Not Business As Usual: President Trump reinstates Mexico City Policy with a substantive addition
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On January 23, 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump reinstated Reagan’s so-called Mexico City Policy, also known as the “global gag rule.”  In the process, he also added text that makes a substantive change going farther than any U.S. national-level anti-abortion … Continue reading

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Bioethics Meets Families in The Netherlands this Summer
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EDITOR’S NOTE: IJFAB Blog is pleased to have Jamie L. Nelson, of IJFAB’s editorial team and Michigan State University, join us as a regular contributor. Her work has been linked from the blog previously in this entry on Bathrooms, Binaries, … Continue reading

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Repeal and Replace with….?
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EDIT: 19 minutes after this blog posted, the NY Times released this (screenshot taken 1 hr 14 minutes after blog posted).  Keep it in mind as you read. For the first time in quite some while, the same political party … Continue reading

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Theresa May’s Tory Agenda: All Children Left Behind
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What is happening to our world? Where has our sense of justice and justness gone? It seems like Brexit and The Donald are sounding the death knell of solidarity. They did not cause it; they are, rather, the dead canaries … Continue reading

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Midwifery as feminist endeavor: a particular blog entry and a blog recommendation
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Over at Feminist Midwife, the eponymous author writes about the nature of midwifery and why they see it as inherently feminist. In 2014, they also addressed the well-known (by bioethicists) issues with whether informed consent really takes place or whether, … Continue reading

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What does a Trump Presidency mean for the Affordable Care Act and American patients’ access to care?
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Since Trump’s electoral college victory became apparent early Wednesday morning and especially since Secretary Clinton’s concession speech, many bioethicists–and many more American residents–have been wondering what a Trump Presidency means for the Affordable Care Act, AKA “Obamacare.” While the ACA … Continue reading

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Of births and beds: thinking spatially about obstetric violence
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After giving birth last year in Colombia, I spoke with a (male) Colombian doctor friend of mine about my experience. We were talking about what in Spanish are called “partos verticales”, or “vertical” births  – births in which the mother … Continue reading

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Women have exclusively borne the side effects of hormonal contraceptives since their invention. Is it time for men?
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Medicine has been searching for a hormonal contraceptive for men for some time.  Recent news trumpeted the withdrawal of a number of men from clinical trials of male hormonal contraceptive injections due to the side effects.  While this editor recently … Continue reading

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Oral Contraceptives and Informed Choice
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As reported by PBS, a large scale study indicates that depression as a known side effect of oral contraceptives affects young women most of all. The research, published in JAMA Psychiatry, is the first ever to draw a connection between birth … Continue reading

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American Academy of Pediatrics makes major shift in recommendations on overweight and obesity
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The American Academy of Pediatrics announced last week that it was radically changing its guidelines for treatment of overweight and obesity in children and teens.  Specifically, it recommends DEemphasizing dieting and weight loss while avoiding any kind of public shaming … Continue reading

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Just Caring for Caregivers in the U.S. Workplace… For Some Workers
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On September 8, 2016, Deloitte LLP announced it would grant 16 weeks of paid leave to employees who provide family caregiving not only to new children, but to older children, parents, and spouses.  This is an enormous improvement in the U.S. … Continue reading

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End-of-life care, and counseling, varies with disease type
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US News and World Report recently published an article summarizing the results of a study of Veterans Affairs hospitals. The study found that patients with cancer or dementia received better end-of-life counseling, more palliative care, and better end-of-life planning on the … Continue reading

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