For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the international news, Brazil — and its Olympic city of Rio de […]
“Why does Congress wish to have mothers and babies die?”
It takes a rare political personality to gain regular air-time on today’s political pundit shows. Former Ohio State Senator Nina […]
Lessons from the Funky Diabetic: Phife Dawg as Reluctant Health Rap Pioneer
Often being a hip-hop fan means learning how to deal with the sudden loss of beloved artists. It always feels […]
Coat Hangers and Knitting Needles: A Brief History of Self-Induced Abortion
Knitting needles. Arsenic. Deliberately falling. These are just some of the methods that women used to self-induce abortion in the […]
Go Breast or Go Home: Natural Motherhood and Breastfeeding’s Return
As I stumble over piles of unpacked boxes in the dimly lit interior of our new home in Philadelphia, I […]
“She Did It to Herself”: Women’s Health on Television and Film
[Spoiler alert for PBS’s Mercy Street] Like just about every other Civil War historian out there, I’ve been following PBS’s […]
Bill Maher, Charlie Sheen, and Modern Day Snake Oil
Bill Maher has done the impossible: he’s fallen farther in my esteem. There was a time (high school) when I […]
Clio Reads: A Review of It Hurts Down There: The Bodily Imaginaries Of Female Genital Pain
“Female genital pain” is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of often miserable, frequently perplexing conditions that render women’s […]
Call the Medical Missionary: Religion and Health Care in Twentieth-Century Britain
If you have ever seen the popular BBC/PBS television program Call the Midwife1 then you know that the central setting, […]
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.
