Looks at the Dalkon Shield case, explains how negative information about the device was suppressed, and tells how to make an informed birth control decision

In this compelling study, Marian Morton traces the development of public and private health-care policies for single mothers and identifies the ways in which attitudes about religion, race, and cultural definitions of womanhood affected their treatment. Focusing on the history of the public hospital and four private maternity homes in Cleveland, Morton considers the care of unwed mothers in the context of developing American social policy from the mid-nineteenth century to today. While social policy has taken on a growing responsibility for health care of dependent people, the perception of unwed mothers as "sinful" by the Christian church and "undeserving" because their situation was brought about by moral failure has differentiated them from other dependent populations. Government provides unmarried mothers with the least support, and private maternity homes, run mostly by churches, have remained committed to the nineteenth-century notion of spiritual reclamation. As Morton shows, regardless of the time period, women pregnant out-of-wedlock have been the dependent population most easily disciplined by private agencies and the most resented and politically vulnerable recipients of public assistance. This vital work sheds new light on the current controversies over public assistance and legalized abortion and offers a powerful appraisal of the uncertainties and inequities of American social policy as it applies to women who fail to conform to social definitions of womanhood.

For pregnant women in the 1990s, technological developments have ushered in new and expanding reproductive genetic testing options. Some herald these procedures as advances providing women with previously unavailable information about their pregnancies. Others contend that with this surge of information come increasing and perhaps unwarranted while some women have greater knowledge about their pregnancies, they also face far more complex decisions and a greater pressure to do as much as is technologically possible to ensure the birth of a healthy child. This book focuses on the major women's issues surrounding the development and application of reproductive genetic testing. Although much has been written about the biological safety and efficacy of these technologies, few publications have addressed their psychological, sociocultural, ethical, legal, and political impact on women and their experience of pregnancy. The first of three sections provides the contextual framework in which the debate should be analyzed. The second section sets forth the philosophical foundations and complex ethical and legal questions that need to be addressed, and the final section delineates a variety of perspectives on the psychological and sociocultural issues raised by reproductive genetic testing. These fourteen essays on the cutting edge of the debate are essential reading for anyone interested in women's studies, human genetics, health law; and bioethics and prenatal care providers.

"Everyone who cares about the question of regulating lay-midwifery should consider the author's premise." -Journal of Nurse-Midwifery Making Midwives Legal explores what happens when midwifery and medicine are brought together by legal regulation. Combining historical data on the regulation of midwifery in Europe and the Unites States with a field study of the regulation of midwifery in Texas, Arizona, and California, Raymond G. DeVries uncovers the subtle ways legislation alters the profession-demonstrating both beneficial and detrimental consequences. This new edition includes an updated preface that situates the themes of the book in the current debate over health care and midwifery, an epilogue that examines the major issues in the 1990s and comments on developments that have taken place over the past decade, and an update bibliography. By encouraging thoughtful policy changes in maternity care, Making Midwives Legal contributes to our understanding of the workings of health care systems, medical professions, and the relation between law and medicine. Raymond G. DeVries is associate professor of sociology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the coauthor of The Perinatal Health Crisis in California and the coeditor of Bioethics and Society and The Sociological Perspective.

Mothers & Motherhood presents dramatic documentation of the social, cultural, demographic, medical, and political factors that shape the experience of motherhood. Organized into four sections, this collection opens with several articles that examine how society constructs images of motherhood and how the social definition of mothering changes over time. The next section examines the theme of reproduction, demonstrating how ideas about fertility shape the meaning of motherhood. The third section explores how social variables - such as slavery and ethnic and religious backgrounds - affect the mothering experiences of women. The essays in the final section examine the links between mothers, mothering, and public policy. Designed for the general reader as well as students of women's history, women's studies, family history, sociology, and American studies, this volume should also be of great interest to politicians and policy makers. This book endeavors not only to teach about the history of mothers and motherhood but to inspire others to undertake their own research projects on the subject.

In Crack Mothers, Drew Humphries asserts that medicine and criminal justice have always been at odds on the subject of drug use. One treats drug users as patients, the other as criminals. However, beginning in the late 1980s, the "crack mother" scare led to an unprecedented alliance between doctors and prosecutors in same states, where doctors turned addicted pregnant women over to the police for arrest, trial, and incarceration. Humphries analyzes the public reaction to crack cocaine and the policies instituted to combat it. She shows us that more often than not, policies were generated by the fears that crack mothers were harbingers of even more serious social problems. The media's construction of the crack mother as a model of depravity is, she argues, a reflection of mainstream desires and fears, not a reflection of the truth. Humphries offers a more balanced view of the women who use crack and the policies that have been adopted to stop them.

In the early twentieth century, ambitious social welfare campaigns linked the improvement of health to the broader aim of "modernizing" American life. Lowered mortality rates, especially among infants and young children, became for reformers a barometer by which to measure society's overall "progress." To date, most analyses of Progressive Era child welfare movements have concentrated on urban areas in the Northeast and the national leadership role played by the Children's Bureau. Modern mothers in the Heartland, in contrast, shifts the focus to the Midwest. Illinois provides an interesting case study because its rates of infant and maternal mortality tended to be higher than those of other midwestern states, and Chicago's rates were consistently higher than those of other major industrial centers. Drawing on local and state sources to reconstruct the nature of maternal and child health work, Lynne Curry highlights the interactive character of health policy makers, clients of community health services, practitioners, and the volunteers who worked with them negotiated the final outcomes of the campaign's stated aims. Situating maternal and child health reform in its historical and regional context, this study uses information about Illinois' distinctive social, economic, and political history—even its geography—to enhance the analytical picture.

The Lupus Foundation of America estimates that between .5 and 1.5 million people have been diagnosed with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that can attack any part of the body. The elusive nature of the illness often becomes a source of overwhelming helplessness and frustration to its victims, their loved ones, and the physicians who treat it. Narrated through both poetry and prose, Travels with the Wolf is an autobiographical account of Melissa Anne Goldstein’s experiences with lupus. It is her story of becoming a young woman, writer, and teacher in the presence of severe, often debilitating disease. It is an exploration of her relationships with her family and friends as the illness steals into their lives, and the record of her struggle to maintain her independence and identity despite disease. Finally, it is an author’s journey to find her spiritual core. This book is not just about lupus. Goldstein uses her experience of the illness as well as sociological, literary, and historical research, to portray and understand the dilemmas faced by the chronically ill person in our society. In her conclusion, she calls for reform of today’s health care system, which does not meet the needs of the chronically ill or their physicians.

This work is based on a concern for women's health and autonomy and on the premise that technology and society mutually shape one another. A basic question is one of cultural appropriation. Do technologies take on different shapes, different practices, and have different impacts as they spread from one place to another? By juxtaposing a number of culturally and historically contextualized studies of similar technologies, the editors demonstrate that although technologies globalize by spreading among cultures, they are also localized by the cultures they encounter.

"An outstanding contribution to the history of medicine and gender, Don't Kill Your Baby should be on the bookshelves of historians and health professionals as well as anyone interested in the way in which medical practice can be shaped by external forces." -Margaret Marsh, Rutgers University How did breastfeeding-once accepted as the essence of motherhood and essential to the well-being of infants-come to be viewed with distaste and mistrust? Why did mothers come to choose artificial food over human milk, despite the health risks? In this history of infant feeding, Jacqueline H. Wolf focuses on turn-of-the-century Chicago as a microcosm of the urbanizing United States. She explores how economic pressures, class conflict, and changing views of medicine, marriage, efficiency, self-control, and nature prompted increasing numbers of women and, eventually, doctors to doubt the efficacy and propriety of breastfeeding. Examining the interactions among women, dairies, and health care providers, Wolf uncovers the origins of contemporary attitudes toward and myths about breastfeeding. Jacqueline H. Wolf is assistant professor in the history of medicine, Department of Social Medicine, Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, and adjust assistant professor, Women's Studies Program, Ohio University.

Since the 1980s, research in the history of sexuality has grown exponentially. Not surprisingly, this new research has made its way into the classroom. Professors across the country have struggled to integrate this often theoretically difficult and eclectic material into a coherent whole. Sexual Borderlands offers students accessible yet challenging essays that cover the subject's diversity, yet allows coherence in a field that often resists such attempts. It is organized around a potential course syllabus that allows students simultaneously to engage significant theoretical as well as empirical debates. Recent research in historical frontiers led Kennedy and Ullman to the theme of sexual borderlands, which links the history of sexuality to such broad concerns in U.S. history as state formation, colonialism, class and race, and modernization. The essays in this collection place sexuality at the center of these processes and demonstrate the importance of understanding sexuality in the narrative of U.S. history. The volume provides students and teachers the tools with which to explore relationships among cultures and individuals that have shaped American identity and society while investigating their own interests.

"In the early twentieth century, maternal and infant health, nutrition, and medical care came under scrutiny, as did the issue of birth control. While the prior gained public support, the latter remained controversial. Though some reformers saw birth control as an important part of maternal welfare, others sought to separate it from more popular reforms. The careers of the four prominent but usually neglected reformers (Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, Ethel Sturges Dummer, Mary Ware Dennett, and Blanche Ames) examined in this book embody the struggle to define and resolve these tensions." The study of these reformers offers a new perspective on more recognized leaders in the arena of reproductive health and rights, especially the U.S. Children's Bureau and Margaret Sanger. Putnam's elitism contextualizes the class politics of the Bureau, underscoring its sensitivity to the vulnerable and its innovative approach to public health. Dummer reminds us of roads not taken by policy makers in the Bureau, accentuating the differences between a child-centered and a woman-centered agenda. Dennett highlights the obstacles to women reformers in the formal political sphere, while Ames' penchant toward maternalism and compromise also led to difficulties. Together, they illustrate the complexities of formulating an effective approach to securing reproductive rights and health.

Founded in 1928, the Maternal Health Association of Cleveland, Ohio offered birth control services to poor women. The Association played a representative role in national reform movements and demonstrates intersections between voluntarism, gender, and state action. This case study explores how volunteers and clients experienced the clinic, especially concentrating on the tactics chosen by the Association to advance their cause and the way they linked with social and reform networks in order to sustain the venture. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Handling the Sick is the story of 838 women who entered St. Luke's Hospital Training School for Nurses, St. Paul, Minnesota, from 1892 to 1937. Their story addresses a fundamental question about nursing that has yet to be answered: is nursing a craft or a profession? It also addresses the colliding visions of nursing factions that for more than a century have disagreed on the inherent traits and formal preparation a nurse has needed. The women of St. Luke's were engaged in the most practical of all occupations open to women, a rare one in which their strength, experience, and skill were prized above all else. They firmly believed that the key to success in nursing was apprenticeship training. Apprenticeship, not schooling, was the cornerstone on which all else rested. This study unites the opposing visions of those who led nursing toward professional status and those who saw it as a craft. Physicality, strength of will, an abiding emphasis on practicality, and a hierarchy based on a deep pride in craft skills have been essential elements of nursing. Nursing can look to its complex history to develop an integrated model of nursing, one drawing on both academic training and the immediate realities involved in "handling the sick."

Appealing to audiences interested in the histories of medicine, women, gender, labor, and social policy, Beyond the Reproductive Body examines women's health in relation to work in early Victorian England. Government officials and reformers investigating the laboring population became convinced that the female body would be ruined by gainful employment, making women incapable of reproducing a healthy labor force. Women's work was thus framed as a public health "problem." Poor women were caught between the contradictory expectations of the reproductive body, which supposedly precluded any but domestic labor, and the able body, which dictated that all poor but healthy people must work to stay independent of state assistance. Medical case narratives of female patients show that while official pronouncements emphasized the physical limitations of the female reproductive body, poor women adopted an able-bodied norm. Beyond the Reproductive Body demonstrates the centrality of gender and the body in the formation of Victorian policies concerning employment, public health, and welfare. Focusing on poor women, it challenges historians' customary presentations of Victorian women's delicate health. The medical case narratives give voices to poor women, who have left very few written records of their own. Marjorie Levine-Clark is assistant professor of history at the University of Colorado, Denver.

"Unlikely Entrepreneurs is an important text on a much neglected topic. It is a fascinating story of the women who built the social institutions that we take for granted” —Sioban Nelson, The University of Melbourne “Unlikely Entrepreneurs is a ground-breaking study that brings together major issues in the history of medicine, women’s history, and immigration history in a unique and highly original manner. This is a highly readable book suitable for anyone interested in the intersection between gender, medicine, and spirituality both past and present.” —Heather Munro Prescott, Central Connecticut State University In Unlikely Entrepreneurs, Barbra Mann Wall looks at the development of religious hospitals in the late nineteenth and early 20th centuries and the entrepreneurial influence Catholic sisters held in this process. When immigrant nuns came to the United States in the late19th century, they encountered a market economy that structured the way they developed their hospitals. Sisters enthusiastically engaged in the market as entrepreneurs, but they used a set of tools and understanding that were counter to the market. Their entrepreneurship was not to expand earnings but rather to advance Catholic spirituality. Wall places the development of Catholic hospital systems (located in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Texas, and Utah) owned and operated by Catholic sisters within the larger social, economic, and medical history of the time. In the modern health care climate, with the influences of corporations, federal laws, spiraling costs, managed care, and medical practices that rely less on human judgments and more on technological innovations, the “modern” hospital reflects a dim memory of the past. This book will inform future debates on who will provide health care as the sisters depart, how costs will be met, who will receive care, and who will be denied access to health services.

Dying to Be Beautiful tells the story of how cosmetics came to be regulated in early-20th-century America. In 1906, the Food and Drug Administration was given the power to control food and drugs. Not until 1938 were other products that went into or onto the body, including cosmetics, similarly regulated. The intervening years saw death by depilatory and blindness by mascara and a rise in consumer and grassroots political activism. This book examines who fought for regulation of these inherently feminine products and why it took so long for their goals to be achieved.

During the twentieth century modern births in America came to involve mostly male physicians, hospitals, technological interventions, and quick, routine procedures. In a unique and detailed historical study, The Birth of a New American Profession, Laura E. Ettinger fills a void with the first book-length documentation of the emergence of American nurse-midwifery. This occupation developed in the 1920s involving nurses who took advanced training in midwifery. In Nurse-Midwifery, Ettinger shows how nurse-midwives in New York City; eastern Kentucky; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and other places both rebelled against and served as agents of a nationwide professionalization of doctors and medicalization of childbirth. Nurse-Midwifery reveals the limitations that nurses, physicians, and nurse-midwives placed on the profession of nurse-midwifery from the outset because of the professional interests of nursing and medicine. The book argues that nurse-midwives challenged what scholars have called the "male medical model" of childbirth, but the cost of the compromises they made to survive was that nurse-midwifery did not become the kind of independent, autonomous profession it might have been. Today, nurse-midwives have assumed a larger role in mainstream health care than before, yet they are still marginalized. As in the past, nurse-midwives' futures will depend on continuing changes in American attitudes about childbirth, health care, and women professionals as well as on their own ability to adapt to the changes. The history of the profession suggests that nurse-midwives will continue to navigate in difficult waters in a middle space between the mainstream and the margins of medicine and between the nursing profession and midwifery traditions.