Women 's Pregnancy As Treatment For Illness Associated With Pregnancy Essay

Throughout this course, we learned that women’s studies originated as a concern at the time that “women and men noticed the absence, misrepresentation, and trivialization of women [in addition to] the ways women were systematically excluded from many positions of power and authority” (Shaw, Lee 1). In the past, men had more privileges than women. Women have battled for centuries against certain patterns of inadequacy that all women experience. Every culture and customs has divergent female

Control of reproductive decisions of black women is a highly prevalent a form of racial oppression in America. Due to this form of control, the meaning of reproductive liberty in America has been significantly altered. These issues are addressed in Dorothy Roberts’ Killing the Black Body. The novel demonstrates the way in which black women were consistently devalued as a tool for reproductive means, which in itself was a form of racial oppression. The novel also provides the reader with insight as to how experiences of black women since times of slavery have drastically changed the present day connotation of reproductive freedom.

Robin Yates’s paper, “Pregnancy and Childbirth, The 1800’s vs. Now: What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting,” was filled with many clear points on the advancement of labor and medicine since the 1800s. This essay was filled with interesting and grabbing facts; however, the structure of the essay needs more support.

Kerber, Linda K., Jane Sherron De Hart, Cornelia Hughes Dayton, and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu. Women's America: Refocusing the Past: Rosalyn Baxandall and Linda Gordon, “The Women’s Liberation Movement”. 8th ed. NY, NY: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Black midwives were common, and carried the responsibility of delivering infants from both slave mothers and white mothers. Due to the lack of sterilization and knowledge of pathogens, the infant mortality rate was high, and physicians blamed black midwives for purposefully killing children, even though the practices of physicians were not any healthier (Kiple 2). Having the responsibility of a midwife in the Antebellum South was not an easy process since many children would die, but the process was even more difficult for the mother delivering the child. Typically, the birth of a child is seen as a wonderful occasion, however, in the South, pregnancy and childbirth caused fear, not only for the mother, but for her family as well. Many complications such as puerperal(a deadly infection in the uterus), the inability to breastfeed the child, and prolapse of the uterus were symptoms a mother could experience after childbirth, which would ultimately end with her death, or her child’s death (Sullivan 24). The medical practices in the South were inadequate and inefficient to support prenatal and birthing needs, therefore, it caused a sufficient amount of deaths between mothers and children during this period of

The early twentieth century was a turning point in American history-especially in regards to the acquisition of women's rights. While the era was considered to be prosperous and later thought to be a happy-go-lucky time, in actuality, it was a time of grave social conflict and human suffering (Parish, 110). Among those who endured much suffering were women. As Margaret Sanger found out, women, especially those who were poor, had no choice regarding pregnancy. The only way not to get pregnant was by not having sex- a choice that was almost always the husband's. This was even more true in the case of lower-class men for whom, 'sex was the poor man's only luxury' (Douglas, 31). As a nurse who assisted in delivering

In Killing the Black Body, Dorothy Roberts describes the history of African-American women and the dehumanizing attempts to control their reproductive lives. Beginning with slavery, to the early beginning of birth control policy, to the sterilization abuse of Black women during the 1960s and 1970s, continuing with the current campaign to inject Norplant and Depo-Provera along with welfare mothers, Roberts argues that the systematic, institutionalized denial of reproductive freedom has uniquely marked Black women’s history in America.

Pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood is a time in a women’s life that is full of varying emotions. Some are excited and hopeful while others are worried and careful. Either way, the moment you hold your newborn for the first time, there is a new sense of purpose women often feel. A heightened sense to nurture and protect. During slavery, that was not always the case for most if not all enslaved women. In a time where oppression, discrimination and sadistic acts of violence and terror were casted upon enslaved Africans in America; women were merged into specific gender roles and expectations. White and black women were not seen equally. Societal views created a margin of how the world perceived white and black women in all aspects of life including: motherhood, work and their roles as a wife.

For enslaved women the nine months of their gestation was radically different than their white counterpoints. When faced with illness doctors would often choose to save the life of the mother, as opposed to that of the infant. This goes to show, as further evidence, the commodity aspect of slave pregnancy. To slave owners, the mother was a

Thesis: Morgan argues that by utilizing the degrading and graphic imagery of black women, slave-owners were able to justify transforming enslaved women from people into property and commodities valued not only for the work labor, but their ability to produce children (7). Through this vision, Morgan explores the lives of enslaved women in colonial America as central to the historical narrative rather than as existing on the margins and how the “underlying realities of reproductive lives shape the encounter with work, community, and culture (1, 3, 194).”

Plantation owners often thought of slave women as “breeders”. Slaves had little choice over their bodies and no access to prevent or abort a pregnancy unlike plantation wives. Slaves had to resort to other methods including: Roots, herbs, and sometimes dangerous chemicals or concoctions. Accordingly, “.. [this] included drinking turpentine or liquid from boiled rusty nails, and taking quinine tablets. These concoctions brought about severe contractions which presumably induced abortions” (Ross). The methods for preventing pregnancy and inducing abortion varied among slave

Women have historically had a rocky relationship with governmental, cultural, religious, and social rights. The Women’s Rights movement has been in effect since approximately 1792, with the publication of the first feminist work, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by British writer Mary Wollstonecraft” (“Women’s Rights Movement”). While social changes have occurred and more progressive laws have been put into place throughout the years, there is still not equality between the sexes. Additionally, gender roles in different countries differ greatly. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the major causes and concerns of the Women’s Rights movements throughout the decades, as well as denote the differences between more progressive societies and their less accepting counterparts.

The 1960s and 1970s typified a period when women not only fought for equality in the United States, but they also began to materialize within the changing trends of historiography. Prior to this, women had often been obscured in history and merited little consideration or focus. Historian Karen Sayer addressed the developing period as one where there was a “paradigm shift, one in which historians began to argue that the experience of the economically powerless and politically inarticulate was important. At the same time, women began to explore their own marginalized position, and women’s history emerged as they made shift to look to the past.”

Pregnancy Prevention Introduction: Pregnancy is not always a planned or wanted event in peoples lives, and so we have man made ways to prevent pregnancy from happening. Everyone has the freedom of choice, both male and female, so therefore there are both male and female methods of contraception. There is an expansive range of contraception methods world wide, and they can be as extreme as being operated on, such as having a tubal ligation or a vasectomy. The more minor options are using condoms or taking a type of contraceptive pill.

Women have determined the course of events and the forms of human culture. Women originated, founded, governed, prophesized, created great art, fought for our rights, and for our people. Female boldness had in many societies been required simply to defend personal liberty and self-determination, carving out space to act in spite of patriarchal constraints, to become what the English called “a woman at her own commandment.” These women were edited out of history, their stories omitted, distorted and replaced with men. Women have been relocated to the footnotes of history, and even those highly selective (Dahsu, Max