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Law, Medicine, Women’s Authority, and the History of Troubled Births: Review of Proving Pregnancy
With Roe v Wade upended, the balance of power and authority among lawmakers, medical practitioners, and pregnant and birthing people is...
Lara Freidenfelds
Mar 22, 2023
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What 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 Freidenfelds
Dec 16, 2021
20 views
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In Vitro Fertilization: From Science Fiction to Reality to History
It 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)
Oct 23, 2019
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A Tale of Two Midwives across Four Centuries
What 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 26, 2019
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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
54 views
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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
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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
24 views
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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
26 views
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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
4 views
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Is Your Doctor Experimenting On You?
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...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Nov 30, 2016
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Are We Free to Be President Yet? The Legacy of Pat Schroeder and 1970s Feminism
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...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Oct 18, 2016
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Playwright Alice Eve Cohen Asks Us to Reconsider What We Think We Know about Pregnancy and Motherhoo
“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...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Aug 25, 2016
10 views
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Enforcing Death Rituals after Miscarriage is Just Plain Cruel
The Indiana legislature claims it wants to protect unborn children and their parents. Last week Governor Mike Pence gave his blessing to...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Apr 15, 2016
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Of Rifles and Responsibility: How Can We Speak to Each Other Across the Gun Control Divide?
As a kid, I loved shooting a rifle with my uncle, out back at my grandmother’s farmhouse. My dad and I would go out with Uncle Bill, in...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jan 13, 2016
3 views
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Obergefell Made History, and History Made Obergefell
History matters. Sober and sophisticated historical research can make a difference in the world. I am proud to live in a nation that now,...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jun 30, 2015
6 views
0 comments


These Days, Even Conservative Dads Want Daughters to Lean In
Appeals court judges who have daughters are more likely to make liberal or “feminist” decisions in gender-related cases than are judges...
Lara Freidenfelds (Admin)
Jun 18, 2014
22 views
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