From the category archives:

pregnancy

Indianapolis Woman Alleges Brutal Police Beating That Caused Miscarriage

by Cara August 31, 2010

Trigger Warning for descriptions of police violence and forcible miscarriage, as well as discussions of racism and victim-blaming. LaDonna Dixon claims that last June, an Indianapolis police officer beat her severely after she argued with him — even though she was in handcuffs, and even though she says that she told him she was pregnant [...]

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UK Health Group Wants to Test All Pregnant Women for Smoking

by Cara June 24, 2010

Just last week, I was defending the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) in the UK for its recommendations regarding age-appropriate sex education. This week, I find myself needing to ask what in the hell they’re thinking. NICE has recommended that all pregnant women should be given carbon monoxide tests in order to determine whether [...]

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New Report Examines Reproductive Health of Urban Native American Women

by Cara May 12, 2010

A new report has been released on the reproductive health of American Indian and Alaska Native women (referred to in the report as AI/AN women, a term I will thus also use here). The full report, Reproductive Health of Urban American Indian and Alaska Native Women, can be found here (pdf) and the executive summary [...]

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Reproductive Coercion Extremely Common Among Victims of Other Forms of Intimate Partner Violence

by Cara April 9, 2010

Trigger Warning for this post and the links within. A new study has been released by the Guttmacher Institute on the subject of reproductive coercion. While a larger study on the same topic was released back in January, this one focuses specifically on cis women who are the victims of other forms of intimate partner [...]

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Anti-Choicers Target Women of Color: How Should Pro-Choicers Respond?

by Cara February 23, 2010

Earlier this month, Renee wrote a post about an Atlanta billboard targeting black women’s reproductive rights by pointing to the higher rates of abortion among black women, and claiming that abortion clinics are attempting to abort black children out of existence. It’s a great post, touching on many things that will come up here, and [...]

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Reproductive Coercion is Sexual Violence

by Cara January 29, 2010

There is a new study which discusses a horribly prevalent but rarely discussed form of intimate partner violence: reproductive coercion. From a press release by The Family Violence Prevention Fund: “Pregnancy Coercion, Intimate Partner Violence and Unintended Pregnancy” is the first quantitative examination of the relationship between intimate partner violence, reproductive coercion and unintended pregnancy. It [...]

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The Today Show Uses Fear-Mongering to Demonize Midwives and Home Births

by Cara September 30, 2009

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy The embedded video above is a fairly recent segment from The Today Show on the rise in midwife-assisted home births. It’s called “The Perils of Midwifery,” and it’s a segment which, it should be noted, uses almost entirely men as reporters and experts. And [...]

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Pretending That Individual Choices Will Help Correct Structural Problems

by Cara September 11, 2009

The other day, I received a press release titled “It’s Riskier to Have a Baby in the U.S. Than in Cuba or the Czech Republic.” This, actually, I knew. The U.S. has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the industrialized world — and one of the worst maternal mortality rates as well. And [...]

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Crisis Pregnancy Centers Regularly Engage in Coercive Adoption Practices

by Cara August 31, 2009

Almost two years ago, I wrote about a distressing and eye-opening book called The Girls Who Went Away, which is about the women who surrendered their children for adoption under coercion in the years before legal abortion and when single or unwed parenting was ostracized. Most of the women who surrendered their children were threatened, [...]

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Women Who Would Have Medicaid-Funded Abortions Instead Often Give Birth

by Cara July 14, 2009

A new study just released by the Guttmacher Institute (pdf; news release here) determined that “approximately one-fourth of women who would have Medicaid-funded abortions instead give birth when this funding is unavailable.” Whatever the actual number of women who are essentially forced to give birth due to a lack of funding for abortion is, as [...]

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