Tag: women’s health
Inside a Ukrainian baby factory – POLITICO
KYIV, Ukraine — When Tanya, a 45-year-old woman living in Los Angeles, paid $10,000 and sent two embryos to a surrogacy firm in Ukraine hoping to build a family six years ago, she says she never expected the uncertainty and heartbreak the process would bring.
Tanya desperately wanted a child but found out she would be unable to conceive herself. After discovering how expensive surrogacy in the U.S. can be, she and her husband began pursuing options abroad — and
How Spain went woke — and why that may not last – POLITICO
CARLA ANTONELLI REMEMBERS when being gay in Spain could get you sent to a work camp.
Under Francisco Franco’s dictatorship, the LGBTQ+ community was harshly persecuted by authorities and forced to live in the shadows, recalled Antonelli, a 63-year old actress, activist, politician and transgender woman. Even after the dictator’s death in 1975, she would “routinely be arrested and beaten by police.”
“They’d smash my face against the wall until I lay in a puddle of my own blood, and
Think Twice Before Testing Your Hormones at Home
Across the internet, a biological scapegoat has emerged for almost any mysterious medical symptom affecting women. Struggling with chronic fatigue, hair loss, brain fog, or dwindling sex drive? When no obvious explanation is at hand, an out-of-whack endocrine system must be to blame. Women have too much cortisol, vloggers and influencers say; or not enough thyroxine, or the wrong ratio of progesterone to estradiol. Social media is brimming with advice from self-proclaimed hormone “gurus” and health coaches; the tag #hormoneimbalance
A Trailblazer of Trauma Studies Asks What Victims Really Want
When the Harvard psychiatry professor Judith Herman began her medical training, in the nineteen-sixties, sexual and domestic abuse was still considered a private scourge that victims brought on themselves—if, that is, it was considered at all. Prominent journals were publishing studies like “The Wifebeater’s Wife” (Archives of General Psychiatry, 1964), which attributed marital violence to the “masochistic needs” of battered women. A major textbook put the prevalence of incest at one in a million, which was an underestimate
After Roe, abortion’s underground railroad gains steam – POLITICO
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RIGA — If you want to get an abortion in Poland, Kinga Jelinska is happy to help.
Legally terminating your pregnancy is almost impossible in the Eastern European country. Abortion is only allowed in the case of rape or incest, or when it threatens the life of the woman.
That’s where Jelinska comes in. She’s the co-founder and executive director of Women Help Women, an Amsterdam-based nonprofit that helps provide women with the
20 Bold Takes on the Roe Draft Opinion
This is an edition of Up for Debate, a newsletter by Conor Friedersdorf. On Wednesdays, he rounds up timely conversations and solicits reader responses to one thought-provoking question. Every Monday, he publishes some thoughtful replies. Sign up for the newsletter here.
Question of the Week
What are your views on abortion?
Email your thoughts to [email protected]. I’ll publish a selection of correspondence in Monday’s newsletter.
Conversations of Note
A few years ago, Caitlin Flanagan wrote about what she called
The Judge Who Told the Truth About the Mississippi Abortion Ban
Of all the arguments that animate the anti-abortion cause, two stand out as particularly far-fetched: that banning abortion protects women’s health and shields African Americans from genocide. Yet for years, these arguments have driven debates over state laws, served as justifications for court decisions upholding those laws, and even appeared on billboards warning women in predominantly Black communities not to kill their babies. Three years ago, Mississippi lawmakers prohibited almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy to save