...Possibilities of Birth Control Funding According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, nineteen percent of all pregnancies in America are unwanted, and twenty-three percent of pregnancies end in abortions (Eagle), with these statistics and political support the American government is pushing a bill for insurance to fund birth control and other preventative services. Funding would eliminate the need of a co-payment or fee for the pills and services that could help teenagers and women alike. Despite the argument of Roman Catholic religious officials, conservatives, and those who say birth control encourages promiscuity. Birth control is a very common method of family planning and in some cases goes beyond that. Birth Control and other preventative services should be free to women to prevent unwanted pregnancies, improve women’s success rates, and help prevent disease. Unwanted pregnancy is very controversial issues in today’s society, with limited options for the pregnant mother, abortion and keeping the unborn child is one of the hardest decisions. The abortion rate of those [unwanted] children is almost as high as the birth rate (Eagle). Despite the age old debate about abortion, it is believed birth control funding can lower the abortion rate due to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies (Rovnier). Emily Stewart, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood says, "Without a doubt, when women have access to birth control, it reduces unintended pregnancies…" (Rovnier). Birth control with...
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... Prof. Cousin ENGL 1613-8am class 13 October 2014 Birth Control Pills Birth control pills are used widely by women all over the world. On average, about 150 million women use birth control worldwide. Only five out of one hundred women each year who use this method are likely to get pregnant. In the United States, 62% of women use a form of contraception, and about 10.5 million of those women use birth control pills. Many women also use birth control pills to control and reduce cramping during the menstrual cycle, prevent acne, and develop stronger bones. Unfortunately, what many women do not realize is, is that birth control pills can also be very harmful to a women’s body. Birth control should be taken out of the general public to prevent women from becoming unhealthy. Birth control should be removed from public consumption because it can cause different kinds of cancer, blood clots, gall bladder disease, benign liver tumors, strokes, and high blood pressure. First off, birth control pills can cause a variety of cancers. Cancers such as breast cancer and cervical cancer may develop from taking the pill. Breast cancer is a major cancer that can develop from taking birth control pills. According to one article, “a 1996 analysis of epidemiologic data from more than 50 states worldwide by the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer found that women who were current or recent users of birth control pills had a slightly higher risk of developing breast...
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...Margaret Sanger Leader in Women's Health Vickie Doscher Hampton University Margaret Sanger Leader in Women's Health The early twentieth century was a turning point in American history-especially in regards to the acquisition of women’s rights. It was a time of grave social conflict and human suffering. As Margaret Sanger found out, women, especially those who were poor, had no choice regarding pregnancy. Margaret Sanger devoted her life to legalizing birth control and making it universally available for women. Born in 1879, Sanger came of age during the Comstock Act, a federal statute that criminalized contraceptives. Margaret Sanger believed that the only way to change the law was to break it. Starting in the 1910s, Sanger actively challenged federal and state Comstock laws to bring birth control information and contraceptive devices to women. Her fervent ambition was to find the perfect contraceptive to relieve women from the horrible strain of repeated, unwanted pregnancies. Sanger's commitment to birth control evolved from personal tragedy. One of eleven children born to a working class Irish Catholic family in Corning, New York, at age nineteen Margaret watched her mother die of tuberculosis. Just 50 years old, her mother had wasted away from the strain of multiple childbirths and miscarriages. “Although she was now spitting blood when she coughed we still expected her to live on forever. She had been ill for so long; this was just another attack among many” (The...
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...Patriarchy and Women’s Reproduction The systems of male domination and female subordination have been a part of the history but these systems still continue to exist even today. The purpose of this paper is to explore how patriarchy controls women’s reproduction resulting in oppression and subordination of women. The paper argues that patriarchy controls women’s lives and their freedom by controlling their reproduction. The paper discusses the following aspects of this social issue: 1) why and how this social problem occurs, 2) the social process by which it is normalized or legitimized in our society, 3) analysis of new reproductive technologies from feminist perspective, and 4) some suggested solutions that would help to resolve this issue. Patriarchy has been defined as the system of male domination or the power relationships by which men dominate women or it is simply, the rule of men (Omvedt, ). It controls women and treats them as inferior to men. Shulamith Firestone argues that reproduction plays a central role in women’s subordination and it is the basis of women’s subordination by men (Walby, 1990). The conventional patriarchal notion of a family is composed of a husband as the bread-winner and the wife as the homemaker and this notion still runs in this contemporary society (Walby, 1990). In other words, women are associated with childbirths and child-rearing whereas men are the ones who financially support the family, meaning they are the ones who have authority...
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...Women Abortion Margaret Higgins Sanger, an American birth control activist, sex educator, and nurse once said “No woman can call herself free until she can choose consciously whether she will or will not be a mother.” This can frustrate the law and religious restrictions of women about abortion. Today, abortion is a controversial issue. Many people argue that unborn babies are human beings from the moment of conception; therefore abortion involves killing a human being, which defies a commandment from God. On the contrary, other people say that to choose safe abortion is a right for women and the anti-abortion position is usually based on religious beliefs and threatens the vital separation of church and state. In fact, abortion is completely safe and to hinder abortion also means to limit the women’s rights and cause harmful effects for them and their families. The government should give women the right to decide what they can or cannot do with their bodies instead of having some politicians or churches dictate this to them. To see this more clearly, we should have a look at the current situation of abortion. The issue of abortion is popular, controversial and closely related to the problem of women’s equality in our society. According to the Guttmacher Institute, each year, almost half of all pregnancies among American women are unintended. About half of these unplanned pregnancies, 1.3 million per year, are ended by abortion (par. 1, 3). In 1973, the Supreme Court case Roe...
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...wrong. Every person on this earth is raised knowing the difference between right and wrong. We all know that murder is wrong, so why is abortion not wrong? People argue that it is not murder if the child is unborn, but abortion is murder. The fetus being destroyed is living, breathing and moving. Why is it that if a baby is killed a month before the birth, it is ok, but if it is killed a month after birth, it is murder? It is morally and strategically foolish, because we lose the middle when we talk about reproductive rights without reference to a larger moral and spiritual dimension, and we are unwilling to use language like transgression and redemption, or right and wrong. (Wolf 54) One of the main reasons abortions are immoral, is how they are so viciously conducted. Everyday innocent and harmless fetuses that very well could soon be laughing, lovable, and beautiful children are being brutally killed. One brutal form of an abortion is to cut the fetus into pieces with a sharp object and then, piece by piece, the cut up fetus is sucked from the uterus with a vacuum. Another form of abortion is bringing the fetus, feet first into the birth canal, then puncturing its skull with a sharp object and sucking out the brain tissue with a vacuum. The body parts such as the head, arms, legs, and torso are given letters, rather than referred to...
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...as Canadian women and the law; but did they do more harm than good? More specifically, does their work in favor of women’s rights, and women becoming recognized “persons”, make up for their love of eugenics and the many lives they ruined sue to their beliefs that people of different races and with different mentalities were not suitable for parenthood? This paper will explore both sides of their work, looking at the persons case, women becoming involved in the senate, as well as the eugenics and sterilization that they supported. These two women were not solely good or bad, they were good with some poor decisions along the way, “although their vision, like our own, was sometimes faulty and incomplete, it also embodied an uncommon personal politics of courage and optimism…Feminists don’t have to be perfect to be worth a respectful hearing.” (Strong-Boag). Nellie McClung is a feminist hero of Canada, “her zest, and her convictions, her campaigns helped shape the Canada we live in today.” (Gray, 5). She was a popular novelist, and she helped improve the conditions of working women. She was also one of the famous five women who worked to have women recognized as equal under the law, gaining women the right to vote and hold political office. She changed the world for women in Canada, “from Nellie’s perspective, progress was measurable in the improvements to women’s lives—and she...
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...When examining the course of history from the 1950s to today it is evident that women made the most progress in attaining individual autonomy equal to that men in their sexual lives (sexuality) and least of a progress when it comes to family life. There are four main sub-topics that regarding women's life that have led to this conclusion and they are family life, including marriage/divorce, and child care; work life; political life (including legal rights); and sexuality and reproduction. "Marriage and the family are the roots of women's oppression" (Women's America, 291). The suburban wife felt alone and was afraid to ask if there was more to life than taking care of the children, shopping for groceries, sponsoring boy scouts and making brownies...she was afraid to ask this because it deviated from so much that she was use to. "By the end of the 1950s, the average marriage age of women in America dropped to 20" (Women's America, 692). The percentage of women in colleges compared to men were dropping at a significant rate. A century before women use to fight for the opportunity to receive a higher education and now they were just going to college to look for husbands. By the end of the fifties the birthdate in the United States had over taken India's. Million have women started to picture their lives as the suburban house wife. Taking the children to school in the station wagon, kissing their husbands good bye in the front of the home as the husbands we going to work, and then...
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...Communist Movements and Women's Struggle for Rights DBQ Communist movements in the twentieth century allowed women to work alongside men and promoted women as being equal to men and deserving the same rights as men. These effects were facilitated by the communist governments promoting women as an important aspect of communist society. However, communist movements did not fully achieve equality for women and women's struggle for rights continued in many countries. The communist movement can best be understood in the context of the Soviet Union promoting and spreading communism. Communist leaders such as Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh were supported by the Soviet Union and came to power behind the military or financial support of the Soviet Union....
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...a critique of medicine as authoritarian and the expansion of its conceptual model to the analysis of social ills and attendant policy. “Medicalization” refers the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders”. This review is based mainly on three objectives; (a) first is to explain the nature of medicalization- i.e. what medicalization actually is and why there is need of de-medicalization, (b) second is to explain the how the medicalization has negative effects on the health of people- i.e. ‘the medical establishment has become a major threat to health’ and providing a dossier of medicine’s adverse effects – the wrongs and harms it has done – through processes of clinical, social and cultural ‘iatrogenesis’ or doctor-induced conditions, and finally (c) third is to explain the impact of the dominance of professional medical power on the people’s lives especially including women. This paper is mostly based on the secondary sources such as books, articles, journals, papers, reports etc. Besides this some data has been collected from online sources. Key words: Medicalization, De-medicalization, Re-medicalization, Power, Caesarean section delivery. INTRODUCTION The concept of...
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...Microcredit: Empowering women in Bangladesh Parveen Mahmud Manifold problems of women cannot be overcome only by small IGAs and credit support. A package programme consisting of leadership and managerial development, of rights and laws, of education, credit, income, health and reproductive issues seems to be appropriate for removing these problems and for stepping up women's position in the society. Presently in its wider dimension microcredit is known as microfinance and seen as a legitimate economic tool in the fight against poverty. It is very difficult for the poor to get small working capital from formal banking system for various reasons. A collateral free working capital loan is the requirement at the door steps of the poor at the right time to help them facilitate and start feasible intended income generating activities (IGAs). It is with this background that microfinance is seen as one of the significant approaches to poverty alleviation. Microcredit programme (MCP) in Bangladesh is women client based. Over 84 per cent of the MFI programme borrowers are women. As rural women have a higher propensity to save and a habit of repaying credit in time than rural men, MFIs have found a dependable client base in rural poor women. Interventions Government of Bangladesh (GOB): Like many other developing countries, the GOB has also undertaken a wide range of programmes spreading across sectors and ministries to create wage as well as self-employment opportunities, created...
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...Birth Control Throughout history, the idea of whether birth control should be used has been a hot topic. Some believed it was harmful to the body while others thought it saved lives. Margaret Sanger, a woman who stood up for women’s rights, fought for birth control. She believed she could make a difference in the world and did what she could to accomplish it. Many people strongly believe that women should be able to have control over their own body. No one should be forced to do something with their body that they don’t agree with. They should stand up for what they believe in ordinarily stop being scared by societal norms. “Victoria Woodhull was perhaps one of the first people to preach the importance of ‘no means no’. No one – not your husband, boyfriend, or date – has the right to act against your wishes” ("10 Victoria...
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...political lobbying. These groups come in just about every category you can think of and play a factor in electing officials, getting laws passed, and influencing society around them. NARAL is one interest group that fights for the rights of women when it comes to abortions, birth control, healthy pregnancies, and sex education. Since 1969 when first founded, they have continued to fight for women’s rights throughout the years. NARAL Pro-Choice America is an interest group that lobbies for several issues related to reproductive...
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...in a free country, women often were confined within their own homes. Women were stereotyped as being weak, delicate and frail and any type of “unconventional work” was deemed hazardous for them. A woman’s main responsibility in life was to be subordinate to her husband and maintain the duties of the home. Women’s rights, as one could imagine, were almost nonexistent. They could not own property, maintain their wages, sign contracts, hold political offices or vote. However through the turmoil of the Women’s Movement, new leaders began to emerge. After reading Ida B. Wells “The Southern Horrors" one sees the effect that her words had on shaping our country during the critical time of reconstruction. Slavery no longer existed in the south and African Americans were supposed to be equal citizens. However, they faced one of the cruelest practices any race has faced in America. Lynching and mob violence came into practice by white southerners after slavery had ended. Wells picked up her pen and began to show the world the true southern horrors that she and her people faced every day. The main justification for mob violence and lynching was to protect the white women's virtue. If they had any suspicion to believe that an African American man was with a white woman, they would not hesitate to lynch them or carry out violent mob action against them. “The miscegenation laws of the South only operate against the legitimate union of the races; they leave the white man free to...
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...One side of the argument is Pro-Choice, this is the side that is for abortion. This side believes each woman should have the choice to do what they want with their body, this thought process is what spurned the Roe vs. Wade case. Pro-Choice focuses strictly on the women who is pregnant. The idea that it is their body is a valid point, the idea that not all pregnancies are planned or even wanted is another point that the Pro-Choice movement will argue to defend their side of this abortion debate. Pro-Choice feels that the women’s civil rights are being violated by not having the choice to decide for themselves. Pro-Life side, one that feels that every life is a miracle and deserves the chance to live. This side stays on the course that all lives matter and deserve the chance to live. Pro-Life argues that taking the life of another is not accepted in any society, they argue the side effects of abortions, and they argue that adoption is an alternative to abortion as...
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