The Alabama Senate recently passed a bill that expands Safe Haven Laws, which permit the surrender of newborns at designated sites like fire stations and hospitals, to allow the use of “baby boxes” across the state. Supporters argue that these “baby boxes,” which look like mail slots equipped with cushions and alarms inside, offer safer… Read more →
Tag: Abortion
(Still Being) Sent Away: Post-Roe Anti-Abortion Maternity Homes
In the years before Roe v. Wade, and in a context of severe stigma of out-of-wedlock pregnancies, maternity homes in the United States housed residents who, upon giving birth, often relinquished their children for adoption. One consequence of the legalization of abortion in 1973 was that fewer American women and girls were “sent away” to… Read more →
The Mifepristone Case Hinges on Whether or not Pregnancy Should be Considered an “Illness” – What Can We Learn When We Look for Medical Precedent?
In November 2022, a group of physicians filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) seeking to revoke their approval of mifepristone, one of the medications in the abortion regimen that accounts for more than half of abortions in the U.S. The plaintiffs argue that the FDA was remiss in approving the drug… Read more →
Singing and Dancing Fetuses: Art, Life, and Abortion at “The Appointment”
My earliest days in healthcare were at abortion clinics. First as a counselor and then as a nurse, I cared for hundreds of patients seeking abortion care. At clinics, I learned how to perform ultrasounds with the screen angled away from my patient; I learned how to tell which patients would be relieved in the… Read more →
Looking Back to Look Forward: Learning from the Boston Women’s Health Center in a Post-Dobbs World
On Friday, June 24th, 2022, the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. A contested court case that faced controversy since it was decided in 1973, Roe v. Wade was the only constitutional protection for abortion rights in the United States. According to the Supreme Court ruling, the 14th Amendment protects a constitutional right… Read more →
Pennyroyal, Mifepristone, and the Long History of Medication Abortions
Around midnight on September 16, 1866, Dr. W. A. Wilcox of Saint Louis, Missouri, was called to the home of “Mrs. L,” a thirty-year-old married mother of two. Mr. L had been out for the evening and returned home at eleven to find his wife unconscious. When Dr. Wilcox arrived, Mrs. L was pale and… Read more →
Abortion in the American Imagination: Before Life and Choice, 1880-1940 by Karen Weingarten
Abortion in the American Imagination takes us back to the early twentieth century, when American writers first dared to broach the controversial subject of abortion. Putting authors like Wharton and Faulkner into conversation with the era’s films and non-fiction, Karen Weingarten uncovers a vigorous public debate decades before Roe v. Wade. Along the way, she… Read more →
Abortion Care As Moral Work: Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies, An Interview with Johanna Schoen
The timely anthology from Rutgers University Press, Abortion Care As Moral Work: Ethical Considerations of Maternal and Fetal Bodies, edited by Johanna Schoen, brings together the voices of abortion providers, counselors, clinic owners, neonatologists, bioethicists, and historians. The authors describe their motivations for offering or studying abortion care; discuss how anti-abortion regulations have made it… Read more →
No Real Choice: How Culture and Politics Matter For Reproductive Autonomy by Katrina Kimport
In the United States, the “right to choose” an abortion is the law of the land. But what if a woman continues her pregnancy because she didn’t really have a choice? What if state laws, federal policies, stigma, and a host of other obstacles push that choice out of her reach? Based on candid, in-depth… Read more →
“Help, I’m Living in My Research!”: Writing on Abortion in a Post-Roe World
In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, my friend and I were in the midst of writing our honors theses, she on smallpox vaccine hesitancy among the working class and I on female emancipation in Weimar Germany. We would jokingly say “Help, I’m living in my research!” on a regular basis.[1] We drew connections… Read more →