Women and Obstetrics: The Loss of Childbirth to Male Physicians
"Woman" is often referred to as a diseased state of the male norm. Medical testing is done on men, with men as the norm. Women's bodies are diseased and dysfunctional. Female processes are not normal occurrences in the female body. They are deviant processes, needing male consultation and male solutions. This medicalization of women's bodies occurred during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as medicine became professionalized and men came to be in control of women's bodies and their processes. During the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century, midwives oversaw women's medical needs. Childbirth and diseases of the reproductive organs were the domain of midwives. Books on midwifery taught midwives to diagnose problems, to suggest treatments, and to oversee birth. As men sought to professionalize medicine and to further their control they began to become involved in midwifery and developed obstetrics and gynecology.
The shift from midwife to obstetrician and gynecologist occurred from the early eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Relinquishing control of their territory was not something midwives did voluntarily, rather it happened as a result of questions of women's place and innovations in technology. Men's access to education and to technology provided them with an advantage over female midwives. Female midwives and women in general were denied medical education. They were not exposed, nor allowed to use certain technologies. In order for midwives to keep their job, they were forbidden from practicing medicine. Using technology was practicing medicine; midwives could not use technology to ease labor or to diagnose...
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The constantly growing field of medical technology has raised many questions especially pertaining to ethics. The mapping of the human genome, cloning technologies, stem cell research, and of course reproductive technology has caused some very real dilemmas over the role of the human decision in the creation and orientation of new life. Humans are able to accomplish amazing things in science, but at what cost? The ubiquitous nature of reproductive technology has caused a new discipline of reproductive ethics. One such dilemma is that of selective abortion due to sex preference. In this paper I will discuss the ethics of gendercide and sonography’s affect on this practice
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One of the most controversial topics of the year is the argument on guns and the government attempting to ban and control certain guns. This topic has always been in disagreement among the American public but has recently become much more popular after several large-scale shootings such as the infamous Sandy Hook. Despite gun control appearing to be the solution to these tragic events, controlling and banning guns will simply not work. Why will it not work and why is it so bad? Because it has not worked before, current gun control laws and attempted laws target the wrong guns, banning the targeted guns or any guns for that matter will not prevent mass shootings, and it infringes on our constitutional rights as Americans. Together, we will not only be addressing these issues, but we will provide well thought out answers to many arguments that pro-gun control advocates can retaliate with.
There is an American consensus for some form of gun control. “…[F]irearms were involved in two-thirds of all murders in the United States and [t]he United States leads the world's richest nations in gun deaths…murders, suicides, and accidental deaths due to guns - according to a study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the International Journal of Epidemiology” (Lepore). There might be some far extreme people who think that all guns should be banned but most sane Americans do not think that gun rights should be abolished. Americans regard self-defense as the most compelling reason to have a gun and twenty-two percent of households have handguns in the United States. However many people do think that gun control laws must be enacted and enforced. Pro-gun extremists and the National Rifle Association’s (NRA) must understand that there is a real for many people at the uncontrolled s...
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