Chicago Women’s
Liberation Union (1969–1977)The Chicago Women’s Liberation Union, hereafter Union or CWLU, was a
feminist union that operated in Chicago, Illinois, from 1969 to 1977
and was the first and largest union, at the time of its operation,
focused on women’s issues. The Union organized women with the
self-proclaimed collective goal of achieving liberation from sexism
and inequality. Within the larger CWLU, smaller groups and chapters
formed to address issues such as
abortion, rape, child care, and reproductive health, among others. During CWLU’s eight years of
operation, the activists circulated petitions, held demonstrations,
and visited high schools to raise public awareness of women’s
issues. The CWLU created educational opportunities for women in
response to apparent sexism in the US and connected them to
“Kangaroo Mother Care to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in Low Birthweight Infants” (2016), by Agustin Conde-Agudelo and José Díaz-RosselloIn 2016, physician researchers Agustin Conde-Agudelo and José Díaz-Rossello published “Kangaroo Mother Care to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in Low Birthweight Infants,” in which they compared the effectiveness of Kangaroo Mother Care to that of traditional treatments for low birth weight newborns. Physicians began using Kangaroo Mother Care in the 1970s as a treatment for low birth weight infants. The treatment, which involves exclusive breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact, was created to help mothers care for low birth weight infants in developing.
Fortunio Liceti (1577–1657)Fortunio Liceti studied natural philosophy and medicine in Italy during the first half of the seventeenth century. Liceti wrote greater than seventy works on a wide range of topics, including the human soul, reproduction, and
birth defects observed in animals and human infants. In the seventeenth century, people commonly addressed
birth defects using superstition and considered them as signs of evil, possibly caused by spiritual or supernatural entities. Liceti described infants with
birth defects as prodigies and monsters to be admired and studied rather than feared.
Simone Mary Campbell (1945–)Simone Campbell is a Roman Catholic sister, attorney, and poet who advocated for social justice, especially equal access to healthcare in the US in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Campbell worked as a lawyer and served the working poor in California. As of 2018, she works for NETWORK, a lobbying group in Washington DC that focuses on broadening access to healthcare by lowering costs. In response to proposed federal budget cuts that would disproportionately affect the poor, Campbell organized Nuns on the Bus, a group of nuns who traveled across the US to publicize the potential effects of the budget cuts. She also organized the Nun’s Letter that supported the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
DONA International (1992– )In 1992, five maternal-infant health researchers founded Doulas of North America, later renamed DONA International to train certified birth attendants called doulas to provide care to pregnant women both before and after the birthing process. Annie Kennedy, John Kennell, Marshall Klaus, Phyllis Klaus, and Penny Simkin used the term doula, derived from the Greek word for woman servant, to describe a female birthing aide who provides non-medical emotional and physical support to laboring pregnant women. Eventually renamed DONA International, the
organization has certified over 12,000 doulas as of 2017.
“Kangaroo Care Is Effective in Diminishing Pain Response in Preterm Neonates” (2003), by Celeste Johnston, Bonnie Stevens, Janet Pinelli, Sharyn Gibbins, Francoise Filion, Anne Jack, Susan Steele, Kristina Boyer, and Annie VeilleuxIn the 2003 article “Kangaroo Care Is Effective in Diminishing Pain Response in Preterm Neonates”, Celeste Johnston, Bonnie Stevens, Janet Pinelli, and their colleagues evaluate the effectiveness of the Kangaroo Mother Care position in decreasing the pain response of preterm infants who undergo a heel lance procedure for blood collection. Kangaroo Mother Care is a method of treatment for premature and low birth weight infants that involves exclusive breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact between a mother and her infant in what is called the kangaroo position.
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.
