Reproductive Health Quotes

No, I'm the human here. I'm the life at stake. I'm the one with fingernails, who feels pain. Me.

He told us that it was important to eat right, exercise, and treat your body as a temple. But he didn't tell us how to get health care services that people with no money could afford. He didn't tell us how we could quickly obtain birth control and other reproductive health services. He didn't recommend any solutions for behavioral or psychiatric care, and for sure some of those broads needed it. He didn't say what options there might be for people who had struggled with substance abuse, sometimes for decades, when they were confronted by old demons on the outside.

Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.

Activism” is not just what we see on the streets or on the Internet or in the news; sometimes, “activism” is the simple act of doggedly, determinedly surviving.

Thanks for nothing, regular human mom. Footnote: nothing except for the unconditional love and support and meticulous care to make sure I faced the world fully informed about my body and reproductive health.

That has been the pattern again and again: With the best of intentions, pro-life conservatives have taken some positions in reproductive health that actually hurt those whom they are trying to help—and that result in more abortions.

The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

Only two things matter in the reproductive health debate: the medical opinions of doctors, and the will of women. Also, feminism is intricately connected with all aspects of our society, including health, but also labor and the economy. A woman can't be an equal player in our society until she has total autonomy, and that includes determining the destiny of her own body.

The Center had suffered scars from the cuts of politicians and the barbs of protesters. It had licked its wounds and healed. At one point it had been called the Center for Women and Reproductive Health. But there were those who believed if you do not name a thing, it ceases to exist, and so its title was amputated, like a war injury. But still, it survived. First it became the Center for Women. And then, just: the Center.

The negative focus on single black motherhood is also not about helping black communities. If it were, those who rail against unmarried mothers would spend at least equal time calling for affordable family planning and reproductive health care, universal access to good child care, improved urban school systems, a higher minimum wage, and college education that doesn't break the banks of average people. And they would admit that the welfare-queen image is a distortion and a distraction.

Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try and have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone. It never ends. It strikes me that while all this judgment goes on, the options available to women become fewer and fewer. I’m not even (just) talking about the right to choose—across the U.S., women have less access to birth control, health care, reproductive education, and post-partum support. So we give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy—and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing. This

As twisted as it sounds, I was so happy that I had received a diagnosis.

Wala lang, kwentuhan lang tayo. Tsaka ano ba namang masama sa usapang reproductive health?

Planned Parenthood, which was then as it is today, the largest single provider of reproductive health services, including abortion and prenatal care, in the United States.

Terms like health, freedom of choice, women’s empowerment, unmet needs, quality services, and reproductive health are clichés used to market the strategy of population reduction. Every

Girls’ education, it turns out, has a dramatic bearing on global warming. Women with more years of education have fewer, healthier children and actively manage their reproductive health.

If you are a feminist and are not a vegan, you are ignoring the exploitation of female nonhumans and the commodification of their reproductive processes, as well as the destruction of their relationship with their babies; If you are an environmentalist and not a vegan, you are ignoring the undeniable fact that animal agriculture is an ecological disaster; If you embrace nonviolence but are not a vegan, then words of nonviolence come out of your mouth as the products of torture and death go into it; If you claim to love animals but you are eating them or products made from them, or otherwise consuming them, you see loving as consistent with harming that which you claim to love. Stop trying to make excuses. There are no good ones to make. Go vegan.

The way to get people to find common ground on reproductive rights, climate change, and criminal justice is not necessarily to talk first and hear everyone’s arguments. Instead, it’s to establish relationships between those who disagree—relationships where people meet first as fellow human beings, not as political positions.

The World today has 6.8 billion people. That's heading up to about nine billion. Now, if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care & reproductive health services, we could LOWER that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” ― Bill Gates

It strikes me that while all this judgment goes on, the options available to women become fewer and fewer. I’m not even (just) talking about the right to choose—across the U.S., women have less access to birth control, health care, reproductive education, and post-partum support. So we give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy—and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing.

Most televangelists, popular Christian preacher icons, and heads of those corporations that we call megachurches share an unreflective modern view of Jesus--that he translates easily and almost automatically into a modern idiom. The fact is, however, that Jesus was not a person of the twenty-first century who spoke the language of contemporary Christian America (or England or Germany or anywhere else). Jesus was inescapably and ineluctably a Jew living in first-century Palestine. He was not like us, and if we make him like us we transform the historical Jesus into a creature that we have invented for ourselves and for our own purposes. Jesus would not recognize himself in the preaching of most of his followers today. He knew nothing of our world. He was not a capitalist. He did not believe in free enterprise. He did not support the acquisition of wealth or the good things in life. He did not believe in massive education. He had never heard of democracy. He had nothing to do with going to church on Sunday. He knew nothing of social security, food stamps, welfare, American exceptionalism, unemployment numbers, or immigration. He had no views on tax reform, health care (apart from wanting to heal leprosy), or the welfare state. So far as we know, he expressed no opinion on the ethical issues that plague us today: abortion and reproductive rights, gay marriage, euthanasia, or bombing Iraq. His world was not ours, his concerns were not ours, and--most striking of all--his beliefs were not ours. Jesus was a first-century Jew, and when we try to make him into a twenty-first century American we distort everything he was and everything he stood for.

three primary fertility signs are cervical fluid, waking temperature, and cervical position (this last one being an additional sign that simply corroborates the first two).

Slaveholders were willing to overwork pregnant slaves at the expense of the health of both mother and child.

natural selection is basically the inevitable outcome of two phenomena that still exist: heritable variation and differential reproductive success. Just

The technology exists for a male contraceptive pill. We have the drugs to switch off testosterone and prevent sperm production. These drugs have never gone to market because developers know that men would never take something like that. Men would never agree to switch off their hormones. They would never put up with the side effects such as depression and low libido. And, honestly, why should they put up with it? Why should women?

The development of cognition, motivation, and self-regulation does not end with adolescence; indeed, personality traits do not reach their maximum stability until the third or fourth decade of life. This suggests that life history strategies are partially open to revision for a large portion of the life course -possibly depending on factors such as success in mating and reproduction, major environmental fluctuations, or unexpected changes in health, wealth or status.

A woman’s preovulatory waking temps typically range from about 97.0 to 97.7 degrees Fahrenheit, with postovulatory temps rising to about 97.8 and higher. After ovulation, they will usually stay elevated until her next period, about 12 to 16 days later.

Good skin signaled discipline and prosperity and health and virtuous contentment and, above all, being cared for, like that rich infant, whose good fortune had been assured from the moment of implantation in the office of a very expensive reproductive specialist.

Imagine this: A world where the quality of your life is not determined by how much money you have. You do not have to sell your labour to survive. Labour is not tied to capitalism, profit or wage. Borders do not exist; we are free to move without consequence. The nuclear family does not exist; children are raised collectively; reproduction takes on new meanings. In this world, the way we carry out dull domestic labour is transformed and nobody is forced to rely on their partner economically to survive. The principles of transformative justice are used to rectify harm. Critical and comprehensive sex education exists for all from an early age. We are liberated from the gender binary’s strangling grip and the demands it places on our bodies. Sex work does not exist because work does not exist. Education and transport are free, from cradle to grave. We are forced to reckon with and rectify histories of imperialism, colonial exploitation, and warfare collectively. We have freedom to, not just freedom from. Specialist mental health services and community care are integral to our societies. There is no “state” as we know it; nobody dies in “suspicious circumstances” at its hands; no person has to navigate sexism, racism, ableism or homophobia to survive. Detention centres do not exist. Prisons do not exist, nor do the police. The military and their weapons are disbanded across nations. Resources are reorganised to adequately address climate catastrophe. No person is without a home or loving community. We love one another, without possession or exploitation or extraction. We all have enough to eat well due to redistribution of wealth and resource. We all have the means and the environment to make art, if we so wish. All cultural gatekeepers are destroyed. Now imagine this vision not as utopian, but as something well within our reach.

It is undignified to inject yourself with hormones designed to slow or enhance ovarian production. It is undignified to have your ovaries monitored by transvaginal ultrasound; to be sedated so that your eggs can be aspirated into a needle; to have your husband emerge sheepishly from a locked room with the “sample” that will be combined with your eggs under supervision of an embryologist. The grainy photo they hand you on transfer day, of your eight-celled embryo (which does not look remotely like a baby), is undignified, and so is all the waiting and despairing that follows.

[Kinsey's studies included] stutterers, amputees, paraplegics, even those with cerebral palsy were observed. Kinsey wanted to document the full spectrum of human sexuality, but it was more than that. He believed these people might have things to teach us about the physiology of sex. And he was right. These groups alerted Kinsey--and the scientific community as a whole--to the complicated and crucial role of the central nervous system in sex and reproduction. Kinsey had noted that a stutterer in the throes of sexual abandon may temporarily lose his stutter. Similarly, the phantom limb pain some amputees feel temporarily disappears. Even the muscle spasticity of cerebral palsy may be briefly quieted. The body's limiting factors seem to get shut off. The organism is driven toward nature's singular goal--conception, the passing on of one's genes--and anything that stands in the way is pushed into the background.

This speaks to one of Prum’s problems with the dominant theories in evolutionary psychology: by arguing that peahens or humans are drawn to the physical attributes of potential mates for entirely biological reasons—health or strength or reproductive fitness—we erase the rich variety of ways that humans might be beautiful to one another and shut down the questions that we can ask about beauty. Suggesting that certain attractions are, evolutionarily speaking, “wrong” while others are “correct” takes away from the epic diversity of taste and preference, and simply doesn’t comport with the realities of human—or bird—attraction.

They say women are blessed with the ability to forget the pain of childbirth so they will be able to have more children later. I often wonder whether the same principle applies to the challenges of writing a book of this magnitude. Had another author warned me about what a monumental task it would be, I'm not sure I would have been so insane as to pursue the dream.

features of physical appearance, such as full lips, clear skin, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, and good muscle tone, and features of behavior, such as a bouncy, youthful gait, an animated facial expression, and a high energy level. These physical cues to youth and health, and hence to reproductive capacity, constitute key elements of male standards of female beauty.

The longevity genes I work on are called “sirtuins,” named after the yeast SIR2 gene, the first one to be discovered. There are seven sirtuins in mammals, SIRT1 to SIRT7, and they are made by almost every cell in the body. When I started my research, sirtuins were barely on the scientific radar. Now this family of genes is at the forefront of medical research and drug development. Descended from gene B in M. superstes, sirtuins are enzymes that remove acetyl tags from histones and other proteins and, by doing so, change the packaging of the DNA, turning genes off and on when needed. These critical epigenetic regulators sit at the very top of cellular control systems, controlling our reproduction and our DNA repair. After a few billion years of advancement since the days of yeast, they have evolved to control our health, our fitness, and our very survival. They have also evolved to require a molecule called nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, or NAD. As we will see later, the loss of NAD as we age, and the resulting decline in sirtuin activity, is thought to be a primary reason our bodies develop diseases when we are old but not when we are young.

Why do women not achieve orgasms during intercourse the same way men do? The answer is straightforward. The most sensitive sexual nerves in women are in the clitoris, which is outside and above the vagina. So, during traditional intercourse (with the couple face-to-face in the missionary position), while the man is having a grand ol'time, the woman may be compiling a grocery list for dinner that night.

In retrospect, it is evident that highlighting abortion rather than reproductive rights as a whole reflected the class biases of the women who were at the forefront of the movement. While the issue of abortion was and remains relevant to all women, there were other reproductive issues that were just as vital which needed attention and might have served to galvanize masses. These issues ranged from basic sex education, prenatal care, preventive health care that would help females understand how their bodies worked, to forced sterilization, unnecessary cesareans and/or hysterectomies, and the medical complications left in their wake. Of all these issues individual white women with class privilege identified most intimately with the pain of unwanted pregnancy. And they highlighted the abortion issue. They were not by any means the only group in need of access to safe, legal abortions. As already stated, they were far more likely to have the means the to acquire an abortion than poor and working-class women. In those days poor women, black women included, often sought illegal abortions. The right to have an abortion was not a white-women-only issue; it was simply not the only or even most important reproductive concern for masses of American women.

WHY WAS A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN SUCH A BIG DEAL? Beauty was a sign of health and reproductive capability; thus, a beautiful woman historically had wide hips (for childbearing), body symmetry (indicating no deformities), hair and teeth that weren’t falling out (indicating health). And she was young—at the beginning of her fertile years. Society needed to reinforce men’s biological dependency on female beauty for the same reasons it needed to make women dependent on male income: dependency created an incentive to marry. A man who was addicted to a woman’s beauty, youth, and sex would temporarily “lose his mind”—he would make the irrational decision to support her for the rest of his life. Female beauty, then, can be thought of as nature’s marketing tool: the way of marketing a woman for the survival of her genes.42 Which is why female beauty is the world’s most potent drug.

Of course, all animals have different things to learn while traversing the arc that takes them from sexually immature, vulnerable child to reproductively capable, developed adult. In our case, those include advanced language skills and critical thinking. But there’s one feature that defines adolescence in species from condors to capuchin monkeys to college freshmen. It’s a time when they learn by taking risks and sometimes making mistakes.

Every single thing our bodies do requires movement—initiated by our musculoskeletal system—to be performed with ease. Digestion, immunity, reproduction—all of these functions require us to move. You can eat the perfect diet, sleep eight hours a night, and use only baking soda and vinegar to clean your house, but without the loads created by natural movement, all of these worthy efforts are thwarted on a cellular level, and your optimal wellness level remains elusive.

Once people understand that women are fertile for only a fraction of the time men are, they are especially struck with the inequity of it all. So it’s particularly interesting to examine the ways in which women have been disproportionately exposed to side effects throughout their cycle. For example, there are many who will concede that while the pill was originally designed to sexually emancipate women, it has also had the effect of burdening the woman with the sole responsibility of birth control.

Readers acquainted with the recent literature on human sexuality will be familiar with what we call the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, hereafter shortened to the standard narrative. It goes something like this: 1. Boy Meets girl, 2. Boy and girl assess one and others mate value, from perspectives based upon their differing reproductive agendas/capacities. He looks for signs of youth, fertility, health, absence of previous sexual experience and likelihood of future sexual fidelity. In other words, his assessment is skewed toward finding a fertile, healthy young mate with many childbearing years ahead and no current children to drain his resources. She looks for signs of wealth (or at least prospects of future wealth), social status, physical health and likelihood that he will stick around to protect and provide for their children. Her guy must be willing and able to provide materially for her (especially during pregnancy and breastfeeding) and their children, known as "male parental investment". 3. Boy gets girl. Assuming they meet one and others criteria, they mate, forming a long term pair bond, "the fundamental condition of the human species" as famed author Desmond Morris put it. Once the pair bond is formed, she will be sensitive to indications that he is considering leaving, vigilant towards signs of infidelity involving intimacy with other women that would threaten her access to his resources and protection while keeping an eye out (around ovulation especially) for a quick fling with a man genetically superior to her husband. He will be sensitive to signs of her sexual infidelities which would reduce his all important paternity certainty while taking advantage of short term sexual opportunities with other women as his sperm are easily produced and plentiful. Researchers claim to have confirmed these basic patterns in studies conducted around the world over several decades. Their results seem to support the standard narrative of human sexual evolution, which appears to make a lot of sense, but they don't, and it doesn't.

It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a program of deliberate disinformation, keep telling the public that we still don't know whether electropollution is a threat to human health. That's simply not true. Certainly we need to know more, but a multitude of risks have been well documented.
Three dangers overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively proven: ELF electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hertz, even if they're weaker than the earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result. Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electropollution, increasing cancer rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climatic manipulation from a sorcerer's-apprentice level of ignorance.


Since the inferior always outnumber the superior, the former would always increase more rapidly if they possessed the same capacities for survival and reproduction. The end result would be that the best would be driven into the background. Therefore a corrective measure in favor of the better must intervene. Nature supplies this by establishing rigorous living conditions, to which the weaker will have to submit and will thereby be numerically restricted. But even the portion that survives cannot reproduce indiscriminately, for here a new and rigorous selection takes place, according to strength and health.

Most women feel isolated, with few policies or governmental programs to support motherhood (particularly working motherhood), and few if any systems in place to address maternal mental health. "We've lost any sense of power around our bodies," Joseph told me. We often talk about choice as if it is the be-all and end-all, as if it is something possessed by certain women and not others, as if it is a simple solution, when all of our choices exist within a warped system that denies both maternal power and maternal vulnerability. "Reproductive freeodom," Roberts writes, "is a matter of reproductive justice, not individual choice.

Reproductive hormones aren’t the only hormones that affect how you look and feel and think. Among the most influential are the hormones produced by your thyroid gland. Too little thyroid, and you feel like a slug. Hypothyroidism makes you feel like you just want to lie on the couch all day with a bag of chips. Everything works slower, including your heart, your bowels, and your brain. When we perform SPECT scans of people with hypothyroidism, we see decreased brain activity. Many other studies confirm that overall low brain function in hypothyroidism leads to depression, cognitive impairment, anxiety, and feelings of being in a mental fog. The thyroid gland drives the production of many neurotransmitters that run the brain, such as serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, and noradrenaline. A

In 1995, China passed the National Maternal and Infant Health Law, forbidding couples who had “genetic diseases of a serious nature” to procreate. The conditions listed include mental retardation, mental illness, and seizures. These couples were required to undergo a mandatory premarital medical exam. It was hugely controversial, reviving international criticism that China practices eugenics. Actually, the wording of the national law was considered mild. Some provinces had more explicit regulations. In 1988, Gansu Province passed local regulations prohibiting “reproduction of the dull-witted, idiots, or blockheads.” Gansu abolished that law in 2002. Similarly, the National Maternal and Infant Health Law was defanged when requirements for the premarital medical examination were quietly dropped in 2003.

Meanwhile in Wichita, Kansas, Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors who performs late-term abortions—only about 1 percent of all procedures but crucial when, for instance, a fetus develops without a brain—is shot in both arms by a female picketer. He recovers and continues serving women who come to him from many states. I finally meet Dr. Tiller in 2008 at a New York gathering of Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. I ask him if he has ever helped a woman who was protesting at his clinic. He says: “Of course, I’m there to help them, not to add to their troubles. They probably already feel guilty.” In 2009 Dr. Tiller is shot in the head at close range by a male activist hiding inside the Lutheran church where the Tiller family worships each Sunday. This is done in the name of being “pro-life.

Wealthy queers support initiatives that lock up and murder poor queers, trans* people, and sex workers. Women in positions of power continue to defend and sometimes initiate the vicious assault on abortion and reproductive rights, and then off-load reproductive labor onto the shoulders of care workers, who are predominantly women of color whose employment is often directly tied to their citizenship status. The politics of "leaning in" for a small layer of wealthy women has dovetailed with budget cuts and health care rollbacks that have left poor women at the mercy of misogynist, increasingly lethal anti-reproductive-rights legislation, and left poor, queer and trans* people without access to necessary medical resources like hormones or AIDS medication. Original pamphlet: Who is Oakland. April 2012. Quoted in: Dangerous Allies. Taking Sides.

Many arms races bankrupt all those who take part in them, without really changing the military balance of power. When Pakistan buys advanced aeroplanes, India responds in kind. When India develops nuclear bombs, Pakistan follows suit. When Pakistan enlarges its navy, India counters. At the end of the process, the balance of power may remain much as it was, but meanwhile billions of dollars that could have been invested in education or health are spent on weapons. Yet the arms race dynamic is hard to resist. ‘Arms racing’ is a pattern of behaviour that spreads itself like a virus from one country to another, harming everyone, but benefiting itself, under the evolutionary criteria of survival and reproduction. (Keep in mind that an arms race, like a gene, has no awareness – it does not consciously seek to survive and reproduce. Its spread is the unintended result of a powerful dynamic.)

To make sense of the seemingly random structure of the brain, in 1967 Dr. Paul MacLean of the National Institute of Mental Health applied Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to the brain. He divided the brain into three parts. (Since then, studies have shown that there are refinements to this model, but we will use it as a rough organizing principle to explain the overall structure of the brain.) First, he noticed that the back and center part of our brains, containing the brain stem, cerebellum, and basal ganglia, are almost identical to the brains of reptiles. Known as the “reptilian brain,” these are the oldest structures of the brain, governing basic animal functions such as balance, breathing, digestion, heartbeat, and blood pressure. They also control behaviors such as fighting, hunting, mating, and territoriality, which are necessary for survival and reproduction. The reptilian brain can be traced back about 500 million years.

Human evolution is not over, but the chances of natural selection adapting our species in dramatic, major ways to common non-infectious mismatch diseases are remote unless conditions change dramatically. One reason is that many of these diseases have little to no effect on fertility. Type 2 diabetes, for example, generally develops after people have reproduced, and even then, it is highly manageable for many years.8 Another consideration is that natural selection can act only on variations that affect reproductive success and that are also genetically passed from parent to offspring. Some obesity-related illnesses can hinder reproductive function, but these problems have strong environmental causes.9 Finally, although culture sometimes spurs selection, it is also a powerful buffer. Every year new products and therapies are being developed that allow people with common mismatch diseases to cope better with their symptoms. Whatever selection is operating is probably occurring at a pace too slow to measure in our lifetimes.

The history of HRT use dates back to 1966 and the success of Dr. Robert Wilson’s best-selling book Feminine Forever, which he promoted vigorously. The premise of the book was that it was as natural and necessary for a menopausal woman to replace estrogen as it was for a diabetic to replace insulin. Dr. Wilson preached that doing so would keep a woman young, healthy, and attractive. He went so far as to declare that the lack of eggs and decline of reproductive hormones in a menopausal woman was a “galloping catastrophe”5 that could only be averted by taking estrogen supplements. He explained that with estrogen supplements, “Breasts and genital organs will not shrivel. Such women will be much more pleasant to live with and will not become dull and unattractive.” According to Dr. Wilson’s son, Ronald, all of his father’s expenses to write Feminine Forever were paid for by Wyeth-Ayerst, the maker of the synthetic estrogen supplement Premarin. He also said that Wyeth-Ayerst financed his father’s organization, the Wilson Research Foundation, which had offices on Park Avenue in Manhattan.

It may be hard to convince ourselves that something we can't see, hear, touch, taste, or smell can still hurt us so dreadfully. Yet the fact must be faced, just as we've learned a healthy fear of nuclear radiation. Certain scientists, some perhaps acting in a program of deliberate disinformation, keep telling the public that we still don't know whether electropollution is a threat to human health. That's simply not true. Certainly we need to know more, but a multitude of risks have been well documented. Three dangers overshadow all others. The first has been conclusively proven: ELF electromagnetic fields vibrating at about 30 to 100 hertz, even if they're weaker than the earth's field, interfere with the cues that keep our biological cycles properly timed; chronic stress and impaired disease resistance result. Second, the available evidence strongly suggests that regulation of cellular growth processes is impaired by electropollution, increasing cancer rates and producing serious reproductive problems. Electromagnetic weapons constitute a third class of hazards culminating in climatic manipulation from a sorcerer's-apprentice level of ignorance.

Underlying phenomena such as the ‘feminisation’, ‘masculinisation’ and ‘juvenilisation’ of poverty, and other identity ways to describe segments of the poverty population such as the poverty of the elderly, or the ‘feminisation of the proletariat’, the ‘feminisation of migration’, or the disproportionate poverty of racial and ethnic minorities, is the impoverishment the working class, the deterioration in the working class’s standard of living and family stability. Consequently, while policies targeted at different poverty populations are important to help and improve the lives of those who are already poor, it must also be recognised that poverty is not uniquely a women’s issue, or a men’s issue, and so forth: poverty is a class issue which can, at best, be ameliorated – not resolved because it is endemic to the capitalist mode of production – through labour’s collective action, through unionisation and struggles for job training and job creation aimed at creating employment for manual, skilled and unskilled labour, in addition to programmes intended to enhance the health and educational opportunities for everyone, regardless of gender, race or ethnicity.

If farming was “the biggest mistake in human history,” which triggered lots of evolutionary mismatch diseases, then why did it spread so rapidly and thoroughly? The biggest reason is that farmers pump out babies much faster than hunter-gatherers. In today’s economy, a higher reproductive rate often entails ominous connotations of expense: more mouths to feed, more college tuition bills to pay. Too many children can be a source of poverty. But to farmers, more offspring yield more wealth because children are a useful, fantastic labor force. After a few years of care, a farmer’s children can work in the fields and in the home, helping to take care of crops, herd animals, mind younger children, and process food. In fact, a large part of the success of farming is that farmers breed their own labor force more effectively than hunter-gatherers, which pumps energy back into the system, driving up fertility rates.20 Farming therefore leads to exponential population growth, causing farming to spread. Another factor that encouraged the spread of agriculture is the way farmers alter the ecology around their farms in ways that hinder if not prevent any more hunting and gathering. Occasionally

We are in uncharted territory" when it comes to sex and the internet, says Justin Garcia, a research scientist at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. "There have been two major transitions" in heterosexual mating, Garcia says, "in the last four million years. The first was around ten to fifteen thousand years ago, in the agricultural revolution, when we became less migratory and more settled," leading to the establishment of marriage as a cultural contract. "And the second major transition is with the rise of the Internet," Garcia says. Suddenly, instead of meeting through proximity, community connections, and family and friends, people could meet each other virtually and engage in amorous activity with the click of a button. Internet meeting is now surpassing every other form. “It’s changing so much about the way we act both romantically and sexually,” Garcia says. “It is unprecedented from an evolutionary standpoint.” And yet this massive shift in our behavior has gone almost completely unexamined, especially given how the internet permeates modern life. While there have been studies about how men and women use social media differently- how they use language and present themselves differently, for example- there's not a lot of research about how they behave sexually online; and there is virtually nothing about how girls and boys do. While there has been concern about the online interaction of children and adults, it's striking that so little attention has been paid to the ways in which the Internet has changed the sexual behavior of girls and boys interacting together. This may be because the behavior has been largely hidden or unknown, or, again, due to the fear of not seeming "sex-positive," mistaking responsibility for judgement. And there are questions to ask, from the standpoint of girls' and boys' physical and emotional health and the ethics of their treatment of each other. Sex on a screen is different from sex that develops in person, this much seems seems self-evident, just as talking on a screen is different from face-to-face communication. And so if talking on a screen reduces one's ability to be empathic, for example, then how does sex on a screen change sexual behavior? Are people more likely to act aggressively or unethically, as in other types of online communication? How do gender roles and sexism play into cybersex? And how does the influence of porn, which became available online at about the same time as social networking, factor in?

It is very important to note, however, that the only segment of the population from whom changing our social and economic conditions in the ways that prevent violence would exact a higher cost would be the extremely wealthy upper, or ruling, class — the wealthiest one per cent of the population (which in the United States today controls some 39 per cent of the total wealth of the nation, and 48 per cent of the financial wealth, as shown by Wolff in Top Heavy (1996). The other 99 per cent of the population — namely, the middle class and the lower class — would benefit, not only form decreased rates of violence (which primarily victimize the very poor), but also from a more equitable distribution of the collective wealth and income of our unprecedentedly wealthy societies. Even on a worldwide scale, it would require a remarkably small sacrifice from the wealthiest individuals and nations to raise everyone on earth, including the populations of the poorest nations, above the subsistence level, as the United Nations Human Development Report 1998, has shown. I emphasize the wealthiest individuals as well as nations because, as the U.N. report documents, a tiny number of the wealthiest individuals actually possess wealth on a scale that is larger than the annual income of most of the nations of the earth. For example, the three richest individuals on earth have assets that exceed the combined Gross Domestic Product of the fortyeight poorest countries! The assets of the 84 richest individuals exceed the Gross Domestic Product of the most populous nation on earth, China, with 1.2 billion inhabitants. The 225 richest individuals have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion, which is equal to the annual income of the poorest 47 per cent of the world's population, or 2.5 billion people. By comparison, it is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, basic health care for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly $40 billion a year. This is less than 4 per cent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people in the world. It has been shown throughout the world, both internationally and intranationally, that reducing economic inequities not only improves physical health and reduces the rate of death from natural causes far more effectively than doctors, medicines, and hospitals; it also decreases the rate of death from both criminal and political violence far more effectively than any system of police forces, prisons, or military interventions ever invented.

The right to choose to abort a fetus is critical, as is the ability to effect that choice in real life, so it's great that Hillary Clinton wants to repeal the Hyde Amendment. But without welfare, single-payer health care, a minimum wage of at least $15--all policies she staunchly opposes--many people have to forgo babies they'd really love to have. That's not really a choice. It seems ill-conceived to have tethered feminism to such a narrow issue as abortion. Yet it makes sense from an insular Beltway fundraising perspective to focus on an issue that makes no demands--the opposite, really--of the oligarch class; this is probably a big reason why EMILY'S List has never dabbled in backing universal pre-K or paid maternity leave; a major reason 'reproductive choice' has such a narrow and negative definition in the American political discourse. The thing is, an abortion is by definition a story you want to forget, not repeat and relive. And for the same reason abortion pills will never be the blockbuster moneymakers heartburn medications are, abortion is a consummately foolish thing to attempt to build a political movement around. It happens once or twice in a woman's lifetime. Kids, on the other hand, are with you forever. A more promising movement--one that goes against everything Hillary Clinton stands for--might take that to heart.

To paint after nature is to transfer three-dimensional corporeality to a two-dimensional surface. This you can do if you are in good health and not colorblind. Oil paint, canvas, and brush are material and tools. It is possible by expedient distribution of oil paint on canvas to copy natural impressions; under favorable conditions you can do it so accurately that the picture cannot be distinguished from the model. You start, let us say, with a white canvas primed for oil painting and sketch in with charcoal the most discernible lines of the natural form you have chosen. Only the first line may be drawn more or less arbitrarily, all the others must form with the first the angle prescribed by the natural model. By constant comparison of the sketch with the model, the lines can be so adjusted that the lines of the sketch will correspond to those of the model. Lines are now drawn by feeling, the accuracy of the feeling is checked and measured by comparison of the estimated angle of the line with the perpendicular in nature and in the sketch. Then, according to the apparent proportions between the parts of the model, you sketch in the proportions between parts on the canvas, preferably by means of broken lines delimiting these parts. The size of the first part is arbitrary, unless your plan is to represent a part, such as the head, in 'life size.' In that case you measure with a compass an imaginary line running parallel to a plane on the natural object conceived as a plane on the picture, and use this measurement in representing the first part. You adjust all the remaining parts to the first through feeling, according to the corresponding parts of the model, and check your feeling by measurement; to do this, you place the picture so far away form you that the first part appears as large in the painting as the model, and then you compare. In order to check a given proportion, you hold out the handle of your paintbrush at arm's length towards this proportion in such a way that the end of the thumbnail on the handle coincides with the other end of the proportion. If then you hold the paintbrush out towards the picture, again at arm's length, you can, by the measurement thus obtained, determine with photographic accuracy whether your feeling has deceived you. If the sketch is correct, you fill in the parts of the picture with color, according to nature. The most expedient method is to begin with a clearly recognizable color of large area, perhaps with a somewhat broken blue. You estimate the degree of matness and break the luminosity with a complimentary color, ultramarine, for example, with light ochre. By addition of white you can make the color light, by addition of black dark. All this can be learned. The best way of checking for accuracy is to place the picture directly beside the projected picture surface in nature, return to your old place and compare the color in your picture with the natural color. By breaking those tones that are too bright and adding those that are still lacking, you will achieve a color tonality as close as possible to that in nature. If one tone is correct, you can put the picture back in its place and adjust the other colors to the first by feeling. You can check your feeling by comparing every tone directly with nature, after setting the picture back beside the model. If you have patience and adjust all large and small lines, all forms and color tones according to nature, you will have an exact reproduction of nature. This can be learned. This can be taught. And in addition, you can avoid making too many mistakes in 'feeling' by studying nature itself through anatomy and perspective and your medium through color theory. That is academy.

Part One—The Lipid Panel. Used to evaluate heart health, this panel comprises of four biological markers representing the four types of fat found in the blood—triglycerides, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein (HDL), and low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Two additional measures of cardiovascular health, homocysteine and c-reactive protein (CRP), may also be measured as part of a more comprehensive profile. These two labs are discussed in Part Six, “Optional Tests” (see page 8). •  Part Two—The Basic Metabolic Panel. The labs used to evaluate metabolism measure blood sugar regulation, electrolyte and fluid balance, and kidney function. Biomarkers included in this panel are glucose, calcium, sodium, potassium, blood urea nitrogen (BUN), and creatinine. •  Part Three—The Hepatic Function Panel. This panel determines how well your liver is functioning by measuring levels of different proteins produced and processed by the liver, like albumin and globulin, as well as liver enzymes. •  Part Four—The Complete Blood Count (CBC) Panel. The lab values measured in the complete blood count (CBC) panel include red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and hemoglobin. Maintaining healthy levels of these biomarkers affect your vitality and energy, immune system, and cardiovascular health. •  Part Five—Hormones. Although they are not always included in a routine blood test, hormones should be periodically tested, especially in aging adults. Hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, DHEA, and prostate specific antigen (PSA) play an integral role in reproductive wellness and affect other aspects of health. Maintaining balanced levels can slow down the aging process, for instance. Hormones involved in metabolism, like the thyroid hormones and the stress hormone cortisol, are also discussed in this section. •  Part Six—Optional Tests. This final part of the book highlights four tests—homocysteine, c-reactive protein (CRP), vitamin D, and magnesium—that are not typically measured unless requested, or if a standard blood test shows an abnormality that requires a more in-depth analysis. These tests can provide a more complete picture of heart health, immunity, calcium absorption, blood sugar regulation, and a number of other vital processes.

Our young are so dependent that no parent is capable of the task of supporting and caring for that infant—not just the attention and protection, but the teaching and feeding. Hunters and gatherers must meet the energy demands of lactating mothers back in camp. Mothers simply cannot raise infants alone, and this dictates social bonding. The basic social contract has babies as its bottom line. Without this, the human species cannot go on as it is. All evolution hinges on successful reproduction of the next generation. In the case of humans, this is an enormous task. Through all human time, across all human cultures, there emerges a number associated with this task. It takes a ratio of four adults to one child to allow humans to go on. This is the real cost of our big brains. This is why we must cooperate, and why tools like empathy and language evolved to enable that cooperation. All else of human nature is derivative of this single human condition.

For most of recorded history, the treatment of women's sexual and reproductive health was the almost exclusive bailiwick of women, including the "juries of matrons" who performed the genital examinations required in the evaluation of rape and annulment cases and who were among the rare women considered qualified to give testimony in medieval courts of law.

So how can genetics explain altruistic scenarios? In 1964, WD Hamilton proposed a ‘model of inclusive fitness’ which suggested “no one is prepared to sacrifice his life for any single person but that everyone will sacrifice it when he can thereby save more than two brothers, or four half-brothers, or eight first cousins …” Conversely, while selfish behaviour against immediate siblings or close relatives will not evolve, from a gene’s point of view, “it is worthwhile to deprive a large number of distant relatives in order to extract a small reproductive advantage.”54

There are one or two variations to this rule: a post-reproductive animal or human can afford to be totally altruistic from a genetic point of view. Grandmas and elderly spinster aunts have great evolutionary value. (We shall return to the role of grandmothers in co-operative nurturing of children.) And the menopause gives a human mother more time to perform her child-rearing and educational role, freed from the duties of reproduction, which tend to limit her selfless streak.

Even those who claimed he’d never be president credited him with reaching voters in a visceral way, as having a gift for channeling the rage of a white America which felt it had been left behind, had its privileges stolen by female, nonwhite interlopers—the kinds of people who’d never occupied the White House or held representative numbers of seats in legislative bodies, people who were paid less, taxed more for health care, and denied full control of their reproductive lives, but who had given such a convincing impression of having taken up more than an equal share of space that they were the objects of the resentful ire being channeled by the orange-tinted and toupéed businessman from Queens. The guy who just kept winning primaries.

The day Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced that he was going to do everything he could to repeal the Affordable Care Act and defund Planned Parenthood, [...] we saw a 900% increase in requests for appointments to get IUDs, a form of birth control that lasts for several years. Women wanted to make sure their birth control would outlast the [new] Administration.

only a remote possibility in the United States, since existing reproductive procedures such as IVF and PGD, which routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars, are seldom covered by health insurance. But in places like France, Israel, and Sweden, countries whose national health plans cover assisted reproduction, it’s possible that simple economics will incentivize governments to make gene editing available to patients who need it. After all, providing lifelong treatment to a single person with a genetic disease could be much more expensive than prophylactic intervention in the embryo using gene editing.

Let’s first consider how farming led to natural selection. It bears repeating that the very first farmers lived about 600 to 500 generations ago, and in most parts of the world, farming has been practiced for less than 300 generations. From an evolutionary perspective, this is not much time for lots of major evolutionary change, such as a new species evolving, but it is enough time for genes with strong effects on survival and reproduction to change their frequencies appreciably within populations. In fact, because farming so profoundly altered people’s diets, the pathogens they encountered, the work they did, and the number of children they could have, the origins of agriculture probably intensified selection on certain genes.

At times like the present, however, when more and more physicians hesitate to perform abortions for fear that they will hurt their image, and when medical schools no longer teach the procedure to their regular medical students, women lose their equal access to abortion, and poor women in particular are denied reproductive autonomy.172

The major religious fundamentalisms—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu—certainly all demonstrate intense concern for and scrutiny of bodies, through dietary restrictions, corporeal rituals, sexual mandates and prohibitions, and even practices of corporeal mortification and abnegation. What primarily distinguishes fundamentalists from other religious practitioners, in fact, is the extreme importance they give to the body: what it does, what parts of it appear in public, what goes into and comes out of it. Even when fundamentalist norms require hiding a part of the body behind a veil, headscarf, or other articles of clothing, they are really signaling its extraordinary importance. Women’s bodies are obviously the object of the most obsessive scrutiny and regulation in religious fundamentalism, but no bodies are completely exempt from examination and control—men’s bodies, adolescents’ bodies, infants’ bodies, even the bodies of the dead. The fundamentalist body is powerful, explosive, precarious, and that is why it requires constant inspection and care… Nationalist fundamentalisms similarly concentrate on bodies through their attention to and care for the population. The nationalist policies deploy a wide range of techniques for corporeal health and welfare, analyzing birthrates and sanitation, nutrition and housing, disease control and reproductive practices. Bodies themselves constitute the nation, and thus the nation’s highest goal is their promotion and preservation. Like religious fundamentalisms, however, nationalisms, although their gaze seems to focus intently on bodies, really see them merely as an indication or symptom of the ultimate, transcendent object of national identity. With its moral face, nationalism looks past the bodies to see national character, whereas with its militarist face, it sees the sacrifice of bodies in battle as revealing the national spirit. The martyr or the patriotic soldier is thus for nationalism too the paradigmatic figure for how the body is made to disappear and leave behind only an index to a higher plane. Given this characteristic double relation to the body, it makes sense to consider white supremacy (and racism in general) a form of fundamentalism.

Gates’s strong patronage of HPV vaccines (Gardasil and Cervarix) deepened suspicions that he was weaponizing vaccination against human fertility. Merck’s clinical trials showed strong signals for reproductive harm from Gardasil.177, 178 People in the study suffered reproductive problems including premature ovarian failure at ten times background rates. Female fertility has dropped precipitously beginning in 2006 in the United States, coterminous with Gardasil uptake.179, 180 Historical drops in fecundity have occurred in every nation with high Gardasil uptake.181

Sex hormones/Reproductive health history. Sex hormone imbalances can be a factor in Hashimoto’s, and here is some of the information I ask for on my health history forms: Do you currently take, or have you taken oral contraceptives or bioidentical hormones? Do you currently take, or have you had an intrauterine device (IUD)? If you answered “yes,” was it a copper or hormonal IUD? How many live births have you had? Were they natural births or Cesarean sections? Is there a history of ovarian cysts? Is there a history of uterine fibroids? Is there a history of endometriosis? Is there a history of fibrocystic breasts?

Remember that for millions of years natural selection favored women who devoted whatever extra energy they had toward reproduction, partly through the action of reproductive hormones such as estrogen. Natural selection, however, never geared women's bodies for coping with long-term surfeits of energy, estrogen, and other related hormones. As a result, women today are very different and vastly more at risk of developing cancer than mothers from long ago because their bodies are still functioning as they evolved to have as many surviving children as possible.

In the late 1960s, a park could purchase an Atlantic bottlenose dolphin for about $300. Today, that same species will cost more than $100,000. Indeed, this spike in price has forced zoos to change their entire philosophy. “The attitude was these marine mammals were an expendable commodity,” a former vice president of Sea World confided. “If these animals perished, you’d just go out and replace them. The ease didn’t drive a great deal of research of what they needed to keep them healthy.[...] Yet if “expendability” was the industry’s previous philosophy, “reproduction” came to be its new one.

However, the false idea that the ovaries were dead after menopause also came from the long-standing belief that a woman’s main value lay in her reproductive ability and so the end of fertility meant women were hanging around in the Grim Reaper’s lounge waiting for their callout.

Motherhood seems to be a no-win battle: however you decide to do (or not do) it, someone’s going to be criticizing you. You went to too great lengths trying to conceive. You didn’t go to great enough lengths. You had the baby too young. You should have kept the baby even though you were young. You shouldn’t have waited so long to try to have a baby. You’re a too involved mother. You’re not involved enough because you let your child play on the playground alone. It never ends. It strikes me that while all this judgment goes on, the options available to women become fewer and fewer. I’m not even (just) talking about the right to choose—across the U.S., women have less access to birth control, health care, reproductive education, and post-partum support. So we give women less information about their bodies and reproduction, less control over their bodies, and less support during and after pregnancy—and then we criticize them fiercely for whatever they end up doing. This seems not only unfair to me but a recipe for societal disaster. I don’t have answers here, but I wanted to raise questions about what we expect of mothers and who we think “deserves” to be a mother and who doesn’t—and why we think that question is ours to decide.

In the NGO universe, which has evolved a strange anodyne language of its own, everything has become a “subject”, a separate, professionalised, special-interest issue. Community development, leadership development, human rights, health, education, reproductive rights, AIDS, orphans with AIDS—have all been hermetically sealed into their own silos with their own elaborate and precise funding brief. Funding has fragmented solidarity in ways that repression never could.

The critique of the male medical establishment and in particular the medicalization of childbirth were already becoming prominent concerns within the emerging women’s health movement, and engendering its related critiques of biological determinism, sexism in science, and patriarchal epistemology. At the same time, the issue of population control dominated the global planning agenda, as well as the family planning one. The intertwined debates about abortion, contraception, planned parenthood, and population growth all concerned access to technology, improvements in basic research on reproduction, and technological innovation, and espoused a linear technological trajectory of increased biological control in which birth control = population control = evolutionary control.

Their thesis in this book is that the advice given to American women by male health professionals, particularly in the areas of marital sex, maternity, and child care, has echoed the dictates of the economic marketplace and the role capitalism has needed women to play in production and/or reproduction. Women have become the consumer victims of various cures, therapies, and normative judgements in different periods (including the prescription to middle-class women to embody and preserve the sacredness of the home—the “scientific” romanticiza-tion of the home itself). None of the “experts’” advice has been either particularly scientific or women-oriented; it has reflected male needs, male fantasies about women, and male interest in controlling women—particularly in the realms of sexuality and motherhood—fused with the require-ments of industrial capitalism.

Women needed access to reliable birth control and information about their reproductive health. And I did not believe in minors becoming pregnant under any circumstances.

Did you know that if you’re a middle-aged woman, you have only a small window of opportunity between the beginning of perimenopause and the start of menopause to start estrogen replacement therapy to protect not only your brain but also your bones and cardiovascular system? I did not, until I dug into the science, because as a woman who was diagnosed with a stage 0 breast lump, I was scared off like so many of us from the results of the Women’s Health Initiative, which got blasted out all over the news and initially showed a link between estrogen replacement therapy and breast cancer, but guess what? That study had so many flaws, its findings are little more than useless and possibly harmful. Worse, women like me without uteri show a decrease in breast cancer with estrogen replacement therapy. But this information never made it either into the headlines or into our gynecologists’ offices. I had to find it in scientific publications such as The Lancet online. In fact, get this: Our medical system barely trains gynecologists in menopausal medicine. A recent study found that only 20 percent of ob-gyn residency programs in the U.S. provide any menopause training. Yes, any. Which means that 80 percent of all gynecological residents in school today are getting no training whatsoever in post-reproductive women’s health. These are people whose job it is to know everything going on in our ladyparts, but they have not been taught the basic tenets of how to care for either us or our plumbing after we stop menstruating. And by “us” I mean 30 percent of all women alive on earth at any given moment. Half of my middle-aged female friends deal with chronic urinary tract infections. Oh, well, we think, throwing up our hands in defeat and consuming far too many antibiotics than are rational or safe or even good for the future safety of humanity. It took Dr. Rachel Rubin, a urologist in Washington, D.C., reaching out to me over Twitter to explain that UTIs in menopausal women do not have to be recurrent. They can be mitigated with, yes, vaginal estrogen. Not once was I ever

Reproductive justice, a phrase coined by Black feminists at a conference in 1994, remains elusive for African American women who struggle to access affordable health care due to social and economic inequalities. The abortion rate for Black women is nearly five times that for white women. African American women are three to four times more likely to die in childbirth than white women. Furthermore, health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women, such as uterine fibroids, receive very little government research funding. My hope is that this novel will provoke discussions about culpability in a society that still deems poor, Black, and disabled as categories unfit for motherhood.

It’s also misogynistic to tie a description for one-third or possibly even one-half of a woman’s life to the function of her uterus and ovaries. We don’t define men as they age by an obvious physical change in their reproductive function.

As a society, we cannot afford to overlook the nexus between environmental health and reproductive well-being. The future health and vitality of our communities depend on our collective commitment to creating a cleaner, safer environment for everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable.

The conversation would look very different if we truly believed gender freedom is the goal for everyone; changing your name, pronouns, body, and/or appearance to feel more authentic was just another part of self-growth celebrated in our culture; we applied “my body, my choice” and a belief in bodily autonomy to gender and not just reproductive health. Wait…

But here, there were obstacles: religious, cultural, and legal. In the United States, disseminating contraceptives—or even just information about how to use them—was banned by the government well into the 1960s. The National Institutes of Health refused to fund basic research in the reproductive sciences and was outright forbidden from funding birth control research until 1959.

The body is not shaped for maximum health or longevity; it is shaped for maximum transmission of its genes. Alleles (different versions of a gene) that increase the number of offspring become more common over the generations, even if that shortens life and increases suffering. This is not merely theoretical. Half of the human population has been shaped by selection to live fast and die young.61 I mean, of course, the fragile sex. On the average, men die seven years sooner than women do. From ages zero to ten in developed countries, for every 100 girls who die, 150 boys die. At puberty and shortly thereafter, the ratio is 300 men for every 100 women.62,63 Why? The proximate explanation involves testosterone and its effect on tissues, immunity, and risk taking. The evolutionary explanation is that allocating effort and resources to competition instead of tissue repair increases reproduction more for males than females; males who win competitions get more mates and have more offspring.

Dr. Satcher was responding to the high incidence of sexually transmitted diseases as well as other concerns about sex in the United States: that nearly half of all pregnancies were unintended, the highest rate among the developed countries; that almost one in four women and one in five men have been victims of forced sex; and that more than a hundred thousand children a year are victims of sexual abuse. Noting that each of these problems has lifelong consequences not just for the individuals but also for their families, their communities, and the entire nation, Satcher was prompted to seek out scientific research and to explore public health strategies to address these issues. The result was a thin booklet, published in 2001 as The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Promote Sexual Health and Responsible Sexual Behavior. In it he wrote, Sexual health is inextricably bound to both physical and mental health. . . . Sexual health is not limited to the absence of disease or dysfunction, nor is its importance confined to just the reproductive years. . . . It includes freedom from sexual abuse and discrimination and the ability of individuals to integrate their sexuality into their lives, derive pleasure from it, and to reproduce if they so choose.

very painful for us to note that reproductive health has become a worldwide political “norm”, containing the most perverse things that the West has to offer to the rest of the world, which is seeking comprehensive development. How can Western heads of state exert such pressure on their counterparts in countries that are often fragile? Gender ideology has become the perverse condition for cooperation and development.

I try to keep my feminism simple. I know feminism is complex and evolving and flawed. I know feminism will not and cannot fix everything. I believe in equal opportunities for women and men. I believe in women having reproductive freedom and affordable and unfettered access to the health care they need. I believe women should be paid as much as men for doing the same work. Feminism is a choice, and if a woman does not want to be a feminist, that is her right, but it is still my responsibility to fight for her rights. I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn’t make certain choices for ourselves. I believe women not just in the United States but throughout the world deserve equality and freedom but know I am in no position to tell women of other cultures what that equality and freedom should look like.

When women and families have access to reproductive health care, including contraception and abortion care, they have children when the time is right for them and build stronger families and lives.

The best ways to motivate human beings are the oldest ways, tapping into timeless needs and emotions: hunger, thirst, fear of death, sex, beauty, identity, status, respect, honor, shame, love, compassion, community, fun. All of these tie back, directly or indirectly, to those most fundamental and evolutionary of motivations: survival and reproduction. The secret is learning how to tap these ancient motivations, and harnessing them to achieve modern goals.

Looking more closely, there are two pathways that link energy and estrogen to higher rates of reproductive cancers among women in developed countries. The first is how many menstrual cycles women experience. The average woman in countries such as the United States, England, and Japan starts menstruating when she is twelve or thirteen years old, and she continues to menstruate until her early fifties. Because she has access to birth control, she gets pregnant only once or twice over her lifetime. Further, after she gives birth, she probably breast-feeds her babies for less than a year. All told, she can expect to experience approximately 350 to 400 menstrual cycles during her life. In contrast, a typical hunter-gatherer woman starts menstruating when she is sixteen, and she spends the majority of her adult life either pregnant or nursing, often struggling to get enough energy to do so. She thus experiences a total of only about 150 menstrual cycles. Since each cycle floods a woman’s body with powerful hormones, it is not surprising that reproductive cancer rates have multiplied in recent generations as birth control and affluence has spread. The other key pathway that links chronic positive energy balances with reproductive cancers among women is through fat. Earlier,

In short, an evolutionary perspective explains why the embarrassment of riches many people now enjoy elevates their levels of reproductive hormones, which, along with birth control, then increases the likelihood that cancers will evolve in their breasts, ovaries, uteruses, and prostates. Many reproductive cancers are thus mismatch diseases that are ultimately linked to having lots of energy to spare. As economic development and processed food diets sweep

So many women have cancer now. Do you think a new esthetic can develop? Cancer beauty? I mean, if there could be heroin chic, the esthetic of the death-wishing drug addict? Will non-cancerous women be begging their cosmetic surgeons to give them fake node implants under their chins and around their necks? Under their arms? In their groins? So sexy, that fullness. And it works so well as an anti-aging technique, to fill out that sagging turkey neck. Who wouldn't want it? And the jewelry, the titanium pellets piercing those tits. So S&M/bondage." Dunja kept talking in Nathan's head as he segued into a parallel inner dialogue with her about health and evolution, about the theory that concepts of beauty were not just concepts, but perceptions of indicators of reproductive potential and therefore of youth, about selfish genes using our bodies as vehicles only to perpetuate themselves, about how perhaps cancer genes could begin to make their own case for reproductive immortality as well, and so they too would put immense pressure on cultural acceptance of formerly taboo concepts of beauty, concepts which used to indicate disease and nearness to death but now mesmerized and seduced and mimicked youth and ripeness and health, and so her little fantasy of a culture forming around her own dire straits could theoretically... Nathan could only just manage to keep looking into her searching eyes, feeling at that moment very sentimental and ordinary, and therefore mute. Could he really say anything about classical concepts of art, and therefore beauty, based on harmony, as opposed to modern theories, post-industrial-revolution, post-psychoanalysis, based on sickness and dysfunction? Could he make a case for her new, diseased self as the most avant-garde form of womanly beauty? He didn't dare, but she did.

Essential Vitamins For Men It's important for the male partner to get proper nutrients as well. Therefore, supplementation is usually a good idea. Here's a list of the vitamins and minerals that men need in order to have optimal reproductive and sperm health. There are others, and dosages can be higher, but this is a guideline to get your started. Zinc - 30 mg per day Selenium - 100-200 micrograms CoQ10 - 200 mg Vitamin E - 150-400 IU Folate - 500 micrograms B12 - 25 micrograms Vitamin C - 250-500 mg L-carnitine - 3-4 grams

When I called Nona Aguilar, author of The New No-Pill, No-Risk Birth Control (Simon & Schuster, 1986), I described my frustration that I was not acceptable to the training program at the Albuquerque clinic. “Well,” she said, respectfully, “I agree with that policy.” I leaned back in my chair. “Okay,” I said. “I don’t understand this. Please explain.” “Properly used,” she began, “sex is about emotional and psychological union. In our culture, artificial birth control—which feminists have strongly advocated—has made sex a recreational activity. Sex certainly can be recreational, but its potential is to be transcendent. Sex is the life-bearing force of humankind. When lovemaking is recreational, it’s a little like being color-blind during sunset over the Grand Canyon. Union becomes harder to experience, and that’s a loss.” With

no organism is primarily adapted to be healthy, long-lived, happy, or to achieve many other goals for which people strive. As a reminder, adaptations are features shaped by natural selection that promote relative reproductive success (fitness). Consequently, adaptations evolve to promote health, longevity, and happiness only insofar as these qualities benefit an individual’s ability to have more surviving offspring. To return to an earlier topic, humans evolved to be prone to obesity not because excess fat makes us healthy, but because it increases fertility. Along the same lines, our species’ proclivities to be worried, anxious, and stressed cause much misery and unhappiness, but they are ancient adaptations to avoid or cope with danger. And

But if the history of women’s reproductive health demonstrates anything, it is that coercive policies are not only inhumane and unethical, they also fail to work, have extremely undesirable consequences—the neglect of Chinese infant girls is only one of the more drastic examples—and in the long run tend to discredit voluntary birth control programs, making people deeply suspicious of the entire movement to control fertility.