My earliest days in healthcare were at abortion clinics. First as a counselor and then as a nurse, I cared […]

My earliest days in healthcare were at abortion clinics. First as a counselor and then as a nurse, I cared […]
There are few things more precious to Buffalonians than their football team. Not only do we love football, but we […]
In the face of the COVID-19 global pandemic crisis, policymakers were forced to answer hard-hitting ethical questions: how would resources […]
The timely anthology from Rutgers University Press, Abortion Care As Moral Work: Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies, edited […]
Our latest series at Nursing Clio, “Maternity at War,” takes perhaps obvious inspiration from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Coverage […]
During one of my last visits with abortion activist Patricia Maginnis in 2015, she handed me The Abortion Handbook for […]
Teachers are undoubtedly scrambling to address the Russian-Ukrainian war in their classrooms, and many probably feel underprepared to talk about […]
Nursing Clio editors and writers share their favorite books on disease, social anxiety, and resilience to help you get through […]
By Ginny Engholm
As everyone who reads this blog (or is on Facebook or Twitter) is by now well aware, the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case has dealt yet another powerful blow to women’s right to access contraceptives and manage their own health care, reproductive choices, and bodies. But a recent law—this one in Louisiana and regarding prenatal testing and counseling—poses yet another, but much less recognized, threat to women’s reproductive freedom. In May, Louisiana joined several other states (Massachusetts, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland) in passing a version of the Down Syndrome Information Act. This measure is part of the pro-information movement, which attempts to balance disparate groups and agendas within the Down syndrome community by bringing together both pro-choice and pro-life Down syndrome advocates in favor of providing women balanced, medically-accurate, and sensitive information about options when faced with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome. The act as intended requires doctors to give appropriate medical information about the diagnosis and the options. It also requires doctors to give referrals to genetic counselors and relevant support services when delivering a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome to a patient.
By Mary Elene Wood
A highway patrol officer straddles a woman who lies on her back by the side of a highway. His arm lifts high into the air, then, with what looks like substantial force, he strikes her in the face with his clenched fist. He does this over and over again. Early in July, news programs around the country quickly spread the story of a California Highway Patrol officer caught on videotape violently beating Marlene Pinnock, a 51-year-old homeless, presumably mentally ill, woman, along the side of a freeway in Los Angeles. The California Highway Patrol claimed that the officer was only trying to stop the woman from walking out into traffic, yet journalists across the U.S. decried, in one writer’s words, “the lack of training given to law enforcement officers to handle such people, even though officers all too often are society’s frontline mental health care providers.”