abortion

A Buffer Zone for Abortion Patients or Free Speech?

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Recently, the Supreme Court heard McCullen v. Coakley, or the Massachusetts Buffer Zone case, in which pro-life activists claim that their right to free speech is violated by the standard buffer zone (35 feet) around Massachusetts abortion clinics. The buffer zone allows anti-abortion protesters to picket behind the line while ensuring the safety of patients and staff. Now, anti-abortion activists are seeking to remove this buffer zone.

Staff and pro-abortion activists are concerned that the removal of the buffer zone will endanger the physical safety of patients and staff at clinics, not to mention the emotional toll that abortion seekers will face entering a clinic. Currently, women seeking a termination to their pregnancy still have to pass the buffer zone, where protesters may verbally interact with them or use graphic signs to intimidate them. With the buffer removed, patients will have to interact directly with people whose goal is to prevent their entrance. Whether that is achieved through verbal intimidation, spitting, preventing the patient from exiting their car, or starting a fight, seems not to matter to some fanatical protesters.

There have been many instances in which patients and staff, especially staff who escort patients to their cars, have been verbally or physically assaulted by anti-abortion protesters. This piece in Mother Jones features several interviews with family planning staffers who have witnessed instances of intimidation and the physical prevention of women entering the clinic by protesters looking to start a fight. In very rare instances, clinic workers and volunteers have been shot and killed by anti-abortion activists, and some people fear that the elimination of the buffer zone may lead to more intense violence and loss of life.

To see what entering and exiting a clinic without a buffer zone would be like, read the second half of this piece in Think Progress. Protesters can trail patients to and from their cars and pass them flyers and videotapes. That in itself doesn’t seem terrifying, but the breach of personal privacy causes patients to turn back simply from the intimidation. Clinic staff can call the police if protesters break any physical boundaries, such as physically touching a patient, but some protesters feel they have nothing to lose.

If the Supreme Court rules in favor of these activists, the consequences would reach further than family planning clinics, it seems. Other politically motivated activist groups would be free to confront their targets with impunity, as long as outright violence does not take place. Take, for instance, these gun rights activists carrying assault weapons who waited in a Texas parking lot to confront a small group of gun control activists. That kind of behavior is not only menacing, but downright threatening. The line between free speech and aggressive scare tactics could become very thin if it’s federally protected.

Free speech is one of the cornerstones of citizenship in the United States, and it’s vital to the existence of good journalism, political debate, and political protest. However, when the protection of free speech trumps the physical safety of other citizens, there is cause for concern.

Fetal Rights Versus Maternal Rights: The Slippery Slope of Personhood

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Perhaps you’ve seen the case of Erick and Marlise Munoz, who reside in Tarrant County, Texas. Marlise is comatose due to a pulmonary embolism and is on life support because she is pregnant. In previous conversations, Marlise had expressed to her husband that she wouldn’t want to be on life support should she become comatose. These wishes, and the wishes of her husband, are being disregarded by the hospital. Current laws in Texas protect fetal rights over the rights of the mother; this means that Marlise will be kept alive until her child can be delivered safely, even though neither she nor her husband desired this outcome. This baby may face many developmental challenges because Marlise has been deprived of oxygen, so Erick will be facing another hurdle.

I had thought that the missing safeguard for the Munoz couple was a living will, which many younger people assume is for senior citizens; that if Marlise had a living will expressing her wish to be removed from life support, she wouldn’t be kept alive. Wrong. Texas law has the authority to void a living will in the interests of keeping a fetus alive. However, this point differs from state to state.

This case accentuates the importance of having a living will at any stage in life, senior or not, as well as discussing your wishes about being kept on life support with your family or partner. However, even a living will may not protect your wishes if you happen to become pregnant; this depends upon which state you reside in.

When did the rights of an unborn child become more important than the rights of the mother, and what is the desired outcome of the fetal rights movement? The term “fetal rights” applies the same legal protection to fetuses as children, meaning that mothers can be imprisoned and sentenced for decisions they made while pregnant that may have endangered the life of the fetus. And, as Vince Beiser of Mother Jones writes, “such tactics may be paving the way for abortion – the ultimate violation of “fetal rights” – to legally be declared murder.”

Take, for instance, the case of Sally DeJesus, a woman residing in North Carolina, profiled in the Mother Jones article “Fetal Abuse”, who briefly relapsed into drug addiction while pregnant, but still sought treatment and delivered a healthy baby. Because she admitted her mistake of using drugs while pregnant to healthcare workers out of the desire to keep her baby healthy, she’s now facing up to three years in prison.

Women’s rights advocates are concerned because this could mean that people struggling with addiction while pregnant won’t seek help because of these legal penalties, and will further endanger their own health and the health of their unborn children. Furthermore, this law penalizes women who use illegal drugs and ignores women who may be endangering their fetuses with legal substances, such as cigarettes or alcohol. If the goal is to protect unborn children from irresponsible or uninformed mothers, it is a sloppy one. It also appears to lead more women into the prison system rather than a system of supportive rehabilitation. If the state cares about the lives of the unborn children it claims to protect, it won’t lead them to have mothers in prison with untreated addiction problems.

What we’re left with is a mass of sticky questions. If the state has the right to keep someone alive against their will and the wishes of their family, who has to foot the hospital bills? Since the Munoz family would not have chosen to deliver the child now being kept alive by the hospital, who will pay for the care of the child that will likely face developmental challenges due to oxygen deprivation? Who is responsible for the child when the state decides life or death?

The fact that the state of Texas can overlook a living will to preserve the life of a fetus also raises the question of how far that can go. What’s the point of making a living will if the state can override it? If the state’s interest is in preserving life at all costs, why honor the “do not resuscitate” clauses at all? Presumably this won’t happen, because the lives of unborn children seem to be more important than the adults responsible for them.

In states where fetal rights advocates have passed legislation, people, especially women who are or may become pregnant, find they don’t get to choose how they live or die. If they’re struggling with addiction, they may further endanger their own lives to stay out of prison for endangering the fetus, rather than seek medical help. Furthermore, certain cases in Alabama and Mississippi are toeing the line for prosecuting women who’ve miscarried due to illegal drug use. Clearly these laws are being put in place to establish personhood for fetuses so that abortion laws can be challenged. That leaves pregnant women in certain states faced with the possibility of jail time for miscarrying, depending on certain factors. Abortion may be legal, but endangering the life of an unborn child, sometimes unintentionally, may become illegal. It’s a frightening state of affairs when the life of a fetus becomes the keystone of determining what happens to the life of a woman. Think of Ireland’s draconian anti-abortion laws and how they led to the 2012 death of Sita Halappanavar, who died while under hospital care because she was refused a badly needed abortion during a life-endangering miscarriage. Sita’s life ended because it was deemed that her fetus, which had already died, was more important than Sita’s own life.

 

The History and Future of Abortion Laws in America

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The article you are about to read is neither an look at the morality of abortion nor a defense for women’s rights. It is a look at the history, future and constitutionality of abortion laws. I am neither pro-choice nor pro-life. I’m not republican or democrat. I am not a feminist. I don’t believe we should categorize and label ourselves over generalities because each choice we make has the potential to redefine who we are and who we think we are. That being said, it was extremely difficult to drudge through websites to find facts on this subject. The argument for/against abortion has been so politicized that every site has a slant. I did my best to leave politics behind and just look at the facts on this subject.

In the Beginning

When America was founded, abortions were legal. There were those for it and against it then as there are now, but it did not affect the laws. There were homes for unwed mothers and campaigns to “adopt not abort,” but the state did not have any laws on the books until the mid-to-late 1800’s.

The American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA) was the catalyst for the first abortion laws, but for reasons you wouldn’t likely expect. Through criminalizing abortion, the AMA could push midwives, apothecaries, and homeopaths out of business by eliminating their principle procedure – abortions. Think about this, the AMA was against abortion for reasons related to business, position and profit and used the morality argument as the wedge.The AMA set the stage for what we see now.  It introduced the pro-life side so it could corner the market on the abortion business. The AMA argued that abortion was immoral and dangerous and by 1910, every state had laws forbidding it unless it was to save a woman’s life, in which case a physician would perform it. No more midwives, apothecaries or homeopaths.

Did these laws protect women? No, back-alley abortions increased and more women died from complications. These back-alley abortions weren’t necessarily only unwed or unfit mothers either, women who had medical complications with the pregnancy but couldn’t afford to go to a physician could no longer seek out a midwife or other practitioner to conduct the procedure.

Margaret Sanger

In the 1900’s Margaret Sanger started educational campaigns for contraceptives because she opposed abortion. (For more information about Margaret Sanger, her involvement in founding Planned Parenthood, and her involvement in the Eugenics Movement in America read The History of Birth Control and Eugenics). As a proponent of the eugenics movement she had an agenda to keep, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit,” (Birth Control Review, May 1919, p. 12), but she did not pursue this agenda via abortions. As a nurse she cared for many women who died from complications of botched abortions and was very opposed to the practice because of the danger it imposed on women. Interestingly enough, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, what we now know as Planned Parenthood. Today, Planned Parenthood performs legal abortions with government funds. Although it is ironic, I suspect that Sanger would likely approve of the procedure today because it is now a much safer procedure for women than it was during her time.

Roe v. Wade

Jumping ahead a bit to 1973, we come to the landmark case of Roe v. Wade. Texas, along with most other states had strict abortion laws that only allowed it if the women’s health was in danger. In this case, a 21-year-old woman brought a class action suit opposing the constitutionality of the law against abortion. She won. The Supreme Court ruled that the laws restricting women from having an abortion violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Today, this case is still the basis for the approval or rejection, and appeal of state and federal laws.

Today

The controversy remains heated. In 2012, Arizona passed a law that made it illegal for women to have abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, but in May 2013, aU.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the measure violates controlling U.S. Supreme Court precedent under the court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade. It was a unanimous ruling. However, prior to the Court of Appeals decision, federal judge James Teilborg ruled the law constitutional because it did not prohibit women from ending their pregnancy, just forced them to do it earlier in the pregnancy.

More recently, on July 18, 2013 Texas Govenor, Rick Perry signed a law making it illegal for a woman to have an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. Texas joins 12 other states with similar laws.

While I’m a firm believer of State rights under the Tenth Amendment (which is why each state has different abortion laws). Legislation should not be based on what is considered right or wrong according to a politician’s beliefs; laws should be based on what is safe for the citizens the law is supposed to protect. Is an abortion after 20 weeks unsafe? That is a discussion we have not had. It’s certainly not common; according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights organization, it is estimated that only that 1.5 percent of abortions takes place after 21 weeks of pregnancy.

The Slippery Slope

In recent years, several states have passed “wrongful birth” laws. These laws prohibit medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors who withhold information from a woman that could cause her to have an abortion. Who are these laws protecting? The patient? The politicians’ re-election campaigns? The doctors? Take a minute to set your personal beliefs aside and think about this – there are laws that allow doctors to withhold medical information that could jeopardize the life of both the mother and fetus. How is that safe? How is that even remotely constitutional? How is it more morally acceptable to potentially allow both mother and child die in order to prevent an abortion? Yet, we the people have accepted it.

The Future

While most arguments about abortion never make it past debating morality and women’s rights, these laws and debates should dive into much deeper issues – state rights, separation of church and state, and the role of the government in our everyday lives. I can’t say whether or not abortion will be legal or illegal in five years or fifty, but one thing I know for sure is the absurdity of the bills introduced, laws passed, and what politicians say will continue to get out of control. Unless, we as citizen’s speak up.

I’m sure we all remember Representative Todd Akin’s statement in August 2012 on the subject of his opposition to abortion even in the case of rape, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

More recently, in January 2013, a bill was introduced in New Mexico that would prevent abortion in the case of rape or incest because it would be considered “tampering with evidence in cases of criminal sexual penetration or incest.” This bill would make an abortion in the case of rape and incest a third degree felony potentially punishable by up to three years in prison!

I wish I was making this up, but as the saying goes, the truth is stranger than fiction. In my opinion, it’s all razzle dazzle to distract the public from the fact that we don’t need, nor should we have laws for or against abortion, but instead have regulations that monitor the safety of the procedure as it changes with technology. Maybe in the future voters will see the deeper issues in this debate and undo what the AMA set in motion in the pursuit of profit, power and prestige.

The Uterus:The Next Great Threat to Humankind

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One would have to be living in the outback not to have noticed the flurry of policy and politics surrounding all things women’s health. The Guttmacher Institute reports that there have been over 1100 provisions introduced and 135 laws passed at the state level, this year alone. This is compared to 32 in 2005 and fewer than 20 in 1985.

Not to be outdone by the locals, the US House of Representatives has spent a whopping 38 of the 46 weeks (from January 2011 through July 2012) in session gesticulating about women’s health, at a cost of approximately $249.6 million dollars.  So much for reducing government or governmental waste.

The Great Uterine Threat

And it is not the health of the woman per se that is of such great concern to these fine, older men. No, these paramounts of paramour don’t care much about a woman’s heart, lungs, kidneys, liver or even really that other female touchstone, the breasts, no sir. All they care about is her uterus. I would venture a guess that no other human organ faces as much regulatory devotion as the uterus.

This irrepressible and dangerous internal human organ of approximately the size of a fist has 100s of laws associated with it. Indeed the female uterus might be more regulated than guns, toxic waste, food safety and probably even taxes combined. At least with taxes and toxic waste there are loopholes to avoid regulation, not so for the formidable uterine threat.

The Secret Juices of the Omnipotent Uterus

Why has the female uterus spurned such consternation from our nation’s mostly-male leaders?  Aside from the obvious as a repository of male fantasy, the demon uterus has the power to induce fear and loathing, especially now that we understand that it can think itself pregnant or not pregnant by emitting its super-secret, all powerful, anti-pregnancy juices. That power must be contained at all costs. Indeed, for such an overt and dangerous threat $249 million is just the beginning. We must spend more money and more time battling the omnipotent uterus.

Let’s Regulate Thoughts Too

But I must say Senator Akin, you have it all wrong. You must regulate a woman’s thoughts too and not just her uterus. Because if you do not and more women learn about the true power that they wield, there would be no more unwanted pregnancies, no need for birth control or abortion, no need for fertility treatment –entire industries would collapse and your PAC money would disappear.   If more women knew about those secret juices that we control – entire nations built upon male hegemony- would crumble. I bet once we master the ability to think ourselves pregnant or not, it’s only a matter of time that we learn how to master having only female children or progressive males.  Just think how we might trim the gene pool once we learn to control our untamed uterine powers.  And then Senator Akin, what will you and the other beacons of reproductive wisdom have left to regulate?

Akin Offends with Legitimate Rape Claim

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Todd Akin, who is running for the Senate in Missouri, recently stated, “If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” The comment suggests that women who are raped and impregnated were not traumatized, and therefore, not truly raped. Really Todd Akin?

Really.

I for one feel incredibly fortunate that those running for the senate are well-informed and highly educated on matters they strongly speak out about. Oh, wait. Akin earned a degree in management engineering and a masters in Divinity. Perhaps he needs to discuss such matters with individuals who are better versed in the subject matter, like doctors.

Akin immediately attempted to rectify his error and claimed he misspoke, but the damage was done. His comment was met with opposition from a number of Republican leaders, including the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Seems these republicans recognize that women account for half the voters.

Though Akin’s view of rape is unclear and not substantiated by legitimate medical research, the President made his opinion clear: Rape is rape. President Obama also stated the obvious – or perhaps the not-so-obvious: That Mr. Akin’s comment emphasizes “why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.”

Amen.

Subtle but fundamental changes in discourse: is anyone listening?

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Discourse Matters

What happens when we change the definition of a person to include everything from a corporation to a barely fertilized female egg? What happens when the corporate person and a collection of cells have more tacit and actual rights afforded than actual sentient beings? Though the loud and often offensive debates over a woman’s manifest right to make decisions about her health have led many to declare a ‘war on women,’ these same trends will serve to erode human rights in general- even for male humans.

Perhaps more of a philosophical question at this point, but when the definitions of words within a language dissociate so radically- person no longer means a human- it is difficult not to wonder what ramifications are before us; the law of unintended consequences will most certainly be at play here.

The Subject in Discourse

Language, and by association conversation or discourse, follow some very specific rules. At the most basic level, a sentence contains a subject, verb and object and, for the most part, words describe something about reality. (We’ve long since dissembled language and reality with mega marketing, political expediency and spin- but that is another topic altogether).

Subjects are usually, he, she, it, they etc., a person or thing.  Although the definition of person has evolved over the course of history, it is generally allied with some underlying concept of sentience or thinking. Even though animals can think, we have never defined animals as persons (try as many dog lovers might) and there has always been a clear demarcation between human and everything else. Over the course of two years, however, cultural forces have rendered that definition virtually obsolete. And we have yet to settle on a new definition.

Corporate Privileges in Discourse

By law, corporations are now afforded some of the same (often more) rights than human persons. A corporation is comprised of human persons, but is essentially a contrived legal entity that allows business to transact. What does it mean when a legal contrivance becomes a person? Because corporate persons often have more power and money, there is the very real risk that their market goals will supersede basic human rights. (As a countervailing force, however, the millions of people within corporations connected socially online may overturn this overstep- see my last post).

The Risks of Anti-Abortion Discourse

Similarly, local anti-abortion supporters aligned with local government entities have pushed legislation across multiple regions of the US that grant a fertilized egg, person status; often affording the cell person more rights than the human person. Along with these trends, legislation that either forces women to undergo unneeded medical procedures and/or prevent physicians from providing medical information to women supersede the rights of the human-sentient person in favor of cells. No matter what you believe about abortion, this is a fundamental shift in discourse with significant policy ramifications.

Aside from the potentially life-threatening position a woman can now be placed in legally, aside from ethical quandaries these laws place a physician in and the very real medical malpractice suits that these laws open the physician up to, this shift in language, motivated by narrow political goals, removes the notion of human rights, human persons, from policy discussions. And although, these policies currently target women specifically, they will ultimately erode rights for all humans. Who is to say other cells or other legal or object entities don’t indeed deserve to be protected over the rights of humans.

Sperm cells for example, are core constituents of human life and until we master asexual reproduction, why shouldn’t all sperm cells be considered sacred and merit the same protective caveats as the female egg?  Or to its absurdity, the male penis, testicles and the like, containers of this life-giving force, why shouldn’t they be enshrined and protected until the moment of copulation- a chastity belt perhaps?

Laugh as we might, redefining personhood to include everything from non-human, legal entities to a collection of cells that may or may not evolve into a human being, dismisses the role and rights of actual humans. This change in discourse is a dangerous slope.

Are Women Equal Ender the Law?

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The Raucous Birth Control Debate

When I was in my 20s, I was adamantly non-feminist. I considered myself equal to any man. I had control of my reproductive health. I could vote, hold office, play sports and saw no point in fighting those old battles. Boy was that naïve. I still consider myself equal to any man. I realize now, however, that much of the world does not agree. And rather than progressing towards more equality, as a country we seem to be moving towards less.

Here we are over a decade into the 21st century and we are once again arguing about a woman’s right to manage her own health. We’re arguing about birth control. Partly because of the political and economic dynamics of our time, the issue is more heated than ever. Wedge issues like this re-surface with every election cycle. From a dollars and cents perspective, who wants to pay for medications that 98% of the female population utilizes for years at a time?  Birth control is an expensive proposition for any institution.

Economics aside, I would contend that the birth control debate is not about birth control, or even one’s religious beliefs. No, this debate is about whether women are full citizens with all of the rights and privileges as men – including the right to make their own health care choices.

Are women equal to men under the law? Do we have the right to pursue health, happiness and liberty as we see fit?  Do we have the right to religious freedom?  Or per the current brouhaha, are we a special class of citizen with only some of the rights conferred to the male citizenry?

If the current discussions are any indication, there are many among us that believe that women’s rights are alienable and superseded by the rights of religious institutions or political expediency. How else does one explain the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings  on women’s health that included no women, but highlighted the male hierarchy of congressional and religious power?  How else does one explain the conservative punditry’s fealty to the male view of women’s health (adroitly portrayed by John Stewart’s Vagina Ideologues ). How else does one explain the utter lack of women, even conservative women, present in these discussions about women’s health?

Maybe these events can be chalked up to the election year machinations of feckless politicians; maybe it is just a power play, positioning one party over the other; we can hope…

I worry, however, that as these conversations continue and the voices of women are denied, the prevailing discourse that women’s health and self-determination are matters of religious conscience and governmental intrusion, will become more and more entrenched. The line between election year politicking and reality is blurring quickly. These debates are defining not only who can speak about women’s health, but which topics are acceptable; only men and only reproduction.

As a woman and a fierce advocate for women’s health research, I find the current trends dangerously recursive.  No, these discussions are not about birth control or even religious freedoms. These issues aren’t even about liberal versus conservative or left versus right, though often framed as such. These discussions are about whether women are equal citizens with all the rights and privileges accorded. Do we have the right to make and manage our own health care decisions?  If the current discourse continues, the answer is trending towards no, women are not equal.

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Unite Walking Uteri: Repair the Economic Moral Fabric, One Woman at a Time

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For a website devoted to women’s hormone health research, I seem to write a lot about the current economic and political situation. That may seem odd on the surface, but a deeper dive reveals an inextricable connection. The recession has forced American values into re-alignment and like or not, health is at the center. And women’s health, because we bear children, is at the nexus.

As a woman, who has born children, I take offense to the fact that in political, economic and healthcare debates, women have become no more than walking uteri. From both the political Left and Right, our choices to bear or not bear children seem to represent the sum total of the interest in our health. Sometimes our breast health is considered and on a rare occasion other aspects of our physiology enter into public discourse and even research, but mostly it is our childbearing that garners the attention.

Even so, the pretense that the debates currently dominating the public arena involve anything closely related to women or health is false. These are debates about money and power—getting it and keeping it– and we are simply the tokens of that economy. But we don’t have to be, because as walking uteri, they have failed to recognize one important point- we can walk the other direction.

Although we are only 50% of the population, we consume 80% of the medical care and we control the medical decision-making in most families – that is our power. The makers of HRT know this all too well.  They saw their profits drop by as much 70% when the unfounded marketing claims that HRT cured everything came to light.  Millions of women transferred their consumer purchasing power to the bio-identical hormone, nutraceutical and other health-related industries. As hospitals began dictating C-sections, a whole movement of home-birth evolved; home-birth in the 21st century- who could have predicted that?  As more and more toxins are found in our foods and especially baby products, companies marketing healthy, organic products are born. Our uteri are walking right out the door and creating entire industries that place health and well-being center stage.

So, while politicians covet big money from the corporations that obliterated the economy and decimated women’s health; while protestors protest the profligate practices of Wall Street (finally) and pundits decide which side of the ratings fence they are on, women are quietly re-building the economy. Inc.com indicates that women lead 40% of all business in the US (2010), but received less than 8% of investment capital. Perhaps as a result of the lower capital, we are better at bootstrapping, have higher growth, better returns and our businesses succeed more frequently than companies led by men. Our companies are less risky; none of the high-flying financial shenanigans that got us into this mess in the first place. Perhaps because of the inequities in healthcare and research perpetrated on women by men interested only in the functionality of our collective uteri, we’re building companies that address women’s health-beyond the uterus.  Companies like Lucine, and many, many others.

Are the attempts to de-fund women’s health important, even though they pertain to the most narrow definition of health? Yes. They serve as a reminder that we have more power than we think. We are the consumer market that matters. We can take our consumer buying power and our voting power elsewhere. We can create the industries that matter to us. In doing so, we repair what David Brooks called the ‘moral fabric of our economy.’

Hormone health research and diagnostics matter to me and my colleagues at Lucine. What matters to you?