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 […]
Losing ‘sorrow in stupefaction’: American Women’s Opiate Dependency before 1900
In 1791 Elizabeth Blake tried to help her sister, New Yorker Catalina Hale, to end her years-long dependency on laudanum, […]
Prenatal Testing and Counseling: The New Front of the Abortion Wars?
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.
On the Verge of a Nervous Breakthrough?: Interpreting Mental Illness
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.”
If You’re Not My Kid, Please Don’t Call Me “Mom”
By Lara Freidenfelds
The dentist peered in my child’s mouth, then turned to me. “Hey, Mom, you did a good job, no cavities!” I brought my kids for a check-up recently, and our wonderful pediatric dentist warmly complemented me. But why on earth did he call me that? And why did it irk me?
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.
Paranoia on the Border: Immigration and Public Health
Like others, I find the growing humanitarian crisis in Texas deeply troubling. The number of minors making this dangerous journey […]
Marvel’s Fleeting Feminism
by Tony Lewis
The recent announcement of a new creative team for the comic book series Wonder Woman has stirred up some controversy, stemming mainly from an interview in which the artist, David Finch, proved wary of the term “feminist.” His hesitance clearly alarmed people who value the character’s status as an icon of feminism, especially as it came on the heels of Stevie St. John’s article in the Summer 2014 issue of Bitch Magazine that explained how the series’ current creators have undermined the feminist aspects of Wonder Woman’s mythology. What has received less attention is the fact that DC Comics has handed its 75-year-old franchise to Finch’s wife, Meredith, a writer who has very little experience working in comics. But, as we shall see, this situation has a historical precedent.
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 […]
