Are adolescents mature enough to make their own decisions when it comes to their medical care? If so, should those decisions be kept confidential from the adolescent’s parents or guardians? When it comes to answering this question, the lines are blurred. Thus far, public policy in the United States says both yes and no, with… Read more →
Tag: reproductive rights
The Politics of Reproductive Rights Legislation in the “Modern” South
On May 15, 2019 Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed legislation that will make the state’s abortion laws the most restrictive in the United States. Furthermore, it will establish extremely stringent penalties for violating these laws. The Human Life Protection Act, as it is formally named, would ban abortion in nearly every instance, including rape and… Read more →
The Eugenicists on Abortion
Clarence Thomas recently issued a twenty-page opinion on the Supreme Court decision Box v. Planned Parenthood that went viral because he drew on Margaret Sanger, founder of the first birth control clinic in the U.S., and her connection to eugenics in order to argue that abortion is and historically has been a tool to control… Read more →
A Tale of Two Midwives across Four Centuries
What happens when the person who delivers most of the babies in her community is arrested? This is a tale of two midwives, separated by nearly four centuries of history, and yet remarkably alike. Six months ago, certified professional midwife Elizabeth Catlin was arrested on the grounds that she was practicing midwifery without a license…. Read more →
This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long after birth deserved to be treated in the womb ‘with extraordinary pharmacological, surgical and other interventions.’” He intimated that parents who did not use extraordinary measures were not caring for their children, saying that “Taking… Read more →
Murder and Motherhood in 1950s Ireland: The Trial of Abortionist Mamie Cadden
On the evening of April 17, 1956, thirty-three-year-old Helen O. visited nurse Mamie Cadden at 17 Hume Street, Dublin, for what she likely thought would be a routine, if illegal, abortion.1 Helen O.’s death after the attempted abortion provoked a national controversy that complicated dominant constructions of motherhood and domesticity in mid-twentieth-century Ireland. In the… Read more →
At Your Service: The Role of the Historian in Contemporary Reproductive Rights Debates
A new wave of frenetic reproductive puritanism appears to be sweeping the globe. From Trump’s global gag, which has widely been heralded as a “devastating blow for women’s rights,” to the rollback of access to legal abortion in countries such as Chile, reproductive politics are defining administrative agendas. But in lamenting the state of current… Read more →
A Referendum – and A Path Toward Reproductive Justice for Ireland?
Citizens of the Republic of Ireland will vote on a referendum on May 25, 2018 to potentially overturn the state’s notoriously harsh anti-abortion laws.1 This moment is being characterized as a defining one, a watershed moment for a state that Amnesty International and the United Nations have chastised for its misogynistic, anti-feminist policies. Indeed, for… Read more →
My Story of 20 Weeks
20 weeks. That is the magic number according to the GOP. House Republicans last week passed a bill, which they named the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, banning abortions after 20 weeks except in cases of rape or incest, or when necessary to save the life of the mother. While not expected to pass the… Read more →
A Quiet Inquisition
When Delma Rosa Gómez was 27 years old, she was diagnosed with advanced stages of metastatic cancer. When she told her physician she was pregnant, they replied that they couldn’t start chemotherapy. “They said any treatment could provoke an abortion. And they couldn’t give me an abortion because it was penalized by law. They said… Read more →