pregnancy

The Relevance of Common Law to Today's Abortion Debate: How Did the Law Work in Practice?

by Katherine Bergevin, Stephanie Insley Hershinow and Manushag N. Powell

Samuel Alito's ruling in Dobbs claimed to ground itself in the English common law's treatment of pregnancy. But he focused on a small number of published treatises while ignoring the record of how the law actually treated pregnant women and fetuses. 

We Must Not Revive Slavery-Era Jurisprudence to Deal with the Complexities of Reproductive Technology

by Tamika Y. Nunley

The use of antebellum laws about the ownership of human property to resolve a dispute between a divorcing couple over frozen embryos shows the necessity of fully addressing women's reproductive freedom under the law rather than seeking simple abstractions of property. 

History of Reproductive Law Shows Women in Power aren't the Solution

by Lara Friedenfelds

The end of Roe v. Wade makes difficult pregnancies and miscarriages potentially legaly perilous for women. The history of how the law determines fault in a lost pregnancy shows that women are as capable as men of participating in a regime that punishes other women for the ends of their pregnancies. 

Who Will Now Bear Costs of Crisis Pregnancies?

by Daniel K. Williams

"Perhaps neither Roe nor Dobbs represents a fully Christian way to distribute the human costs associated with crisis pregnancies.  And therein lies a dilemma for Christians who want to preserve human life and are unhappy with the results of Roe as well as the likely results of Dobbs."

When the Constitution Was Written, Abortion was a Choice Left to Women

by Lara Friedenfelds

"Before the 19th century, civil society regarded abortion as a private medical matter for married women, and a problem in need of occasional discipline when it was a sign of extramarital sex."

Early Pregnancy Testing Required Sacrificing Rabbits

Women have always had an interest in detecting pregancy as soon as possible; the development of tests for pregnancy hormones involved fugitives from the Nazis and unfortunate rodents who were autopsied in early tests. 

Eugenics is trending. That’s a problem.

by Caitlin Fendley

Any effort to slow population growth must center on reproductive justice.

The surprising history of “pregnancy portraits”

For centuries British artists edited baby bumps out of their work. Why?

The History Briefing on Pregnancy Discrimination: What Historians Had to Say About This Week’s News

by Isabella DelPino

How historians discussed pregnancy discrimination this week. 

It’s time to stop viewing pregnant women as threats to their babies

by Kathleen Crowther

How Georgia is continuing a centuries-long tradition, and why it must stop.

Sarah Knott Looks at Pregnancy and Mothering Through the Ages

Knott, a professor at Indiana University, uses her own path to motherhood, which includes a miscarriage and two successful pregnancies, as the scaffolding for her engaging and pleasingly radical “unconventional history” of this subject. 

The key to lowering America’s high rates of maternal mortality

by Melissa Reynolds

Health-care providers have forgotten the central lesson of two millennia of gynecology.