Lara FreidenfeldsDec 16, 2021What Does It mean to Have a “Real Choice” About Abortion?What does it mean to have a “real choice” about abortion? I am writing this book review as the Supreme Court hears arguments over...
Lara FreidenfeldsOct 14, 2020What About Men’s Reproductive Health?In her latest book, GUYnecology: The Missing Science of Men’s Reproductive Health, sociologist Rene Almeling asks why all the public...
Lara FreidenfeldsOct 6, 2020Pregnancy and Miscarriage on Social Media New Metaphors to Make Miscarriages Easier to Talk About, and Easier to Bear For someone who has been trying for a pregnancy, it is...
Lara FreidenfeldsSep 23, 2020During Covid, We Need to Grieve, Find Perspective, and Seek Safe Connection and FulfillmentI wrote this letter to the editor of my local newspaper after my community experienced a Covid outbreak from a teen party, resulting in a...
Lara FreidenfeldsJul 30, 2020Accessibility in America Past and PresentBess Williamson’s Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design is a thought-provoking and edifying look at the shifting culture...
Lara FreidenfeldsJul 28, 2020An Incisive History of Cesarean SectionThis is a pre-publication draft of my review of Jacqueline Wolf’s Cesarean Section: An American History of Risk, Technology, and...
Lara FreidenfeldsJan 27, 2020The emergence of the home pregnancy testWith the arrival of cheaper and more user-friendly home pregnancy tests in the 1980s, women were able to confirm their pregnancies...
Lara FreidenfeldsJan 2, 20208 myths about pregnancy and miscarriageIn the decade and a half that I spent researching my book “The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America,” I...
Lara FreidenfeldsJan 1, 2020How Did We Get Here? An Interview with Lara Freidenfelds (by Shannon Withycombe)Lara Freidenfelds’s new book, The Myth of the Perfect Pregnancy: A History of Miscarriage in America, explores the history of pregnancy...
Lara FreidenfeldsDec 31, 2019Making Room for MiscarriageAfter I miscarried my first pregnancy, I quickly realized that I needed a historical perspective to make sense of this shockingly...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Oct 23, 2019In Vitro Fertilization: From Science Fiction to Reality to HistoryIt was not that long ago that “test tube babies” only existed in science fiction. I remember my shock when, in 2007, one of my students...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Jul 23, 2019Journey Into Mothering with Historian Sarah KnottIn Mother Is a Verb, Sarah Knott takes her reader on a historian’s journey into motherhood. It is a sort of train travelogue, riding...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Jun 26, 2019A Tale of Two Midwives across Four CenturiesWhat happens when the person who delivers most of the babies in her community is arrested? This is a tale of two midwives, separated by...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Jun 3, 2019This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-DeathLast week at a Vatican conference on abortion, Pope Francis “argued that children who were not expected to live long after birth deserved...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Apr 25, 2019Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth (review)It’s a rare academic history book that tempts me to binge-read. Wendy Kline’s Coming Home: How Midwives Changed Birth is one of those...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Nov 22, 2018Give Thanks for Crossing Guards“Wait on the curb, kids. Wait until I say you can cross.” Janice, the crossing guard at Fairmount Avenue, stepped briskly into traffic,...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Nov 16, 2018Washington Post op-ed: What Michelle Obama’s Miscarriage Teaches Us About Modern Pregnancy“In her new book, “Becoming,” Michelle Obama reveals that she miscarried her first pregnancy, and went on to conceive her two daughters...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Nov 1, 2018Church Discipline and Miscarriage Mismanagement at Catholic HospitalsQuick — is your nearest hospital affiliated with the Catholic Church? This is a question I would not have been able to answer during my...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Jul 19, 2018When Did We Get So Hormonal? An Interview with Randi Hutter EpsteinRandi Hutter Epstein’s new book, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything, traces the development of...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)Jun 28, 2018How the abortion debate has skewed Americans’ understanding of pregnancyWhat led a Walgreeens pharmacist to deny a woman her prescription. Read the rest at the Washington Post #conscienceclause #misoprostol