In December 2022 – a few days shy of the new year – the Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee (MMMRC) and Department of State Health Services released a joint Biennial Report on maternal mortality and morbidity rates in the state. They use term “maternal mortality” to describe the death of a childbearing person… Read more →
Tag: Texas
Peering Into Windows and Wombs: Reflections on SB 8
I thought about Dr. Curtis Boyd when I heard that the Supreme Court greenlit Texas’s unprecedented abortion restrictions. In the 1960s, Dr. Boyd lived in a small town in southern Texas. There, he provided illegal abortions to thousands of women who traveled across the United States to see him. Some of the women who found… Read more →
“Heroic Effort Beyond the Call of Duty”: Death Care Workers and the 1947 Texas City Disaster
On April 16, 2020, the New York Times published an op-ed about the challenges facing overwhelmed funeral directors around the country during the COVID-19 epidemic. In “hot spots” like New York, Detroit, and New Orleans, funeral home staff are working long hours to pick up and prepare the remains of those killed by the disease;… Read more →
Suffering a Suffragist: An 1880s Romance
When Nursing Clio put out the call for the Romancing Clio series, I searched Goodreads for historical romance novels in my field and was surprised to find eighty-two suffrage-themed romance novels, including one set in Texas, my specialty. Bobbi Smith’s The Lady and the Texan looked like an enjoyable romp about Amanda Taylor, a young… Read more →
Fear-mongering from Anita Bryant to Houston’s Proposition 1
This post was originally published on February 1, 2016, during Nursing Clio’s Undergraduate Week, when we brought you amazing work written by students at Macaulay Honors College, CUNY. Students wrote their essays as part a “Transgender Issues” course taught by Elizabeth Reis. A man approaches a public women’s restroom. He pushes his way inside, locking himself… Read more →
Friday Night Rights: Abortion in Small-Town Texas
Two recent events have made me return to my favorite TV show of all time, Friday Night Lights, a well-written and riveting drama about football and small-town life in West Texas. First, I recently saw Connie Britton, aka Tami Taylor outside a restaurant in Beachwood Canyon, Los Angeles. I got so excited I stalled my… Read more →