Herstory

Sometimes, the effects of sexism and implicit gender bias are difficult to show. However, in the case of women's health care, there's very little ambiguity. Women should be aware of what these problems look like, so that they can identify doctors who similarly understand them and can fairly diagnose and treat them.

In reality, however, they’re often the opposite: disseminating misinformation and, in the process, robbing women of their autonomy. And the best worst part of the situation is the fact that plenty of crisis pregnancy centers, in spite of their duplicity, are actually licensed community clinics, which gives them an added air of respectability.

So, in the interest of trying to understand what actually goes on in these inexplicably legal establishments, I decided to go undercover as a preggers patsy.

Breast "Below Normal Functionation": “Illustrating an application of high frequency current to the breast of a nursing mother…” Why, yes, Dr. Monell, I believe I would like to subscribe to your kinky newsletter! This ima

We see hypocrisy around on reproductive health care every day, but this The Daily Show segment with Ilyse Hogue reveals a new twist on a double standard that you've probably never heard of before.

In the ’90s, a gynecologist named Gao Yaojie exposed an AIDS epidemic in rural China and the ensuing government cover-up. Forced to leave, she’s now 85 and living alone in New York.

After three days of vomiting, heavy bleeding and agonizing pain, she stumbled into a maternity hospital. Doctors rushed her into surgery where they stopped the bleeding, and repaired her perforated uterus, botched in the first abortion attempt...

Abortion is illegal in Haiti but women and girls are losing their uteruses and their lives as they turn to clandestine, increasingly deadly ways to terminate their pregnancies. These unsafe abortions are leading to a public health crisis in a region with one of the world’s highest rates of unintended pregnancies, experts say.

The women's health movement of the 1960s and 1970s transformed the doctor-patient relationship and yielded the novel concept that women can take control of their own health, says Laurie Edwards in this excerpt from "In the Kingdom of the Sick."...

For women, this change started with the radical notion that they had a right to know about their own bodies, had a right to control their own health care and belonged in medical schools where they could fully participate in the very health care decisions that have such significance in their lives. The grassroots women's health activism that emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s was fostered by an equally diverse group of advocates, among them middle-class white women, middle- and working-class African Americans, lesbians and heterosexuals.

In May of this year, I talked to Deon Haywood, Executive Director of Women With A Vision in New Orleans about her approach to organizing. WWAV scored a significant grassroots legal and political victory in the last year with the NO Justice campaign, which removed hundreds of cis and trans women from Louisiana’s registered felony sexual offender rolls. Deon is a longtime activist in the city of New Orleans, with a history of organizing low-income women of color around reproductive justice, harm reduction, and human rights.

...We are not all in the same boat. And if we keep playing like we are, we’re not really going to make the kind of change we’d like to see. Because the women I work with are never going to be able to jump into the sex workers’ rights movement. They don’t feel like that movement is for them.

How can you tell women that if they just put down the pound cake and took up your prayer and exercise regime they would look like that, when you don't even look like that? I am...disappoint. And none of this is to say her photo here isn't gorgeous. The only one saying that is her, when she thanks her fans for being "understanding and supportive" of her stomach skin. She is a damn knockout, as she is. I'm sorry she doesn't see it that way.