Women's Health Commons^™

Reproductive Justice In Mississippi: A Call For Reform And Acknowledgement, Andie Udziela

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I apply the values of the Reproductive Justice Movement to reproductive healthcare resources in Mississippi to advocate for reproductive policy reform. I begin by navigating the historic racial discrimination in gynecology and how it manifested in Mississippi. Dr Sim’s abusive experimentation on Anarcha, Betsy, and Lucy depict how Anti-Black racism took root in gynecology and obstetrics and was later expanded on by the eugenic goals of white supremacy and the feminist movement through Margaret Sanger and the Mississippi Appendectomy. Then I discuss the current availability of reproductive care in Mississippi to low-income individuals to emphasize socioeconomic and …

Establishing Consent: The Role Of Women Representatives In Passing Informed Consent Laws, Sophia Stockham

Department of Political Science: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

What predicts the adoption of informed consent laws for pelvic exams within the United States? As of January 2023, 22 states have adopted informed consent laws for pelvic examinations on women, with eleven being under Democratic control, six being Republican control, and five with divided control between the legislature and gubernatorial level at the time of adoption. Little attention, however, has been given to women’s health mandates outside the issue of abortion and to variation among state partisan adoption regarding informed consent for pelvic exams. This paper examines the impact of partisanship, the percentage of women in the legislature, and …

A Life-Threatening Emergency Exacerbated By Untreated Mental Illness In A Low-Barrier Health Center, Brendan J. Prast, Byron Marshall

Journal of Maine Medical Center

Introduction: We report on a patient with untreated severe mental illness who presented with a life-threatening emergency: retained products of conception and hemorrhage.

Clinical Findings: A female patient experiencing homelessness developed life-threatening hemorrhage. Her mental illness impaired effective communication and treatment.

Clinical Course: The patient presented with fatigue, vaginal bleeding, and known retained products of conception. Her active mental illness complicated the situation as it limited effective communication and treatment due to delusions. She requested only treatment for an infectious cause of her symptoms. She refused most interventions and had a self-directed discharge from the hospital. Throughout this process, we …

Community Health Workers, Stress Reduction, And Racial Equity In Infant Vitality, Justin Rex

ICS Fellow Lectures

How can communities help mothers reduce stress during pregnancy and provide the social supports that contribute to infant vitality? This talk presented findings from an evaluation of the Northwest Ohio Pathways HUB program, a nationally recognized best practice program model that pairs at-risk mothers with community health workers (CHWs) who connect mothers to services that reduce pregnancy risks. The talk included stories from mothers and CHWs about the challenges and stresses they face as well as data from interviews and surveys that quantify the impact CHWs have for reducing mothers' stress and providing supports that help mothers and their children …

A Pre-Medical Student’S Reconciliation Of Feminist Narratives Regarding Women’S Health: A Consideration Of Perspectives On Childbirth In The U.S., Laura Clayton

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Many feminists argue that one major negative aspect of reproductive healthcare in the U.S. is the common over-medicalization of women during childbirth, including potentially unnecessary procedures such as cesarean-section and episiotomy. As a solution, they advocate for increased involvement of midwives in childbirth practices, as midwives allow women to give birth at home with minimal medical intervention. This paper analyzes the benefits of midwifery as well as the current increased risk associated with homebirth in the U.S. Additionally, it questions the damaging stigma associated with assumptions of cesarean-section as a suboptimal outcome. A false dichotomy has developed in our culture …

The Pink Tax: A Comparative Case Study Between Tennessee And Washington State, Megha Chitturi

Baker Scholar Projects

The imposition of an additional luxury tax on menstrual health products, otherwise referred to as the “Pink Tax” or the “Tampon Tax”, is present in some states while absent in others. The decision to repeal such a tax is one that has proven to be critical, as it removes the connotation that such products are of “luxury” and make them more accessible to menstruators throughout the state. As of 2023, twenty-three states have eliminated the tax. The state of Washington falls under that parameter while Tennessee does not. The purpose of this undergraduate honors thesis is to explore the potential …

Infertility: An Evaluation Of Treatment Modalities And Ethical Considerations, Elise Ferenczy

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis reviews a variety of options for treatment of infertility, along with ethical considerations for each. The basis for ethical concerns will be primarily a biblical worldview, as the goal is to support Christian couples in decisions regarding infertility treatment. The biblical worldview is outlined to provide readers with an understanding of its core principles, and the Bible is used as the primary source for ethical discussion. The most common etiologies of infertility are outlined, followed by treatment modalities grouped by category. While some modalities present very few ethical concerns, others require careful consideration in many regards. Many of …

Indiana Law Fertility Fraud Expert Participates In Washington, Dc Roundtable, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Professor Jody Madeira, an internationally recognized expert in fertility fraud, bioethics, and law and medicine, participated this morning (January 26) in a bipartisan roundtable discussion with victims of fertility fraud. The event was facilitated by U.S. Representatives Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), Julia Letlow (R-LA), and Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) following the January 23 introduction of their Protecting Families From Fertility Fraud Act, which would—for the first time—make it a federal crime to knowingly misrepresent the source of DNA used in any procedure that involves assisted reproduction.

Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals And Breast Cancer: Disparities In Exposure And Importance Of Research Inclusivity, Ashlie Santaliz Casiano, Annah Lee, Dede Teteh, Zeynep Madak Erdogan, Lindsey Trevino

Health Sciences and Kinesiology Faculty Articles

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are known contributors to breast cancer development. EDC exposures commonly occur through food packaging, cookware, fabrics, and personal care products as well as through the environment. Increasing evidence highlights disparities in EDC exposure across racial/ethnic groups, yet breast cancer research continues to lack the inclusion necessary to positively impact treatment response and overall survival in these socially disadvantaged populations. Additionally, the inequity in environmental exposures has yet to be remedied. Exposure to EDCs due to structural racism poses an unequivocal risk to marginalized communities. In this review, we summarize recent epidemiological and molecular studies on two lesser-studied …

The Role Of Healthcare Workers In The Care Of Human Trafficking Survivors, Darisel N. Ventura Rodriguez

NSU REACH and IPE Day

Purpose/Objective: Highlight the importance of increasing awareness among healthcare professionals on the identification and treatment of human trafficking victims. Background/Rationale: In the state of Florida, human trafficking (HT) remains a significant public health issue affecting hundreds of victims each year. Miami-Dade and Broward Counties reported 351 cases in 2019 alone. More than 50% of HT victims encounter healthcare providers while being exploited. For this reason, healthcare providers must be trained to recognize and treat victims of HT. The goal of this project was to educate healthcare providers and students on the identification of HT victims and how to provide trauma-informed …

Trans Doublethink And Newspeak. A Review Of Doublethink: A Feminist Challenge To Transgenderism By Janice Raymond, Heather Brunskell-Evans

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Black And White Health Disparities: Racial Bias In American Healthcare, Yasmeen Almomani

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper explores the historical implications of race in American society that have led to implicit racism in the healthcare system. Racial bias in healthcare against Black people is a factor in the health disparities between Black and white people in America, such as the gap in life expectancy, infant death, and maternal mortality. Black people are more likely to report racial discrimination from healthcare providers, which is a reason for the decreased quality of care received. The past justifications of slavery, the Tuskegee syphilis study, and the medical experimentations on Black women are horrifying but were considered acceptable in …

The Ways In Which Women’S Suffrage Affected Healthcare, Madison M. Weber

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

The 19th Amendment had and continues to have a major impact on women’s healthcare in the United States. Prior to suffrage, women had little to no ability to voice their thoughts on and change policies that regarded their own health. This essay addresses the way in which the vote both directly and indirectly impacted healthcare; including workplace conditions, maternal and reproductive rights, racial disparities, political advocacy and healthcare, the different waves of feminism, and how this has all affected modern healthcare for women. From progressive articles being published in women's magazines, to the establishment of marital rape, to the availability …

Disparities In Access To Assisted Reproductive Technology Among Hispanic Women In The United States, Madison Gallagher

Honors Thesis

Infertility is a health problem that affects approximately 7 million women in the United States (Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, 2015). Due to the high costs of reproductive medicine and infertility treatment, these services tend to be expensive and have limited accessibility without full insurance coverage. Emerging literature outlines the disparities in access to proper treatment for reproductive complications. These existing studies highlight that many minority populations in the United States experience increased challenges regarding access to reproductive medicine and infertility treatment. Among these minority groups are Hispanic women, who are more likely to require reproductive …

Assisted Reproductive Technologies And Health-Related Issues Among Women And Children: A Research Review, Laura Maria Corradi

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

From their first use in the late 1970s until the mid-1990s, Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) gave rise to serious concerns by feminists internationally. Their questions ranged from asking about health risks to ethical and political problems inherent in these technologies. However, over the last 25 years, interest in women’s health which used to be central to feminist theory and politics, progressively decreased and with it concerns about ART. Today, while the medical literature about health risks in ART is increasing, the topic of women’s health in relation to reproductive technologies remains marginal in feminist discourse, social sciences, and the mainstream …

Neither “Post-War” Nor Post-Pregnancy Paranoia: How America’S War On Drugs Continues To Perpetuate Disparate Incarceration Outcomes For Pregnant, Substance-Involved Offenders, Becca S. Zimmerman

Pitzer Senior Theses

This thesis investigates the unique interactions between pregnancy, substance involvement, and race as they relate to the War on Drugs and the hyper-incarceration of women. Using ordinary least square regression analyses and data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates, I examine if (and how) pregnancy status, drug use, race, and their interactions influence two length of incarceration outcomes: sentence length and amount of time spent in jail between arrest and imprisonment. The results collectively indicate that pregnancy decreases length of incarceration outcomes for those offenders who are not substance-involved but not evenhandedly -- benefitting white …

Betrayed Partners And Men With Poisoned Souls: Interview With A Former Sex Buyer In Germany, Ingeborg Kraus

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Pornography As A Public Health Issue: Promoting Violence And Exploitation Of Children, Youth, And Adults, Elisabeth Taylor

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

The pornography industry is expanding exponentially as a result of ongoing technological advances. The ability to stream videos over the internet and the ubiquity of the smart phone have meant that pornography producers are able to use algorithms to target potential consumers, to cultivate new sexual tastes and to deliver content to a more diverse audience over mobile devices. The advent of virtual reality pornography with interactive sex toys and sex robots imbued with artificial intelligence promises to unleash a further step-change in the extent to which pornography influences ‘real-world’ sexual culture. The critical analysis of pornography undertaken over decades …

Where Trying To Conceive Becomes A Community Effort: A Digital Ethnography Of Online Infertility Forums, Megan Burns

Sociology Honors Papers

Online forums for women using in vitro fertilization (IVF), or similar assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), provide a useful setting to further evaluate and understand women’s expectations of motherhood, the relationship infertile women have with physicians and biomedicine, and their interactions on the forums. Some critics of ARTs consider them a tool of oppression in a pronatalist state. The pressure and desire to become a biological mother leads the women with access to these technologies to use them regardless. Through digital ethnographic research on four online ART forums, this research examines the intersection of altruism and self-interest in the ways forum-users …

Making Sex Work For The State : The Policing Of Sex Work In The United States., Madeline A Clabough

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the ways that sex work is regulated within the United States, and analyze the ways that regulation is shaped by contemporary feminist discourse. To do so, it analyzes the ways in which sex workers have been and pathologized since the 19th century, and address the ways that these conceptualizations have been incorporated into the legal regulation of sex workers. Finally, this thesis will look to contemporary practices in the state regulation of sex workers, and argue that the relationship between neoliberalism, the carceral state, and what has come to be termed “carceral feminism” operate in conjunction to …

Naturalized Women And Womanized Earth: Connecting The Journeys Of Womanhood And The Earth, From The Early Modern Era To The Industrial Revolution, Maggie Rose Berke

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe

Jarrod Bailey, PhD

Birth defects induced by maternal exposure to exogenous agents during pregnancy are preventable, if the agents themselves can be identified and avoided. Billions of dollars and manhours have been dedicated to animal-based discovery and characterisation methods over decades. We show here, via a comprehensive systematic review and analysis of this data, that these methods constitute questionable science and pose a hazard to humans. Mean positive and negative predictivities barely exceed 50%; discordance among the species used is substantial; reliable extrapolation from animal data to humans is impossible, and virtually all known human teratogens have so far been identified in spite …

The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe

Andrew Knight, PhD

Birth defects induced by maternal exposure to exogenous agents during pregnancy are preventable, if the agents themselves can be identified and avoided. Billions of dollars and manhours have been dedicated to animal-based discovery and characterisation methods over decades. We show here, via a comprehensive systematic review and analysis of this data, that these methods constitute questionable science and pose a hazard to humans. Mean positive and negative predictivities barely exceed 50%; discordance among the species used is substantial; reliable extrapolation from animal data to humans is impossible, and virtually all known human teratogens have so far been identified in spite …

An Analysis Of Women’S Access To Acute Opioid Detoxification Services In Maine: Identifying The Barriers To Treatment, Karen E. Conley

Muskie School Capstones and Dissertations

The lack of treatment facilities and services for opioid use disorder in Maine, combined with an increased prevalence of addiction, creates a potential for health inequity between men and women that may be intensified by barriers in access to care. This capstone study utilized detoxification screening inquiry forms and data obtained from the Milestone Foundation’s acute opioid detoxification program to assess and categorize barriers to access by gender. A barriers model was developed based on existing literature and was to identify potential associations among and between the known barriers to accessing treatment. Barriers were described as internally or externally based, …

The Skinny On Eating Attitudes, Body Image, And The Thin-Ideal In College Women, Lyndsay N. Greene

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

There is evidence of a link between body image and disordered eating among females, and some research that suggests exposure to the media exacerbates both body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. Despite these claims, little research has been done on the effects that exposure to photo-shopped images specifically has on body dissatisfaction and eating pathology. The present study sought to further understand the relationship between cognitive distortions of body image and eating attitudes and to examine the effects that exposure to the thin-ideal found in the media has on body dissatisfaction among college aged women. Eighty female college students answered questions …

La Paradoja Hispana Epidemiológica: Investigando Las Preconcepciones Y Generalizaciones, Maya H. Sandalow

CMC Senior Theses

En los Estados Unidos, los latinos suelen tener menos acceso a la educación, el trabajo, y el seguro médico en comparación con los blancos no-latinos, pero aun así el grupo parece superar ciertos obstáculos de la salud. Las estadísticas de la población latina muestran mayor longevidad y otras tasas favorables en comparación con los blancos no-latinos. Los expertos han titulado esta contradicción “La Paradoja Hispana Epidemiológica”.

Desafortunadamente, la investigación de la paradoja está llena de generalizaciones y presuposiciones erróneas sobre la población latina diversa. Esta tesis investiga los participantes que producen generalizaciones sobre la supuesta paradoja para mostrar que estas …

The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, Ph.D.

Birth defects induced by maternal exposure to exogenous agents during pregnancy are preventable, if the agents themselves can be identified and avoided. Billions of dollars and manhours have been dedicated to animal-based discovery and characterisation methods over decades. We show here, via a comprehensive systematic review and analysis of this data, that these methods constitute questionable science and pose a hazard to humans. Mean positive and negative predictivities barely exceed 50%; discordance among the species used is substantial; reliable extrapolation from animal data to humans is impossible, and virtually all known human teratogens have so far been identified in spite …

The Future Of Teratology Research Is In Vitro, Jarrod Bailey, Andrew Knight, Jonathan Balcombe

Jonathan Balcombe, PhD

Birth defects induced by maternal exposure to exogenous agents during pregnancy are preventable, if the agents themselves can be identified and avoided. Billions of dollars and manhours have been dedicated to animal-based discovery and characterisation methods over decades. We show here, via a comprehensive systematic review and analysis of this data, that these methods constitute questionable science and pose a hazard to humans. Mean positive and negative predictivities barely exceed 50%; discordance among the species used is substantial; reliable extrapolation from animal data to humans is impossible, and virtually all known human teratogens have so far been identified in spite …

Money, Sex, And Religion--The Supreme Court's Aca Sequel, George J. Annas, Theodore Ruger, Jennifer Prah Ruger

All Faculty Scholarship

The Supreme Court decision in the Hobby Lobby case is in many ways a sequel to the Court's 2012 decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The majority decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, is a setback for both the ACA's foundational goal of access to universal health care and for women's health care specifically. The Court's ruling can be viewed as a direct consequence of our fragmented health care system, in which fundamental duties are incrementally delegated and imposed on a range of public and private actors. Our incremental, fragmented, and incomplete health insurance system means …

Industry’S Colonization Of Psychiatry: Ethical And Practical Implications Of Financial Conflicts Of Interest In The Dsm-5, Lisa Cosgrove, Emily E. Wheeler

Counseling and School Psychology Faculty Publication Series

The revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), scheduled for publication in May 2013 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), has created a firestorm of controversy because of questions about undue industry influence. Specifically, concerns have been raised about financial conflicts of interest between DSM-5 panel members and the pharmaceutical industry. The authors argue that current approaches to the management of these relationships, particularly transparency of them, are insufficient solutions to the problem of industry’s capture of organized psychiatry. The conceptual framework of institutional corruption is used to understand psychiatry’s dependence on the pharmaceutical industry and …