In December of 2016, I wrote an essay for Nursing Clio called Nurse-Midwives are With Women, Walking a Middle Path to a Safe and...

“Merry Christmas!” It was the standard December greeting in the New Jersey town where I was raised. New Jersey is diverse as a whole, but...

I would call it a “pet peeve,” but the stakes are higher: I can’t stand policy arguments based on inaccurate or misrepresented historical...

When I was 19, I had a summer job supervising a playground. It was a pretty lame job. It paid $5 an hour, and it was outside in the...

I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Sharrona Pearl about her new book, Face/On: Transplants and the Ethics of the Other. Below...

“If men could menstruate,” Gloria Steinem observed wryly in an iconic 1978 essay for Ms. magazine, “[s]anitary supplies would be...

One of my favorite books to recommend to new parents is The Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind. In it,...

Last year I learned how to chop a carrot with my eyes closed. While being filmed. Sounds like one of those crazy reality cooking shows,...

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine asked me to write a blog post about how women handled menstruation in the nineteenth century,...

For three decades, my dad’s brothers framed houses. The three of them had a small construction business in rural Connecticut. The eldest...

In childbirth politics as in all politics, extreme viewpoints make the news, and sensible centrists are ignored. A couple of years ago,...

My friend’s father is in the hospital, and it’s been rough. His cancer treatment did not go as expected. “He’s suffering so much!” my...

I was born into 1970s feminism. I came into the world in 1972, the year Free to Be You and Me came out. It must have made a big...

“We are a divided nation,” Donald Trump repeats again and again.  And then he makes plans to divide us still further: registration of...

“What makes a mother real?” asks writer and performer Alice Eve Cohen in her newly-published play, What I Thought I Knew. In 1999, Cohen...

“His BMI is on the high side of normal. See?” The pediatrician showed me a chart. “This is something we need to keep an eye on.” I had...

A year and a half ago, I gained a permanent dance partner. That’s what I’ve decided. That’s how I need to think about the damage to my...

“Sorry,” I say, “Sorry, but would you mind giving me the directions again a little slower? I have a visual impairment and I didn’t see...

The Indiana legislature claims it wants to protect unborn children and their parents. Last week Governor Mike Pence gave his blessing to...

This week I had the pleasure of interviewing historian Jessica Martucci at length about her new book, Back to the Breast: Natural...