The Doula Project, cofounded in 2007 as The Abortion Doula Project by Mary Mahoney, Lauren Mitchell, and Miriam Zoila Perez, is a nonprofit organization of full-spectrum doulas based in New York City, New York, and is one of the first organizations to provide free full-spectrum doula care to pregnant people. Full-spectrum doulas provide non-medical physical, emotional, and informational support to pregnant people through a wide range of pregnancy experiences, including birth, miscarriage, stillbirth, fetal anomalies, and abortion. Since 2007, The Doula Project has trained doulas to provide emotional and informational comfort to those experiencing fetal loss in support of its goal to create a society in which all pregnant people have access to care and support for both their emotional and physical, regardless of their pregnancy outcome.

Many difficulties can arise with a pregnancy even after the sperm successfully fertilizes the oocyte. A major problem occurs if the fertilized egg tries to implant before reaching its normal implantation site, the uterus. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants anywhere other than in the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tubes. Ectopic pregnancies cannot continue to term, so a physician must remove the developing embryo as early as possible. Although no longer a significant risk to the mother's life due to improved detection methods as well as treatment procedures following detection, ectopic pregnancies can still pose a major risk to the mother's health if not detected early. If the fallopian tube ruptures as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, the physician can either try to repair the fallopian tube or remove the damaged portion. Various risk factors predisposing women to a higher chance of ectopic pregnancy include fallopian tube scarring, damaged fallopian tubes due to past ectopic pregnancies, or an inflamed fallopian tube.

In 1974, the United States Supreme Court decided in a six-to-three decision in Geduldig v. Aiello (1974), hereafter Geduldig, that pregnancy-related disabilities could be excluded from state-run disability insurance programs and that discrimination based on pregnancy did not constitute sex discrimination. Carolyn Aiello, a woman denied disability benefits in California since her disability was pregnancy-related, and three other women facing similar discrimination, sued Dwight Geduldig, director of the California Department of Human Resources Development for violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Under California’s Unemployment Insurance Code at the time, conditions or disabilities that arise from or are related to a pregnancy were excluded from coverage. Aiello and the other women argued that by not insuring pregnancy-related disabilities, the state was unfairly discriminating against women. Geduldig detached pregnancy discrimination from the injustices uniquely faced by women by determining that civil rights law did not apply to pregnancy status, exacerbating the inequality women in the United States face in employment, education, and economic opportunity.

Laparoscopic tubal sterilization is a set of surgical techniques that use laparoscopy to render people with female reproductive systems sterile, or unable to reproduce. In a laparoscopy, a surgeon uses small incisions in the abdomen to feed in a camera or other viewing tool that aids in diagnosing internal medical issues or treating those issues via surgery. To sterilize a patient, the surgeon uses a camera with attached surgical tools to guide the procedure and interfere with the fallopian tubes to stop the passage of an egg. Laparoscopic sterilization was developed as an alternative to surgical sterilization that requires larger incisions to open the abdomen to access the fallopian tubes, which can pose a greater risk of complications. Due to decades of technical development, laparoscopic tubal sterilization allows people with female reproductive systems to control their fertility more safely and less invasively than with other surgical methods.

Robert Lawson Tait was a physician who practiced abdominal surgery in the United Kingdom during the late nineteenth century. Physicians and historians credit Tait with introducing a number of gynecologic surgeries, or surgeries related to women’s reproductive health. Those included procedures for treating abscesses, removing ovaries, and fallopian tubes, and treatment of the gallbladder. Beyond his work as a surgeon, Tait advocated against vivisection, which is the practice of medical experimentation on living animals. Tait also argued for strict cleanliness during surgery as well as a more specific focus on performing surgeries to treat diseases of the female reproductive system. Tait’s surgical techniques and advocacy not only aided in the development of hygiene in surgery, increasing patient survival, but also helped develop the field of gynecology, which contributed to a centralized focus on the health of the female reproductive system.