As I was thinking about the task of reviewing the anthropological, bioethical, and/or STS implications of the past month of news, my mind kept returning to the introduction of Laura Briggs’ recent book How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics: From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump. In Briggs’ introduction, she finds “reproductive labor” is necessary to both biological reproduction …
Author Archives: Whitney Arey
Web Roundup: Measles, Vaccinations and Epidemics
This month has been filled with news stories about the growing problem of measles outbreaks in the U.S. and around the world. In the U.S. this has been a growing concern over measles in airports, potentially impacting travelers. However this is just a smaller part of a worldwide trend. The WHO estimates that over 140,000 people have died from …
Web Roundup: Abortion Bans, Heartbeat Bills, and the Future of Roe v. Wade
A year ago, I wrote about changes in abortion access globally, as countries like Ireland and Argentina were on a path to decriminalizing access to abortion services. While there have been both gains and losses in global abortion access since, 2019 has seen a drastic increase in U.S. states passing abortion bans, including the near total ban on …
Web Roundup: CRISPR Babies and Bioethics
In late November, He Jiankui, a scientist in China, announced that he had created the first “CRISPR babies,” meaning that he performed germ-line genome edits on human embryos, which were implanted through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and has now resulted the birth of twin girls. He used CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing technology that can target DNA at precise …
Web Roundup: Abortion Access
This month, and especially this past week, has seen immense media coverage of abortion access, both in the United States and abroad. A recent study out of UCSF has shown that abortion is extremely safe, with lower post-procedure ER visits than many other routine surgical procedures. However, despite the safety of this medical procedure, abortion is still highly …