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This is Not a Culture of Life, This is a Culture of Un-Death
Last 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)
Jun 3, 2019


Coming 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)
Apr 25, 2019


Take Back the Net: Joy Rankin’s A People’s History of Computing in the United States
Should I post a tough parenting question on Twitter, ask my Facebook community, or email a few friends who are most likely to have useful...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Feb 7, 2019
Give 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 22, 2018
Washington 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 16, 2018
Church Discipline and Miscarriage Mismanagement at Catholic Hospitals
Quick — 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)
Nov 1, 2018
A View from Inside the Suburban Mom Movement
Before 2016, conversations at school pickup time in my affluent suburb nearly always revolved around kids’ activities and home...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Sep 6, 2018
Are Our Smart Devices Turning Us into Dumb Humans?
Are all of our “smart” devices training us to be “dumb” humans, too-often indistinguishable from mere machines? As click-through...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Aug 23, 2018
When Did We Get So Hormonal? An Interview with Randi Hutter Epstein
Randi Hutter Epstein’s new book, Aroused: The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything, traces the development of...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jul 19, 2018
How the abortion debate has skewed Americans’ understanding of pregnancy
What led a Walgreeens pharmacist to deny a woman her prescription. Read the rest at the Washington Post #conscienceclause #misoprostol

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jun 28, 2018
The Obstetrician Who Cried “White Privilege”
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...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
May 2, 2018
Let’s Say “Happy Holidays” and Share Hope, Joy, and Light in the Darkness
“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...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Dec 25, 2017
Let’s Question All Versions of the Myth of Perfect Motherhood
I would call it a “pet peeve,” but the stakes are higher: I can’t stand policy arguments based on inaccurate or misrepresented historical...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Nov 17, 2017
Pornography on the Playground
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...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Oct 23, 2017
Face to Face with Sharrona Pearl
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Sharrona Pearl about her new book, Face/On: Transplants and the Ethics of the Other. Below...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Sep 22, 2017
Eighth-Grade Innovator Helps Girls Focus on Class Periods, Not Menstrual Periods
“If men could menstruate,” Gloria Steinem observed wryly in an iconic 1978 essay for Ms. magazine, “[s]anitary supplies would be...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Aug 2, 2017
The Baby as Scientist and the Parent as Gardener: Alison Gopnik’s Inspiring Views on Childhood
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,...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jun 15, 2017
I May Not Heal, But I Will Live Better Thanks to Occupational Therapy
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,...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jun 10, 2017
That Time of the Month in Victorian America
The National Museum of Civil War Medicine asked me to write a blog post about how women handled menstruation in the nineteenth century,...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Feb 13, 2017
Referendum on a Life in the Woods
For three decades, my dad’s brothers framed houses. The three of them had a small construction business in rural Connecticut. The eldest...

Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Feb 8, 2017
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