A group of people gathering, holding slogans for public health reform, in Boston

Get Out of Our Exam Rooms: A Brief History of the Uneasy Relationship between Medicine and Politics

So far, 2012 has seen state legislators proposing an unprecedented number of bills aimed at regulating women’s access to various reproductive health services, including mammograms, annual pap smears to detect cervical cancer, contraceptives, and abortion, as well as women’s ability to pay for these services through private and public insurance providers. The underlying assumption in all of this health legislation is that women are unable to make informed, responsible decisions about their bodies unless they are mandated to do so by the state. A parallel implication is that even the physicians treating these women are incapable of making medically appropriate decisions without state interference. Medical professionals finally began fighting back on this political trespassing on their terrain just this week.

Women dressing styles, vintage magazine picture, Six women in vintage colorful dresses and hats

Sunday Morning Medicine

Isn’t it Ironic? – Singer Alanis Morissette weighs in on the attachment parenting debate.
Do pregnant black women receive worse medical treatment than white women?
The Crunk Feminist Collective examines black women, nudity, and the politics of touch.
Wisconsin licences its first midwife of color.
Oh those wacky 1920s…
Want to attract a man? Acting sleepy and stupid is apparently a good way to go.

Protest against Republicans, Women raising slogans, Trust Women, abortion rights

Wonder Woman Wields a Speculum

Like many graduate students, I obsess about my particular academic interests and have a hard time letting them go at the end of the day. I happen to study the history of women and medicine in the United States, so I see my specialization everywhere, often to the dismay of my friends and family. I interrupt movies to point out inaccuracies and anachronisms, and I offer unsolicited historical commentary about the depictions of women on Mad Men. I lecture people about the stupidity of 1950s nostalgia, and I get angry about advertisements for Dr. Pepper. I am, in short, lots of fun at parties.