(Roughly) Daily

If you’re in possession of a uterus, at some point in your life you’ve likely gotten the message that having children isn’t a choice—it’s your duty. For well over a century, doctors, psychologists, and politicians have engaged in intense public campaigns to persuade American women to bear children, publicly exalting motherhood and warning of personal, and societal, peril if they don’t comply.

There’s a word for this: pronatalism, the promotion of baby-making for a nation’s social, political, and economic purposes…

The techniques that have been used to pressure American women to keep breeding are even more shocking than you might think– proselytizing, pseudoscience, and shaming–all committed in the name of turning women into mothers: “A Brief History of Bullying Women to Have Babies.”

* Margaret Sanger

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As we cherish choice, we might send healing birthday greetings to Helen Brooke Taussig; she was born on this date in 1898.  The founder of pediatric cardiology, Dr. Taussig pioneered the use of X-rays and fluoroscopy to identify heart defects in newborns; then in 1944, with surgeon Alfred Blalock, she developed a surgical procedure for treating blue baby syndrome. In the 1960s, Taussig was a leader in the identification of Thalidomide (a fertility drug) as a cause of birth defects, and an effective campaigner for its banning.

Though she chose never to marry nor have children herself, Taussig was responsible for advances that have saved millions of children’s lives.

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