Embryo Project Encyclopedia Articles

In 2014, Big Belli, a media and social networking brand, released a documentary called 40 Weeks online. The documentary, directed by Christopher Henze, followed multiple women during their pregnancies. The film predominantly features three women, though it includes the stories of many. Throughout the film, women detail their accounts of the physical and emotional changes that occur during pregnancy. 40 Weeks provides viewers with information about different aspects of pregnancy including the importance of nutrition and hydration, knowledge about safe medications, and the possible complications that can affect a pregnant woman and her fetus.

Jane Elizabeth Hodgson was a physician who advocated for abortion rights in the twentieth century in the United States. In November of 1970, Hodgson became the first physician in the U.S. to be convicted of performing an illegal abortion in a hospital. Hodgson deliberately performed the abortion to challenge the Minnesota State Statute 617.18, which prohibited non-therapeutic abortions. Following the legalization of abortion in the US Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade (1973), Hodgson focused on promoting accessible abortion, obstetric, and gynecological care throughout Minnesota. Her name also appears in the Supreme Court case Hodgson v. Minnesota (1990), which challenged the constitutionality of a Minnesota statute that required physicians to notify both parents forty-eight hours prior to a minor being allowed to undergoing an abortion. Hodgson’s career was centered around challenging the legal system to protect and promote reproductive rights for women, including access to abortion.

The Dalkon Shield was an intrauterine contraceptive device (IUD) that women used in the early 1970s and 1980s. Produced by the A.H. Robins Company in the US, the Dalkon Shield was a contraceptive device placed directly into a woman’s uterus that was supposed to prevent the development of a fetus in the uterus. In the 1980s, researchers uncovered an array of severe birth defects and injuries caused by the Dalkon shield, including pelvic infection, infertility, and death of the user. Eventually the A.H. Robins Company took the shield off the market, and the US Food and Drug Administration banned the device. Some users of the Dalkon shield sued the producers of the device, winning millions of dollars in compensation and punitive damages. After the dangers of the Dalkon Shield became public through those lawsuits, the popularity of intrauterine devices decreased significantly in the US.

In 1904, physician William Henry Walling published Sexology, a family medicine reference book. In his book, Walling proposed that his guidance would help people who were married or single and young or old, as well as anyone who wanted to conform to, what he claims are, gender expectations. Sexology discusses issues such as masturbation, abortion, pregnancy, labor, and marriage. Despite Walling’s limited scientific explanations and evidence for his medical claims, the Puritan Publishing Company printed and distributed the book, which received many positive reviews and endorsements from other physicians, college presidents, politicians, and religious leaders. However, in the twenty-first century, people may consider many of Walling’s claims to be sexist and oppressive toward women. Sexology provides readers with examples of historical medical misconceptions of male and female anatomy and provides context for the logic of reproductive medicine at the turn of the twentieth century.

The copper intrauterine device, or IUD, is a long-term, reversible contraceptive first introduced by Howard Tatum and Jamie Zipper in 1967. Health care providers place an IUD inside a woman’s uterus to prevent pregnancy. Copper IUDs are typically made of T-shaped plastic with some portion covered with exposed copper. Prior to the invention of the first IUDs, women had few long-term options for safe and reliable birth control. Those options mostly consisted of barrier methods and the oral birth control pill, which were only effective if used correctly and consistently. For women seeking to control their fertility, a copper IUD was one of the first forms of long-term birth control that was highly effective and did not require consistent and regular action on the woman’s part to remain effective.

In 2013, Lois Uttley, Sheila Reynertson, Larraine Kenny, and Louise Melling published “Miscarriage of Medicine: The Growth of Catholic Hospitals and the Threat to Reproductive Health Care,” in which they analyzed the growth of Catholic hospitals in the United States from 2001 to 2011 and the impact those hospitals had on reproductive health care. In the US, Catholic hospitals are required to abide by the US Catholic Church's Ethical Guidelines for Health Care Providers, also called the Directives. The authors of the article argue that the Directives threaten reproductive health because of their limitations on contraception, sterilization, some infertility treatments, and abortion. The report demonstrated an increase in Catholic hospitals and an associated impact on reproductive health care, which formed the basis for lawsuits the American Civil Liberties Union brought against various Catholic hospitals and health care networks during the early 2000s.

In the 1971 court case United States v. Milan Vuitch, hereafter US v. Vuitch, the US Supreme Court ruled that a Washington, DC law was constitutional by overturning a 1969 district court decision. Beginning in the early twentieth century, Washington, DC, prohibited abortions except for abortions performed to preserve the life or health of the pregnant woman. In 1969, Milan Vuitch, a physician in Washington, DC, was convicted of criminal abortion for providing an abortion when the woman’s life was not endangered. In his defense, Vuitch argued that the Washington abortion law was unconstitutionally vague, meaning it failed to define health in terms clear enough so that doctors could be sure what actions violated the law. Though a lower district court agreed with Vuitch and struck down the law as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court later disagreed and overturned the decision. US v. Vuitch was one of the first US Supreme Court cases that challenged the constitutional validity of laws regulating abortion and set a precedent that helped determine future abortion cases, like Roe v. Wade in 1973, which made abortions more accessible and gave women more control over their bodies.

On 16 October 1916, Margaret Sanger opened one of the first birth control clinics in the United States in Brooklyn, New York, which some have called the Brownsville Clinic. Located at 46 Amboy Street, the clinic was a place where Sanger and her staff verbally communicated with women seeking information about birth control. During the early 1900s, both birth control and abortion were illegal in the US, and publication or circulation of information on both topics was deemed obscene and illegal by the federal Comstock Act. However, women still sought means to control unwanted pregnancies and visited the clinic to learn about birth control. The clinic was open for only ten days. It shut down after being found guilty of violation of the Comstock Act. The Brownsville Clinic represented a step toward the eventual founding of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, which Sanger led. Despite being short-lived, America’s first birth control clinic provided educational resources to women in New York and raised awareness of the birth control movement in the US through media exposure.

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. Through the
magazine, Sanger sought to convince female readers to reject
their oppression and become what she called women rebels. The
Woman Rebel generated attention and controversy around the birth
control and feminist movements in the United States during the
twentieth century, advancing those movements and creating a
community of women with the common intent to rebel against
apparent injustice.