The Business of Being Born (2008)
The Whelan Method of Sex Selection
The Magdalene Sisters (2002)In 2002, Miramax Entertainment released
The Magdalene Sisters, a film that portrays an interpretation of the true events experienced by four young women who were forcibly placed into a Magdalene asylum in Dublin, Ireland, in 1964. Catholic nuns ran Magdalene asylums throughout the world, where they forced women whom society deemed sexually promiscuous to perform hard labor in their laundry facilities. The film portrays the experiences of four women, Margaret, Bernadette, Rose, and Crispina, as they experienced negative treatment from the nuns and sought escape. Directed by Peter Mullan,
The Magdalene Sisters provided a means to see how women, including unwed mothers, prostitutes, and those with disabilities, were affected by Magdalene laundries in Ireland.
Chernobyl Heart (2003)In 2003, HBO Original Programming released the documentary
Chernobyl Heart. Maryann De Leo directed and produced the film, which is about the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident and how the
radiation from that accident has affected people living in the area. Side effects have included mental disabilities, physical disabilities, and genetic mutations. The documentary follows Adi Roche, the founder of Chernobyl Children International, a non-profit humanitarian
organization headquartered in Cork, Ireland, as she interviews people who live in the areas that Chernobyl contaminated with
radiation.
Gonzales v. <a href="/search?text=Planned%20Parenthood%20Federation%20of%20America" title="" class="lexicon-term">Planned Parenthood Federation of America</a>, Inc. (2007)
Barbara Seaman (1935–2008)Barbara Seaman was a writer, investigator, and advocate for female healthcare rights during the twentieth century in the United States. Seaman’s work addressed the gendered prejudice she observed in the US healthcare system and argued that women of the 1960s lacked the proper tools to make informed decisions about
pregnancy care, breastfeeding, childbirth, and
contraception. Seaman wrote the book
The Doctor’s Case Against the Pill in 1969 to expose the dangers in prescribing and consuming high doses of
estrogen in the form of
birth control.
“The ‘Kangaroo-Method’ for Treating Low Birth <a href="/search?text=Weight" title="" class="lexicon-term">Weight</a> Babies in a Developing Country” (1994), by Nils Bergman and Agneta JürisooIn the 1994 article “The ‘Kangaroo-Method’ for Treating Low Birth
Weight Babies in a Developing Country,” authors Nils Bergman and Agneta Jürisoo evaluate the effectiveness of the Kangaroo Care method in treating low birth weight infants at Manama Mission Hospital in Gwanda, Zimbabwe. Low birth weight infants face many medical complications. In developing countries, where the prevalence of low birth weight infants is highest, there is limited access to the technology or skilled personnel required to keep those infants alive.
The Woman Rebel (1914)In the early twentieth century,
birth control advocate Margaret Sanger published eight issues of a feminist magazine called
The Woman Rebel. During this time, discussion of sex education,
birth control, and
abortion were illegal. The magazine featured literary pieces on topics like women’s rights, love and marriage, women in the workplace, reproductive and sexual education, and
contraception.
The Woman Rebel was one of the first magazines that discussed issues that working class American women faced.
Dana Louise Raphael (1926–2016)Dana Louise Raphael was an anthropologist and breastfeeding
advocate in the US during the twentieth century. After she was unable
to breastfeed her own infant, Raphael began to research why
breastfeeding was more common in other cultures than in the US. As
part of that research, Raphael cofounded the Human Lactation Center,
where she studied the breastfeeding habits of mothers around the
world. Through that research, she coordinated with formula
manufacturers to educate women on the benefits of breastfeeding and
formula supplementation to reduce infant mortality in developing
nations. In addition, Raphael was the first person to use the word
doula to describe a childbirth support companion for laboring women.
Raphael was an advocate for the acceptance of breastfeeding around
the world, and asserted the importance of doula support for new
mothers in the form of breastfeeding education.
