Labor Without Respite: Tennis, pregnancy, and other ‘unexpected feats’

GUEST CONTRIBUTORS Agomoni Ganguli-Mitra (Dr. sc. med., Research Associate, Liminal Spaces Project; Teaching Fellow, School of Law; Executive committee member, Mason Institute; University of Edinburgh Law School, UK) Verina Wild (Dr. med., Philosophy Department, Ludwig-Maximilians- University Munich, Germany)  Social media … Continue reading

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The Handmaid’s Tale: a roundup of media sources and related prior IJFAB Blog entries
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Editor’s Note: See “Body Ecology and Commodification in The Handmaid’s Tale” by Rebecca Bratten Weiss, and more to come. Over the next few weeks, IJFAB Blog will have several original blog entries on The Handmaid’s Tale, both the book and … Continue reading

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Like and unlike: Late abortion in the case of wanted pregnancies, and miscarriage
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A recent article by Natalia Megas in The Guardian profiles three women who chose late abortions and who had very much wanted to be pregnant.  It is a moving exploration of the seriousness of abortion as a moral issue, and an important set … Continue reading

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TENTH ANNIVERSARY ISSUE OF IJFAB is an embarassment of riches
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Our parent journal, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, is celebrating its 10th anniversary.  Lo those many years ago in Spring of 2008, our first issue, Doing Feminist Bioethics, was published. In the second issue, Lyerly, Little, and Faden’s article on … Continue reading

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Ebola Stigma and Lack of Access to Care in Liberia Cost the Life of an Ebola Fighter After Complications of Childbirth
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Salome Karwah was recognized by Time magazine as an Ebola fighter during the 2015 Ebola outbreak. She died February 21 from complications of childbirth by C-section. Days after the procedure, she collapsed from a seizure and began foaming at the … Continue reading

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Power, othering, and slurs in the clinic: undermining the capacity for care
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Over at the Feminist Midwife, we find a valuable post on WHY something that may seem prima facie wrong is, in fact, wrong.  In an entry called “Patients Are Not Bitches, and Thoughts Medical Othering,” Feminist Midwife considers a case … Continue reading

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International Efforts to Mitigate the effects of Trump’s Expanded Mexico City Policy
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Just a quick update on Trump’s expanded Mexico City Policy AKA the “global gag rule”, which we previously addressed.  The Netherlands are leading an effort to implement a fund which would replace funding stripped from organizations under the expanded U.S. … Continue reading

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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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A Shift in the Anti-Abortion Movement: Are feminist woman-centered values gaining ground?
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In April, the IJFAB Blog editor provided some information on pro-life feminism in an entry called “Pro-Life Feminism: A Catholic feminist philosopher considers the consequences of punishing women for seeking abortions” mentioning both Sidney Callahan’s famous essay on the subject and … 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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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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