Substance Use Disorder By Pregnant Persons Should be Treated as a Complex Medical Condition, Not Punished as a Moral Failing
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Elizabeth Ferries-Rowe (MD; MS Medical Ethics) is Chief of Service in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Eskenazi Health and has worked to expand Eskenazi’s Centering Pregnancy program. It is hardly breaking news that the United States is in … Continue reading

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‘Sick Pregnant Women’ – How to Terrify Research Funders, and Why This Needs to Change
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“Sick pregnant women”: the three little words that can make potential investors in medical research run for the hills. On Thursday, an article in the Washington Post described the efforts over two years of a team of researchers – including … Continue reading

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Disparities in Maternal Mortality: Some American women have a higher risk of the highest cost of being pregnant
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Maternal mortality is a basic public health measure. It is also one of the many health outcomes on which the United States ranks much lower than other comparably developed nations. As per Ann Simmons’ superb article on the subject of … Continue reading

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The Zika Virus Vaccine Research Agenda and Pregnant Women
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EDITOR’S NOTE: This guest post by the Ethics Working Group on ZIKV Research & Pregnancy is cross-posted with the Canadian Bioethics blog Impact Ethics. The Ethics Working Group on ZIKV Research & Pregnancy provides recommendations to ensure that pregnant women are … Continue reading

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Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Carleigh Krubiner, and Ruth Faden pen a passionate call to look broadly at pregnant women’s health, through the lens of the Zika virus outbreak
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Over at the Baltimore Sun, Anne Drapkin Lyerly, Carleigh Krubiner, and Ruth Faden have penned an excellent op-ed on the need for further research on pregnant women.  They write: Pregnant women are at the crux of Zika’s most devastating consequences. … Continue reading

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“The Opioid Epidemic’s Toll on Pregnant Women and their Babies”

It’s a Catch-22 all the way. You can’t get off of it, or then the baby will die. But, if you stay on it, the baby could go through withdrawal. It’s just Certain studies have additionally demonstrated that daylight is … Continue reading

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NYPD Officer Caught on Video Allegedly Throwing Pregnant Woman to the Ground

IJFAB Book Review Editor, Katy Fulfer (Hood College) sends this my way: Recently a video surfaced which shows an NYPD officer shoving a pregnant woman to the ground when she tries to intervene in her son’s arrest (witnesses report excessive … Continue reading

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Controlling Pregnant Women–Again

The controllers of pregnant women are at it again. In this case, however, it is not clear whether the controllers are seeking to protect the fetus, the woman, or both. They may even be seeking to protect the hospital against … Continue reading

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Constraints on Medical Autonomy for Pregnant Women

I have written on diminished autonomy for pregnant women before for IJFAB blog in my piece,  Not All Objectification Is Sexual: The Return of the Fetal Container.   That piece, like Minkoff and Lyerly’s excellent 2010 piece in Hastings Center Report, dealt broadly with the choices which pregnant women are or are not constrained from making during their pregnancy, allegedly by state-imposed duties to their fetuses.  There is another aspect of constrained medical autonomy for pregnant women, however, and it has to do with the priorities of some physicians (and patients) with respect to how risk and other concerns are viewed.

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Pregnant Women

Readers may be interested to learn that the initiative to include pregnant women in biomedical research is gaining steam.  To follow this progress, please check the following website:  http://secondwaveinitiative.org/ And–just as the movement to lift severe restrictions on abortion is … Continue reading

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US Woman Denied Dental Care Because She is Pregnant

In this New York Times story, Catherine Saint Louise tells of a 34 year old women, in her second trimester, denied urgent dental care because she did not have a note from her doctor. Weeks later when she was finally seen, two … Continue reading

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Feminist Bioethics Scholar Spotlight: Desiree Valentine

For our first in our new Feminist Bioethics Scholar Spotlight Series we are thrilled to feature Desiree Valentine, PhD, who is currently an Assistant Professor in the philosophy department at Marquette University. Read on to learn more about Desiree, her … Continue reading

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