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17th-century surgeon performing a c-section.
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Pelvic Obsessions

How the “obstetrical dilemma” and the dark history of pelvimetry met in the present.
by Lynne Feeley via HNN on July 29, 2025
Drawing of five women in uniform aprons and white bonnets.

Law, Medicine, Women’s Authority, and the History of Troubled Births

A new book "examines legal cases of women accused of infanticide and concealment of stillbirth."
by Lara Freidenfelds via Nursing Clio on March 22, 2023
A black mother holds her newborn
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Bringing Midwifery Back to Black Mothers

For care in pregnancy and childbirth, Black parents are turning to a traditional practice.
via Retro Report on May 13, 2021

How the C-Section Went From Last Resort to Overused

Today, 1 in 3 American babies are delivered via the procedure, twice what the World Health Organization recommends.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on May 21, 2018

The Husband Stitch Isn’t Just a Horrifying Childbirth Myth

When repairing tearing from birth, some providers put in an extra stitch “for daddy,” with painful consequences for women.
by Carrie Murphy via Healthline on January 24, 2018

Weighing the Baby

When did the practice of weighing newborns begin? And why?
by Deborah Warner via National Museum of American History on July 10, 2017
A mother holding her infant child in her lap.
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Before the Ward

On the movement away from midwifery towards hospital births.
via BackStory on May 10, 2013
The Jersey Devil, a winged creature with horns and a goat-like head, amidst trees wrapped with vines.
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Birthing the Jersey Devil

A mythical creature that lurks in the pinelands of New Jersey has served as a reminder of the horrors that result when reproductive freedoms are destroyed.
by Katherine Churchill via JSTOR Daily on July 3, 2024
Knitted baby booties.

Civil War Surprises: We Didn't Know She Was Pregnant

During the Civil War, women secretly enlisted as men in the Union Army. No one suspected a thing...until they gave birth.
by Sarah Kay Bierle via Emerging Civil War on April 28, 2023
Enslaved African Americans hoe and plow the earth and cut piles of sweet potatoes on a South Carolina plantation, circa 1862-3.

"She Had Smothered Her Baby On Purpose"

Enslaved women's use of birth control, abortifacients, and even infanticide showed that they resisted by exerting control over their reproductive lives.
by Signe Peterson Fourmy via Age of Revolutions on July 25, 2022
Guinan Phillips, 31, attends a candlelit memorial for victims of the mass shooting at Tops supermarket in Buffalo. (Heather Ainsworth for The Washington Post)
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The Tie Between the Buffalo Shooting and Banning Abortion

The two may seem unconnected, but a centuries-long history of panic about White birth rates binds them together.
by Mytheli Sreenivas via Made By History on May 20, 2022
A cemetery with a dusting of snow.

Safer Than Childbirth

Abortion in the 19th century was widely accepted as a means of avoiding the risks of pregnancy.
by Tamara Dean via The American Scholar on March 4, 2022
Third World Women's Alliance member demonstrating in crowd

How Black Feminists Defined Abortion Rights

As liberation movements bloomed, they offered a vision of reproductive justice that was about equality, not just “choice.”
by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor via The New Yorker on February 22, 2022
A group of nurses.

Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail and Histories of Native American Nursing

Yellowtail, the first Crow registered nurse, fought for the inclusion of Native medicine and healing knowledge in reservation hospitals.
by Brianna Theobald via Nursing Clio on November 19, 2020
A portrait of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow with white hair and a full beard.

A Beautiful Ending

On dying and heaven in the time of Longfellow.
by Nicholas A. Basbanes via Humanities on June 15, 2020
A woman walking toward an isolated house on the Navajo reservation.

The Native American Women Who Fought Mass Sterilization

Over a six-year period in the 1970s, physicians sterilized perhaps 25% of Native American women of childbearing age.
by Brianna Theobald via TIME on November 27, 2019
Lithograph of Black wet nurse nursing a white baby.

George Washington’s Midwives

The economics of childbirth under slavery.
by Sara Collini via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 19, 2019

The (Historical) Body in Pain

How can we understand the physical pain of others?
by Cassia Roth via Nursing Clio on April 9, 2019

In the 19th Century, Miscarriage Could Be a Happy Relief

A new book shows the remarkable contrast between 19th-century women’s views of miscarriage and the loss-focused rhetoric of today.
by Rebecca Onion via Slate on November 26, 2018
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Pregnant Pioneers

For the frontier women of the 19th century, the experience of childbirth was harrowing, and even just expressing fear was considered a privilege.
by Erin Blakemore, Sylvia D. Hoffert via JSTOR Daily on June 5, 2018

The US Medical System is Still Haunted by Slavery

Medicine’s dark history helps explain why black mothers are dying at alarming rates.
by Ranjani Chakraborty via Vox on December 7, 2017

What Planned Parenthood Looked Like in The 1940s

Following WWII, the birth control organization published illustrated pamphlets with authoritative guidance on family planning.
by Claire Voon via Hyperallergic on October 5, 2017
Formal portrait photo of an African American wet nurse with a white child on her lap.

Historians Detail Charleston's Role in the Antebellum Market for Wet Nurses

Enslaved wet nurses were a valued purchase in the antebellum South.
by Dustin Waters via Charleston City Paper on September 6, 2017

She Thought She Was Irish — Until a DNA Test Opened a 100-Year-Old Mystery

How Alice Collins Plebuch’s foray into “recreational genomics” upended a family tree.
by Libby Copeland via Washington Post on July 27, 2017
Entry in Theodore Roosevelt's diary with an "X" from the day his wife died.

Theodore Roosevelt & Valentine’s Day

How Theodore's Roosevelt's personal tragedies inspired him to reform America's cities.
by Heather Cox Richardson via We're History on February 14, 2016
Jerri Cobb with a space capsule.

The Case for Female Astronauts: Reproducing Americans in the Final Frontier

Imagining a future that separates women from their biological identity seems so “drastic” as to be unimaginable—in 1962 and today.
by Lisa Ruth Rand via The Appendix on July 15, 2014

Abortion in American History

How do ideological debates on gender roles influence the abortion debate?
by Katha Pollitt via The Atlantic on May 1, 1997
Mother's hand holding baby's hand on the cover of "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America".

On Rachel Louise Moran’s "Blue: A History of Postpartum Depression in America"

A new book challenges the discursive ignorance about the condition.
by Audrey Wu Clark via Society for U.S. Intellectual History on May 25, 2025
Birth control devices in different shapes and forms.

The Battle for Birth Control Could Have Gone Differently

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?
by Joanna Scutts via The New Republic on January 3, 2025
A medieval drawing of a stork.
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Exit, Pursued by a Stork

When the 1930 Hays Code banned pregnancy in film, birds took over the business of birth.
by Victoria Sturtevant via HNN on December 17, 2024
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