas as the winner of its Spokesbaby Contest, making Lucas the first […]
‘Phantom Catholic Threats’ and Haunted Legal Futures: Reading the Deal Over Ireland’s National Maternity Hospital
In May 2022, Irish social and mainstream media were alive with heated discussion of the terms of proposed agreements between […]
Desertion, Martial Manhood, and Mental Illness: The Case of Sgt. Bergdahl
By Sarah Handley Cousins
Several months ago, when I submitted my first blog post for Nursing Clio, I included a short section about Civil War veterans who had lost their right to a pension because they had deserted the army during the war. But after discussing it with our editors, I decided to remove the section – after all, we thought, desertion isn’t really a current issue, right? I was more than a little surprised when, a few months later, the topic of military desertion became headline news.
Excommunicating Feminism in the Mormon Church
On June 8, 2014, Kate Kelly received a letter from her bishop telling her that she could be excommunicated from […]
Take Women’s Health Care Out of Employers’ Hands: The Hobby Lobby Problem and the Single-Payer Solution
By Austin McCoy
I was not shocked to learn that the SCOTUS sided in favor of a for-profit corporation over real human beings in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. considering its recent history. The Roberts court strengthened the concept of corporate personhood in the Citizen’s United v. Federal Election Commission case in 2010, ruling that businesses were entitled to the same right of political speech—spending—as any individual citizen. On Monday, five male Supreme Court justices ruled that “closely-held companies” were patriarchal entities who shared religious identities. The 5-4 decision allows particular employers the right to opt out of the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive coverage requirement, ultimately leaving women without the ability to buy coverage that includes certain forms of preventive care.
The Slippery Slopes of Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby
by Andrea Milne
Everybody and their sister is blogging about the Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby ruling, so I’ll spare you all the gory details, if for no other reason than to preserve my sanity. Here, in my (admittedly biased) opinion, are the most important things you need to know:
Big Berkshire Conference 2014 Report
By Heather Munro Prescott
Last month, I attended the 16th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women (aka the Big Berks) at the University of Toronto. For those unfamiliar with this event, it is a triennial research conference held by the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians (aka the Little Berks). According to the Little Berks website, the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians “formed in 1930 in response to women academics’ sense of professional isolation.” Women historians were allowed to join the American Historical Association (the professional organization for historians in the U.S.), but “were never invited to the ‘smokers,’ the parties, the dinners and the informal gatherings where the leading men of the profession introduced their graduate students to their colleagues and generally shepherded them into history jobs in colleges and universities.”
Our Wellness, Our Selves
By Carolyn Herbst Lewis
Recently, I taught my first upper-level course on the history of health and medicine in the United States. The course readings covered a broad base, both chronologically and thematically. The discussions that emerged from two of the assigned texts, however, really stand out in my memory. In fact, in retrospect, I can see that they shaped the emergence of an unexpected theme in the course: a critique of both the concept and rhetoric of wellness that is so prevalent in contemporary American workplaces, including many college campuses.
Sex as Construct, Rape as Reality, and Consent as Healing
By Jenna Tucker
I grew up in a culture obsessed with sexual ethics. As part of a group of Christian teenagers in the Midwest in the 1990’s, one thing we all knew, for certain, was that our religious and moral identities were directly linked to our relationships to sex. It was the culture that birthed virginity pledges and organized for abstinence-only sex education. I remember going to one of those Protestant mega-gatherings with youth groups from all over the country. The speaker gave us two messages that I carry with me to this day. The first was that we had to stop relying on our parents’ beliefs and develop our own relationship to God. The second was that we should not have sex and that anything that gave us sexual pleasure was sex. He was trying to head off our questions. Sex was bad, but what was sex? Could we have sex that didn’t risk pregnancy? Could we masturbate? What if we were engaged?
