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Abortion is—and always has been—an arena for contesting power relations between women and men. When in 1973 the Supreme Court made the procedure legal throughout the United States, it seemed that women were at last able to make decisions about their own bodies. In the four decades that followed, however, abortion became ever more politicized and stigmatized. Abortion after Roe chronicles and analyzes what the new legal status and changing political environment have meant for abortion providers and their patients. This book sheds light on the little-studied experience of performing and receiving abortion care from the 1970s—a period of optimism—to the rise of the antiabortion movement and the escalation of antiabortion tactics in the 1980s to the 1990s and beyond, when violent attacks on clinics and abortion providers led to a new articulation of abortion care as moral work. More than four decades after the legalization of abortion, the abortion provider community has powerfully asserted that abortion care is a moral good.

In February 2003, an undocumented immigrant teen from Mexico lay dying in a prominent American hospital due to a stunning medical oversight—she had received a heart-lung transplantation of the wrong blood type. In the following weeks, Jesica Santillan's tragedy became a portal into the complexities of American medicine, prompting contentious debate about new patterns and old problems in immigration, the hidden epidemic of medical error, the lines separating transplant “haves” from “have-nots,” the right to sue, and the challenges posed by “foreigners” crossing borders for medical care. This volume draws together experts in history, sociology, medical ethics, communication and immigration studies, transplant surgery, anthropology, and health law to understand the dramatic events, the major players, and the core issues at stake. Contributors view the Santillan story as a morality tale about the conflicting values underpinning American health care; about the politics of transplant medicine; about how a nation debates deservedness, justice, and second chances; and about the global dilemmas of medical tourism and citizenship.

It is the most common complex birth defect. Spina bifida affects approximately one out of every 1,000 children born in the United States. This comprehensive guide offers a wealth of useful information on the medical, developmental, and psychological aspects of this condition. Accurate, accessible, and up to date, it is written especially for families and professionals who care for children, adolescents, and adults with spina bifida. This edition contains a new preface by the author, addressing recent developments in research and treatment, as well as an updated list of spina bifida associations.

Using fathers' first-hand accounts from letters, journals, and personal interviews, along with hospital records and medical literature, this book offers a new perspective on the changing role of expectant fathers from the 1940s to the 1980s. It shows how, as men moved first from the hospital waiting room to the labor room in the 1960s, and then on to the delivery and birthing rooms in the 1970s and 1980s, they became progressively more involved in the birth experience and their influence over events expanded. With attention given to power and privilege, the book charts not only the increasing involvement of fathers, but also medical inequalities, the impact of race and class, and the evolution of hospital policies. Illustrated with more than seventy images from TV, films, and magazines, it provides new insights into childbirth in modern America, even as it reminds readers of their own experiences.

Thirty years after AIDS was first recognized, the American South constitutes the epicenter of the United States' epidemic. Southern states claim the highest rates of new infections, the most AIDS-related deaths, and the largest number of adults and adolescents living with the virus. Moreover, the epidemic disproportionately affects African American communities across the region. Using the history of HIV in North Carolina as a case study, this book examines the rise of AIDS in the South in the period from the early spread and discovery of the disease through the late 1990s. Drawing on epidemiological, archival, and oral history sources, the author probes the social determinants of health that put poor, rural, and minority communities at greater risk of HIV infection in the American South. He also examines the difficulties that health workers and AIDS organizations faced in reaching those communities, especially in the early years of the epidemic. The author's analysis provides a counterweight to most accounts of the early history of the disease, which focus on urban areas and the spread of AIDS in the gay community. As one of the first historical studies of AIDS in a southern state, the book provides insight into the forces and factors that have made AIDS such an intractable health problem in the American South and the greater United States.

In the 1960s, policymakers and mental health experts joined forces to participate in President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. This interdisciplinary history examines the interplay between psychiatric theory and social policy throughout that decade, ending with President Richard Nixon's 1971 veto of a bill that would have provided universal day care. The book shows that this cooperation between mental health professionals and policymakers was based on an understanding of what poor men, women, and children lacked. This perception was rooted in psychiatric theories of deprivation focused on two overlapping sections of American society: the poor had less, and African Americans, disproportionately represented among America's poor, were seen as having practically nothing. The author analyzes the political and cultural context that led child mental health experts, educators, and policymakers to embrace this deprivation-based theory and its translation into liberal social policy. Deprivation theory, she shows, continues to haunt social policy today, profoundly shaping how both health professionals and educators view children from low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse homes.