A former Michigan state employee specializing in reducing infant mortality rates told the Guardian that a Catholic hospital’s ban on performing abortions led doctors there to force pregnant women to go through life-threatening miscarriages. She alleges that the doctors were observing a ban on inducing delivery, even…
One of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act is that birth control methods — be it pill, patch, shot, ring — are supposed to be covered by insurance companies without a co-pay or other charges. But two studies from the National Women’s Law Center have found that many insurance companies are still charging for…
The Catholic Church and Kenya's government are at odds over a vaccine that religious leaders say is a sterilization drug disguised as a tetanus shot. The Church is advising women not to vaccinate themselves or their children because they might ruin their reproductive future. Meanwhile, political leaders say the drug…
On Tuesday, health officials in India reported eight deaths and nearly 70 more hospitalizations following a horrific sterilization procedure in a government run "health camp." While mass sterilizations under unsanitary and inhumane conditions like this have been known to lead to the deaths of women, this marks the…
The governor of California recently signed a bill into law that will ban forced sterilizations in state prisons. That happened this week—and yes it is still the year 2014 and we are, in fact, in the United States of America.
A number of California prisons have been sterilizing female prisoners without their permission for nearly a decade. Hello Tuskegee experiment and Henrietta Lacks! What the fuck California?
Tina Fey gave a rousing, appropriately angry speech at the Center for Reproductive Rights Gala last night during which she decried the "grey-faced men" with "$2 haircuts" trying to define rape for all the simple minded ladies of America. Here's a clip from her speech, which I kind of wish came in necklace form. In…
For women who know deep down that they never want children, that hell no response to the thought of motherhood endures long after the echoes of a temper tantrum in the candy aisle at Target subside. But women who want to be sterilized often face obstacles that aren't present for other medical procedures — obnoxious,…
A plan to compensate some of the estimated 7,600 victims of the state of North Carolina's forced sterilization program has been stalled in the state's Senate by Republicans who are terribly, terribly sorry that it happened, but who just don't understand how money will help solve anything. There there, now. Please…
The North Carolina General Assembly recently passed the first bill that will grant reparations of $50,000 to victims who underwent forced sterilization within the state between 1929 and 1974. This is the first step in recognizing a very dark mark on American history, however victims, such as 58-year-old Elaine…
We all knew it was coming; what’s surprising is that it took this long. The University of Notre Dame and a parade of other religious organizations have filed several lawsuits against the US Department of Health and Human Services today, alleging that a new Preventative Care Mandate in the Affordable Care Act that…
A BBC investigation has uncovered a massive government-mandated program that forced doctors to sterilize women in Uzbekistan without their knowledge or consent. Tens of thousands of women have been affected, with no end in sight. But doctors aren't just sneaking into women's houses at night and stealthily making off…
When a mentally ill woman showed up at a Massachusetts emergency room and doctors discovered she was pregnant, a judge recommended that she be forced to abort and then sterilized. Luckily, another judge disagreed.
A task force convened by North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue has spent months debating what the state should do for the 1,500-2,000 living victims of its forced sterilization program, which targeted poor, black, and disabled residents all the way up into the seventies. Now, the task force has recommended that each…
Hundreds of women in Peru who believe they're infertile may actually be the victims of a horrible government policy that led to them being sterilized. The country's attorney general says there are about 2,000 documented cases of women who had their tubes tied without their consent under a program meant to provide…
From the 1920's to the late 1970's, the state of North Carolina forcibly sterilized 7,600 people. Most of them were poor women, and a disproportionate number of them were black. At the time, the government justified the surgeries as in the best interest of the state, as those sterilized were classified as "feeble…
New mothers interested in long term birth control typically have two options after giving birth. One is completely reversible and renewable every 5 to 10 years, the other is permanent, more expensive, and difficult to reverse. It seems that, for women in a position to choose, the . Why, then, do so many women opt for…
In 1968, Elaine Riddick was sterilized against her will after a c-section to deliver her first and only child. She was just fourteen years old. Now she's fighting to receive compensation as a victim of North Carolina's Eugenics Board, which sterilized thousands of women, disproportionately black, on such grounds as…
And the best part? Your husband doesn't have to know. It's secrety!
Publicly endorsing a birth control procedure seems like a decent way to inform women while (maybe) making some bank. But what happens when the procedure fails? That's what happened to ex-Olympic skier Picabo Street.
