Category Archives: Human Reproduction

A research essay published in PLoS Biology suggests that selfish chromosomes identified in mammals could explain why so many human embryos are lost early in pregnancy.

Getting pregnant and maintaining a pregnancy can be incredibly challenging for the human species. Approximately 4060% of embryos are lost between fertilization and birth, in many cases without a mother knowing that she is pregnant. Unfortunately, one in eight recognized pregnancies will also end in miscarriage.

A common cause for embryo death in utero is aneuploidy an excess or deficit of chromosomes. Gametes, or sex cells (the sperm and egg, in the case of human reproduction), possess half the number of chromosomes (23) as the other cells in the human body (46). When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the fertilized egg should possess a total of 46 chromosomes. However, this is often not the case, as Professor Laurence Hurst, director of the Milner Centre for Evolution, describes: Very many embryos have the wrong number of chromosomes, often 45 or 47, and nearly all of these die in the womb. Even in cases like Down syndrome with three copies of chromosome 21, about 80% sadly will not make it to term.

Considering that the human species has been evolving for thousands of years, the high prevalence of aneuploidy which is so lethal to reproduction has puzzled scientists. In a new essay, Hurst outlines several clues, collected through his study of reproduction across different organisms, which may help to explain why it can be so challenging for humans to have a baby.

Aneuploidy is an issue that can often be traced back to the manufacturing of eggs, rather than sperm, with over 70% of eggs estimated to carry the incorrect number of chromosomes. The molecular processes that result in aneuploidy appear to occur in the first two stages of egg manufacturing. Research in mice suggests that the first step is susceptible to genetic mutations capable of sneaking into over 50% of eggs that, upon fertilization, selfishly force the partner chromosome to be destroyed. It has long been suspected that this mechanism, known as centromeric drive, also occurs in humans.

Selfish mutations that endeavor to force out the partner chromosome, but ultimately fail, result in fertilized eggs with the wrong number of chromosomes aneuploidy. Interestingly, Hurst observed that, from an evolutionary standpoint, these mutations may possess an advantage. In mammals, he suggests that it is evolutionarily beneficial for embryos developing from eggs with the incorrect number of chromosomes to be lost, due to the energy expenditure required for a mother to continuously support the developing fetus in the womb.

Aneuploidy has been detected in every mammal that has been studied. However, when studying fish and amphibians which do not carry their offspring this problem has not been identified. In over 2000 fish embryos, not one was found with chromosomal errors from mum, Hurst describes. Chromosomal gain or loss is therefore a downside of feeding offspring in the womb, Hurst suggests.

Hurst believes that the human species as mammals could be vulnerable to the effect of selfish mutations. In mammals such as mice, which typically birth several pups in one litter, the death of an embryo offers resources to the survivors within the same litter. In humans, where a mother most commonly carries one baby at a time, the early death of an embryo with aneuploidy provides the opportunity for a mother to reproduce again, hopefully with a healthy pregnancy as the outcome.

Hursts research also identified that a protein, known as Bub1, could be implicated in aneuploidy. The levels of Bub1 go down as mothers get older and as the rate of embryonic chromosomal problems goes up. Identifying these suppressor proteins and increasing their level in older mothers could restore fertility, he says.

I would hope too that these insights will be one step to helping those women who experience difficulties getting pregnant, or suffer recurrent miscarriage, Hurst concludes.

Reference: Hurst LD. Selfish centromeres and the wastefulness of human reproduction. PLOS Bio. 2022;20(7):e3001671. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3001671.

This article is a rework of a press release issued by the University of Bath. Material has been edited for length and content.

Continue reading here:
Why Is It So Challenging for Humans To Have a Baby? - Technology Networks

Twenty years ago, when I was thirteen, I wrote an entry in my journal about abortion, which began, I have this huge thing weighing on me. That morning, in Bible class, which Id attended every day since the first grade at an evangelical school, in Houston, my teacher had led us in an exercise called Agree/Disagree. He presented us with moral propositions, and we stood up and physically chose sides. Abortion is always wrong, he offered, and there was no disagreement. We all walked to the wall that meant agree.

Then I raised my hand and, according to my journal, said, I think it is always morally wrong and absolutely murder, but if a woman is raped, I respect her right to get an abortion. Also, I said, if a woman knew the child would face a terrible life, the child might be better off. Dead? the teacher asked. My classmates said I needed to go to the other side, and I did. I felt guilty and guilty and guilty, I wrote in my journal. I didnt feel like a Christian when I was on that side of the room. I felt terrible, actually.... But I still have that thought that if a woman was raped, she has her right. But thats so strangeshe has a right to kill what would one day be her child? That issue is irresolved in my mind and it will eat at me until I sort it out.

I had always thought of abortion as it had been taught to me in school: it was a sin that irresponsible women committed to cover up another sin, having sex in a non-Christian manner. The moral universe was a stark battle of virtue and depravity, in which the only meaningful question about any possible action was whether or not it would be sanctioned in the eyes of God. Men were sinful, and the goodness of women was the essential bulwark against the corruption of the world. There was suffering built into this framework, but suffering was noble; justice would prevail, in the end, because God always provided for the faithful. It was these last tenets, prosperity-gospel principles that neatly erase the material causes of suffering in our history and our social policiesnot only regarding abortion but so much elsewhich toppled for me first. By the time I went to college, I understood that I was pro-choice.

America is, in many ways, a deeply religious countrythe only wealthy Western democracy in which more than half of the population claims to pray every day. (In Europe, the figure is twenty-two per cent.) Although seven out of ten American women who get abortions identify as Christian, the fight to make the procedure illegal is an almost entirely Christian phenomenon. Two-thirds of the national population and nearly ninety per cent of Congress affirm a tradition in which a teen-age girl continuing an unplanned pregnancy allowed for the salvation of the world, in which a corrupt government leader who demanded a Massacre of the Innocents almost killed the baby Jesus and damned us all in the process, and in which the Son of God entered the world as what the godless dare to call a clump of cells.

For centuries, most Christians believed that human personhood began months into the long course of pregnancy. It was only in the twentieth century that a dogmatic narrative, in which every pregnancy is an iteration of the same static story of creation, began both to shape American public policy and to occlude the reality of pregnancy as volatile and ambiguousas a process in which creation and destruction run in tandem. This newer narrative helped to erase an instinctive, long-held understanding that pregnancy does not begin with the presence of a child, and only sometimes ends with one. Even within the course of the same pregnancy, a person and the fetus she carries can shift between the roles of lover and beloved, host and parasite, vessel and divinity, victim and murderer; each body is capable of extinguishing the other, although one cannot survive alone. There is no human relationship more complex, more morally unstable than this.

The idea that a fetus is not just a full human but a superior and kinglike onea being whose survival is so paramount that another person can be legally compelled to accept harm, ruin, or death to insure itis a recent invention. For most of history, women ended unwanted pregnancies as they needed to, taking herbal or plant-derived preparations on their own or with the help of female healers and midwives, who presided over all forms of treatment and care connected with pregnancy. They were likely enough to think that they were simply restoring their menstruation, treating a blockage of blood. Pregnancy was not confirmed until quickening, the point at which the pregnant person could feel fetal movement, a measurement that relied on her testimony. Then as now, there was often nothing that distinguished the result of an abortionthe body expelling fetal tissuefrom a miscarriage.

Ancient records of abortifacient medicine are plentiful; ancient attempts to regulate abortion are rare. What regulations existed reflect concern with womens behavior and marital propriety, not with fetal life. The Code of the Assura, from the eleventh century B.C.E., mandated death for married women who got abortions without consulting their husbands; when husbands beat their wives hard enough to make them miscarry, the punishment was a fine. The first known Roman prohibition on abortion dates to the second century and prescribes exile for a woman who ends her pregnancy, because it might appear scandalous that she should be able to deny her husband of children without being punished. Likewise, the early Christian Church opposed abortion not as an act of murder but because of its association with sexual sin. (The Bible offers ambiguous guidance on the question of when life begins: Genesis 2:7 arguably implies that it begins at first breath; Exodus 21:22-24 suggests that, in Old Testament law, a fetus was not considered a person; Jeremiah 1:5 describes Gods hand in creation even before I formed you in the womb. Nowhere does the Bible clearly and directly address abortion.) Augustine, in the fourth century, favored the idea that God endowed a fetus with a soul only after its body was formeda point that Augustine placed, in line with Aristotelian tradition, somewhere between forty and eighty days into its development. There cannot yet be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation when it is not formed in flesh, and so not yet endowed with sense, he wrote. This was more or less the Churchs official position; it was affirmed eight centuries later by Thomas Aquinas.

In the early modern era, European attitudes began to change. The Black Death had dramatically lowered the continents population, and dealt a blow to most forms of economic activity; the Reformation had weakened the Churchs position as the essential intermediary between the layman and God. The social scientist Silvia Federici has argued, in her book Caliban and the Witch, that church and state waged deliberate campaigns to force women to give birth, in service of the emerging capitalist economy. Starting in the mid-16th century, while Portuguese ships were returning from Africa with their first human cargoes, all the European governments began to impose the severest penalties against contraception, abortion, and infanticide, Federici notes. Midwives and wise women were prosecuted for witchcraft, a catchall crime for deviancy from procreative sex. For the first time, male doctors began to control labor and delivery, and, Federici writes, in the case of a medical emergency they prioritized the life of the fetus over that of the mother. She goes on: While in the Middle Ages women had been able to use various forms of contraceptives, and had exercised an undisputed control over the birthing process, from now on their wombs became public territory, controlled by men and the state.

Martin Luther and John Calvin, the most influential figures of the Reformation, did not address abortion at any length. But Catholic doctrine started to shift, albeit slowly. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V labelled both abortion and contraception as homicide. This pronouncement was reversed three years later, by Pope Gregory XIV, who declared that abortion was only homicide if it took place after ensoulment, which he identified as occurring around twenty-four weeks into a pregnancy. Still, theologians continued to push the idea of embryonic humanity; in 1621, the physician Paolo Zacchia, an adviser to the Vatican, proclaimed that the soul was present from the moment of conception. Still, it was not until 1869 that Pope Pius IX affirmed this doctrine, proclaiming abortion at any point in pregnancy to be a sin punishable by excommunication.

When I found out I was pregnant, at the beginning of 2020, I wondered how the experience would change my understanding of life, of fetal personhood, of the morality of reproduction. Its been years since I traded the echo chamber of evangelical Texas for the echo chamber of progressive Brooklyn, but I can still sometimes feel the old world view flickering, a photographic negative underneath my vision. I have come to believe that abortion should be universally accessible, regulated only by medical codes and ethics, and not by the criminal-justice system. Still, in passing moments, I can imagine upholding the idea that our sole task when it comes to protecting life is to end the practice of abortion; I can imagine that seeming profoundly moral and unbelievably urgent. I would only need to think of the fetus in total isolationto imagine that it were not formed and contained by another body, and that body not formed and contained by a family, or a society, or a world.

As happens to many women, though, I became, if possible, more militant about the right to an abortion in the process of pregnancy, childbirth, and caregiving. It wasnt just the difficult things that had this effectthe paralyzing back spasms, the ragged desperation of sleeplessness, the thundering doom that pervaded every cell in my body when I weaned my child. And it wasnt just my newly visceral understanding of the anguish embedded in the facts of American family life. (A third of parents in one of the richest countries in the world struggle to afford diapers; in the first few months of the pandemic, as Jeff Bezoss net worth rose by forty-eight billion dollars, sixteen per cent of households with children did not have enough to eat.) What multiplied my commitment to abortion were the beautiful things about motherhood: in particular, the way I felt able to love my baby fully and singularly because I had chosen to give my body and life over to her. I had not been forced by law to make another person with my flesh, or to tear that flesh open to bring her into the world; I hadnt been driven by need to give that new person away to a stranger in the hope that she would never go to bed hungry. I had been able to choose this permanent rearrangement of my existence. That volition felt sacred.

Abortion is often talked about as a grave act that requires justification, but bringing a new life into the world felt, to me, like the decision that more clearly risked being a moral mistake. The debate about abortion in America is rooted in the largely unacknowledged premise that continuing a pregnancy is a prima facie moral good, the pro-choice Presbyterian minister Rebecca Todd Peters writes. But childbearing, Peters notes, is a morally weighted act, one that takes place in a world of limited and unequally distributed resources. Many people who get abortionsthe majority of whom are poor women who already have childrenunderstand this perfectly well. We ought to take the decision to continue a pregnancy far more seriously than we do, Peters writes.

I gave birth in the middle of a pandemic that previewed a future of cross-species viral transmission exacerbated by global warming, and during a summer when ten million acres on the West Coast burned. I knew that my child would not only live in this degrading world but contribute to that degradation. (Every year, the average American emits enough carbon to melt ten thousand tons of ice in the Antarctic ice sheets, David Wallace-Wells writes in his book The Uninhabitable Earth.) Just before COVID arrived, the science writer Meehan Crist published an essay in the London Review of Books titled Is it OK to have a child? (The title alludes to a question that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once asked in a live stream, on Instagram.) Crist details the environmental damage that we are doing, and the costs for the planet and for us and for those who will come after. Then she turns the question on its head. The idea of choosing whether or not to have a child, she writes, is predicated on a fantasy of control that quickly begins to dissipate when we acknowledge that the conditions for human flourishing are distributed so unevenly, and that, in an age of ecological catastrophe, we face a range of possible futures in which these conditions no longer reliably exist.

Visit link:
Is Abortion Sacred? - The New Yorker

SINGAPORE - A girl - who was sexually assaulted by a family friend when she was nine to 10 years old - was so badly traumatised that her science lessons and examination paper had to be modified to avoid the topic of human reproduction.

The girl, now 17, continues to display symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) connected to the assaults, the High Court heard on Monday (July 18).

Her assailant, now 60, was sentenced to 11 years' jail.

He pleaded guilty earlier to one count each of sexual assault by penetration and outrage of modesty committed in 2015.

Five other similar charges were taken into consideration in sentencing.

He cannot be named owing to a gag order to protect the victim's identity.

The court heard that the girl, whose parents were divorced, lived with her father and maternal grandmother.

In January 2015, her grandmother agreed to take care of the accused's daughter, who moved into their three-room flat.

Between January 2015 and March 2016, the accused would visit his daughter at the flat, usually during weekends.

During these weekly visits, he would ask the victim to chat with him on the sofa in the living room and took the opportunity to sexually assault her when no one else was around.

In the final incident, the victim was looking out of the kitchen window when the man whispered into her ear and molested her.

She managed to pull away, locked herself in her room and began crying and having panic attacks.

On hearing a knock, she opened the door thinking it was her grandmother, but found the man standing there instead.

He hugged and kissed her but she escaped to the toilet, where she washed away his saliva and stuffed toilet paper into her mouth.

She opened the door only when she heard her grandmother's voice.

See the rest here:
Girl traumatised by sexual abuse had to take modified science exam, assailant jailed 11 years - The Straits Times

To understand how the United States of America became a country without the constitutional right to abortion, look to the history of Black womens long fight for reproductive autonomy.

The reproductive coercion of Black women is a thread running through American history, one that predated and presaged the Supreme Courts recent decision in Dobbs that overturned Roe v. Wade. Enslaved Black women were forced into pregnancy to help build Americas budding economy. Pregnant Black moms are criminalized or excluded from abortion on the basis of poverty. The state takes away Black children from Black mothers at a disproportionate rate.

Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts chronicled this history in her seminal book Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Roberts defines reproductive justice as the human right not to have a child; the right to have a child; and the right to parent your child in a supportive, humane, and just society. Her latest book is Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families And How Abolition Can Build a Safer World.

For Roberts, reproductive rights and the fight for abortion access shouldnt just be about the existence of a choice, but about the right to live in a society that allows for the freedom to make it. Just having a legal choice that you dont have the means to effectuate is not true freedom, Roberts told me.

I reached out to Roberts to talk about the key moments throughout history, like the passage of the Hyde Amendment barring federal funds from paying for abortions that suggested abortion rights were never fully secure. We talk about why adoption is not and has never been a solution to inequality, why Black women have historically used abortion as resistance, and why American history is a better source of analogies than The Handmaids Tale. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

As someone who has studied the historic fight for reproductive justice, particularly through what Black women have experienced, what was your reaction when you saw the leaked draft opinion in May and then when the Supreme Court officially overturned Roe in June?

I cant tell you how many panels Ive been on over the last couple of decades where the issue was what to do in the post-Roe world. So there was a lot of preparation for it, but I was still shaken by it. I happened to be with my daughter and her two best friends theyre all in their 30s and my thought was, My goodness, they have fewer rights to autonomy over their bodies than I did at their age. When I was their age, I thought that I had good control over my body.

At the same time, though, theres a reproductive justice movement thats so much stronger than it was when I was their age. We are in a contradictory time because with the fight for justice, it seems like were going backward while at the same time building movements that are so much further than we were when we were growing up.

You had more autonomy over your body in the past than your daughters do now. But was there something you observed back then that suggested that reproductive rights were not actually secure?

I could see that even though we were legally protected from government laws that barred abortion, there was no legal right to demand government support for abortions due to the Hyde Amendment. So we had the legal right to an abortion, but it excluded funding for women who were poor. This was all happening while there was a bipartisan effort to end the federal entitlement to welfare. Plus, in the late 1980s, I watched the prosecutions of Black women for being pregnant and using drugs.

Those two aspects of reproductive regulation, which disproportionately affected Black women, made me think the fight wasnt over.

The advocacy around abortion was focused mostly on the framework of being able to make a choice, without taking into account these structural impediments to having reproductive freedom.

It also didnt take into full account the devaluation of Black womens childbearing and the punitive policies surrounding it. I was an advocate for abortion rights, but I was more concerned about the failure to advocate with the same force for the human rights of impoverished people, or Black people and other people of color in the United States. Once I started thinking about the Hyde Amendment and the prosecutions of Black women who were pregnant and using drugs, I began to see a whole host of reproductive violations that werent at the forefront of the mainstream reproductive rights movement. That really changed the narrative about progress toward reproductive freedom in America.

I can see today how those infringements of human rights are coming together to create the moment were in now, where pregnancy is criminalized and where we are going to see the arrests and incarceration of people who manage their pregnancies, have miscarriages, or have stillbirths. Theyre all going to be punished under one agenda of controlling womens autonomy over their bodies and participation in society, and also punishing anyone whos capable of being pregnant.

Id like to back up then. It sounds like theres almost a straight line from the 17th century to now that has long told us that these rights were never fully secure. And it sounds like it is specifically bound up in a struggle that Black women have faced for reproductive freedom. Can you walk me through some key historical moments that you think speak directly to the Supreme Courts decision and the ensuing trigger bans?

Id first go back to the institution of slavery to look at the connection between reproduction and bondage. The experiences of the enslaved Black woman and the exploitation of Black womens labor were foundational to the state regulation of reproduction in America.

It still is staggering to me when I think about the very first laws in the colonies that were so directed at regulating Black womens sexuality and reproduction, and how that reverberates today.

Black women, during the slavery era, resisted control of their bodies, including by having abortions. Abortion has been a means of resistance for Black women in the same way that exploiting Black womens reproductive labor has been a form of racial and gender oppression from the very founding of this nation.

That was an aspect of the history of reproductive policy and rights in the United States that I didnt think was getting enough attention. I dont think you can understand where we are today without taking into account the historic regulation of Black womens childbearing, which has its roots in enslavement.

And what would you highlight next?

After the Civil War, white supremacists who wanted to take back control of the South, enforce white domination, and effectively re-enslave Black people used the apprenticeship system to violently capture and take control of Black children again by exploiting their labor against the will of their parents. In many of the narratives about this, Black mothers describe how they fought to get their children back. To me, that system is the root of our current child welfare system, or what I call a family policing system, that also disproportionately tears apart Black families and is especially punitive to Black mothers.

I would also highlight the activism of Black women, demanding welfare rights and government funding for their childbearing decisions and for the care of their children. Because Black women were successful at being included in welfare programs, the state reacted by making those programs more punitive and vilifying, eventually leading up to the abolition of the federal entitlement to welfare. This was fueled by the myth of the Black welfare queen. So theres that.

What else stands out to you?

The way in which prosecutors and policymakers turned drug use during pregnancy from a health care issue into a crime, with the prosecutions of Black women who are pregnant and smoked crack cocaine in the 1980s. I see that as the beginning of this latest chapter of the right-wing criminalization of pregnancy.

This is the chapter in which they criminalize pregnant people who dont produce a healthy baby, whether its by abortion or by alleged behaviors during pregnancy that are seen to risk a fetus. That strategy begins with the prosecutions of Black women and also the taking of their newborns. And that is a prelude to what is happening today.

And how have things shifted to what we are seeing today?

One way in which the conditions now are different from when Roe was decided [in 1973] is that we have medication abortion and its easier for people to self-manage their abortions. But on the other hand, we have this buildup of criminalizing pregnancy with fetal protection laws, prosecutors prosecuting and getting convictions of women who have stillbirths. We see the arrest of women who had self-managed abortions prior to the Dobbs decision. That foreshadows a future where women and girls and people who are capable of pregnancy are going to be arrested and incarcerated for pregnancy outcomes. So again, criminalizing pregnancy whether you want to have a child or you want to terminate the pregnancy those prosecutions are a pivotal point in the story of how we got to where we are today, and how Black women were both targeted and fought back again.

During a period in the 1990s, Black feminists got together and developed the framework of reproductive justice. Thats certainly another key moment though, of course, we can also go back to enslaved women who started this work, and the Combahee River Collective of the 1970s that wrote about interlocking systems of oppression and how Black womens position in society is oppositional to white male rule.

So the crafting of reproductive justice analysis is built on that history that recognizes the human right to not have a child but also to have a child, and to parent a child in a nurturing and supportive and just and humane society. That looks beyond the question of whether there is a legal choice to look at the societal conditions that allow people to actually exercise true reproductive freedom and autonomy.

Youve said that forced pregnancy and family separation taking children away from their parents through the child welfare system are connected and that understanding this connection is key to understanding the struggle for reproductive justice. How are they connected?

One way that we can see they are connected forms of state violence is that the right is arguing that adoption is the solution to both of them. And, unfortunately, some liberal people are also arguing for adoption as a solution to the struggles of families who are feeling the brunt of an inequitable society. I dont think its a coincidence that were seeing adoption thrown around as the solution to what really is state violence and state oppression.

Yeah, Ive been seeing what looks like mostly white or foreign couples or white women holding up signs that say, We will adopt your baby. Yet when asked if they actually will, the answer seems to be, No. What is this about?

Compelling pregnancy and taking peoples children away from them are both ways of upholding a system of white male elite rule where you divert attention away from structural inequities that need to be demolished and replaced and point to private mechanisms, which is what adoption is.

In the case of family separation, we have a family policing system that instead of helping families, blames family caregivers especially Black family caregivers and relies on taking children away. To me, that is a neoliberal form of privatizing issues. Instead of a society that supports families needs, it turns to private citizens taking children and claiming them for their own. That is exactly the same response of a regime that now wants to force people to carry pregnancies to term. They turn to this private response of adoption in place of facing the fact that one of the main reasons that people have abortions is because they dont have the means at that time to take care of children.

For state legislators and the Supreme Court justices to pretend that adoption is going to take care of it is just blatant mendacity.

Every aspect of that is just false theres not going to be enough people to adopt all of the children whose needs cannot be met because of poverty in this nation, because of the structural racism, because of discrimination against women. Children will either grow up in families that dont have the means to meet all of their needs on their own, or theyre going to go into a dangerous and harmful foster system.

Its all about blaming people who are unable to meet childrens needs. Its about denying them freedom to make decisions for themselves and then punishing them for whatever outcomes befall their children. Under this regime, they include the fetuses where there isnt a healthy baby.

This also sounds connected to the idea that abortion for Black women is a form of genocide, an idea thats been repeated for a long time. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has even cited this idea.

Yes, this is also related to the false accusation that abortion is a form of genocide that Black mothers are complicit in. Abortion hasnt been used historically as a form of controlling Black reproduction. Sterilization has. Theres a big difference between forcible sterilization and upholding the human rights to control your body and not be compelled to be pregnant. Those are two radically different things. One is about compulsion and unfreedom. The other is about freedom and resisting compulsion. Those arent the same thing.

Clarence Thomas is just wrong. And so are others like him who say that abortion is a tool of Black genocide and that Black women are participating in the destruction of the Black community when they have abortions. And they refer to the eugenics era as a historical reference. Thats just false.

The historical reference is compelled sterilization of Black women, which is akin to compelled pregnancy. Theyve got the references all screwed up when they make that argument. The billboards that went up [10 years ago] to shame Black women for abortion that said, The most dangerous place for an African American is in the womb that message supports sterilizing Black women, as well as compelling pregnancies. Its a message about reproductive control. Its a false message that isnt about any kind of liberation for Black people.

And is this another reason why some people claim that abortion still feels like a white woman issue?

Ive heard that, too, believe me. At the time when the Webster decision was being considered and we thought that Roe might be overturned, I was speaking about it at a church and a Black man came up to me and said, Thats a white womans issue. Why are you talking about it? And there is a history of some Black nationalists chiding Black women for any kind of family planning, contraceptives, or abortion. Its just ridiculous to say its a white womans issue when Black women are more likely to seek and have abortions.

Black women have been advocating for reproductive freedom for just as long as white women have been. We have included the right to abortion in our fight, but its just that we havent focused on it since we recognize that sterilization, abuse, and being prosecuted for having babies, and Black maternal mortality, and so many other issues involving our reproductive lives are equally as important.

Theres a long history of Black women advocating for abortion rights. Loretta Ross has been advocating for abortion rights for decades. Shirley Chisholm, in her autobiography and advocacy, championed abortion rights and spoke out against Black men who said that it was a white womans issue. Black women use abortion as a form of resistance against slavery.

Its wrong to say that its a white womans issue. And its also wrong to say that it is a form of Black genocide. Those are false in terms of politics, history, in terms of what Black women have been advocating for for centuries. Theyre anti-freedom. Theyre anti-freedom, and they are inconsistent with the history of Black rebellion and abolition activism.

I also want to get your thoughts on The Handmaids Tale references and memes and the people who declared, Welcome to The Handmaids Tale! when the Supreme Courts decision came down. This is the reference that seems to be the most widespread whenever womens rights are on the line.

But lately some people have been pushing back, arguing that the meme erases the realities that marginalized groups of women have faced for centuries in America America has already been a Gilead for Black women, for example. Why do you think The Handmaids Tale meme is still prevalent?

Mainstream US society has never taken full account of Black womens lives and autonomy and imagination and vision. So the response to any current trend is often to look to white people as the victims and as the visionaries. But as Ive been saying, Black women have been at the forefront of movements to both contest oppression and also reimagine a society that is more just and humane and caring and equal. I think thats just one reason why we would get The Handmaids Tale before we get the very real history of Black womens reproductive labor being exploited or Black women being compelled to be pregnant for the profit of white enslavers. Its not an imagined story. Its an actual history that continues to shape policy today.

Theres a big difference between saying this fictional dystopia is a metaphor for our reality and saying, lets look at the real history of the reproductive violence against Black women and how it actually has shaped policy in the United States since the time of slavery until today.

Its also prevalent because white people dont have to grapple with the reality of how we got to the overturning of Roe. It is a result of the dehumanization of Black people, and it is a white backlash against every advance for liberation that Black people have made. It is a result of policies that have put Black women at the center.

Its mind-boggling but so important to recognize that we can name all these moments of history where thereve been these regressions in freedom, where stereotypes about Black women and policies geared at controlling Black womens sexuality and childbearing have been at the center over and over again. One of the reasons for ignoring this is that its a way to skirt radical social change. Its a way of pretending that America is built on principles of equality and liberty when you ignore the deep roots of inhumanity and slavery and coercion and punishment that are still critical to understanding where we are today.

As someone whos examined and been a part of this fight for a long time, what gives you hope right now?

What gives me hope today that we can continue with a reproductive justice framework is fighting back against these assaults on our freedoms while building a radically different society that doesnt rely on carceral approaches to meeting human needs. This means it doesnt police people or force people into compelled pregnancy. It doesnt take peoples children away from them as a way of meeting childrens needs. I see all of these carceral, punitive, inhumane approaches as part of a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist approach to meeting human needs. Theyre all interconnected.

I find hope in the fact that we have a reproductive justice movement that has been active and flourishing. Im also finding a lot of hope in the very quick action by abortion funds that are taking immediate steps to help people who need abortions.

See the article here:
Americas long, cruel history of reproductive violence against Black women - Vox.com

SpaceX launched its 25th contracted supply mission for NASA, delivering new science experiments for the astronauts aboard the ISS. The spacecraft will make a return to trip to Earth with cargo and research from space station in about a month.

Just before 9 a.m. EST on July 14, 2022, SpaceX launched its Dragon cargo spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, headed toward the International Space Station (ISS) (see image below). Two days later, the spacecraft autonomously docked to the forward-facing port of the space station's Harmony module. Aboard the spacecraft were new science experiments for the astronauts aboard ISS.

One of the experiments that arrived, deals with how aging is associated with changes in the immune response known as immunosenescence. As astronauts spend long periods of time in microgravity, it causes changes in their immune cells that resemble this condition, but happen faster than the actual process of aging on Earth. The investigation, sponsored by the International Space Station U.S. National Laboratory, will attempt to use tissue chips in order to study how microgravity affects immune function during flight and whether those immune cells recover post-flight. The tissue chips being utilized are small devices that contain human cells in a 3D structure, allowing scientists to test how the cells respond to things such as stress, drugs, and genetic changes.

Another study that arrived deals with how microgravity affects metabolic interactions in communities of soil microbes. Soil on Earth has complex communities of microorganisms that carry out important functions in the soil. These functions include cycling of carbon and other nutrients, along with supporting plant growth. This particular study will look at microbe communities that decompose chitin, a natural carbon polymer on Earth.

Other studies that arrived aboard ISS include a high school student weather study called BeaverCube, a study into cell-free technology, and another looking at how microgravity affects the process of creating a concrete alternative made with an organic material and on-site materials.

Top Image Credit: NASA/SpaceX

Originally posted here:
SpaceX Dragon Resupply Ship Docks With ISS To Deliver Science Benefitting Human Race - Hot Hardware

BUDAPEST -- "If it weren't for a private clinic, I wouldn't have him," Krisztina Kazinczy says, pointing at her little boy collecting branches at a playground in a Budapest suburb. Her son, now almost 2 years old, was born after his parents received in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at a private clinic.

Such stories could be increasingly rare in Hungary, as from June 30, the government has outlawed all private institutions from offering IVF treatment. Hungary's longtime, right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban has justified the move, saying it is designed to make the procedure more accessible and help stop the shrinking of Hungary's population.

The country's population has been in an almost constant decline since 1980 and has been under 10 million since 2010. While the number of births has been rising since 2019, there have also been agrowing number of deaths, severely worsened by the coronavirus pandemic.

The government's ban on private IVF treatment has drastically reduced the options for many women and couples who are having problems conceiving. With private clinics now a no-go in Hungary, they are left with two options: try their luck at state hospitals with long waiting lists or pursue expensive treatment abroad.

Kazinczy, 38, a freelance consultant, had multiple rounds of IVF at a state-run hospital before electing to go private.

"I will never forget, one time they called in five of usand told us to get naked. When the doctor was done with the first person, the second went right in. And in the meantime, we stood next to each other naked, because they didn't have enough time to wait for us to undress and dress," she says.

Her experience in the private sector was completely different. She didn't, she says, have to explain her medical history from scratch at every appointment and always felt that her doctors were well-informed and knew her case. After two rounds of treatment at the private clinic, she became pregnant.

The first Hungarian IVF baby was born in May 1989 in the southwestern Hungarian city of Pecs. A year later, Steven Kaali, a Hungarian-born, U.S.-based doctor, decided to open a fertility clinic in Budapest. The center, which opened in 1992 in one of Budapest's more affluent neighborhoods, soon became popular in Hungary and well-known abroad.

By 2017, the Kaali Institute (named after Kaali's father, himself a gynecologist) had assisted in the births of over 25,000 children, according to a letter Kaali wrote to Orban. The letter was published in a biography of Kaali, which also includes a signed photograph of the doctor and Hungary's veteran leader, whose Fidesz party won reelection again in April elections.

All eight Kaali Institute centers around Hungary were bought by the government in 2019 for an undisclosed amount. The reason for the sale has never been publicly announced. In December 2019, the Human Resources Minister Miklos Kasler announced that over 10 billion forints ($24.5 million) was to be spent on IVF clinics, treatments, and medications supporting fertility.

In May 2021, the government went further, announcing a ban on private clinics performing fertility treatments starting June 30, 2022. The state bought one more private clinic based in Budapest, the Robert Karoly Infertility Center, and the two remaining private fertility centers in the capital -- the Versys Clinics and the Reprosys Fertility Center -- both closed down, unable to provide services under the new law.

RFE/RL reached out to all three institutions for comment but did not receive any responses.

For people pursuing fertility treatment in Hungary, the shuttering of private services has been a huge blow.

Anita, 41, who for reasons of privacy prefers to only use her first name, lives in Szentendre, a town near Budapest. She has two teenage sons and would like to have a baby with her new husband. She became pregnant twice in the last year but miscarried both times.

"We didn't hear a heartbeat," she says over the phone.

Now, Anita has no other option but to go to a state-run hospital. While the treatment is mostly free, Anita's husband still had to undergo some privately funded examinations.

"When I called the assistant of the doctor in September, they told me the first available slot was in January. But if we pay, we can go as soon as October," she says about her husband's private examinations.

Anita is preparing for her second and last round of IVF within the state system but has doubts about whether she has received the correct diagnostic examinations in advance of the procedures.

"I asked the doctor to at least whisper the name of the [extra] examinations we could do, and we would do them in a private [clinic], but he wouldn't," Anita says. "If I could afford it, I would go to the Czech Republic."

Some Hungarians can afford to go abroad. According to Gabriela Nemethova, an IVF coordinator at the Gyncare clinic in Nitra, a city in western Slovakia, the number of Hungarian patients has "multiplied" in recent years. At the Slovak clinic, a basic consultation is 50 euros ($50) and one full round of IVF costs 1,200 euros.

Nemethova speaks Hungarian and was hired so the clinic could make their services available for Hungarian clients. Both of Gyncare's Slovak clinics have Hungarian-speaking coordinators, and they have nurses, receptionists, and doctors who can speak Hungarian, or at least English.

"We have some patients who didn't want to wait their turn in Hungary," Nemethova says. "But there are others who can't get treatment in these institutions because of their age, for example. And there are some who can afford it, but can't get the treatment they want."

For LGBT people, the challenges are even greater.

Laura, a soft-spoken German woman with a Hungarian wife, splits her time between Budapest and the Austrian capital, Vienna. Now eight months pregnant in the middle of a heatwave, she says that for her and her wife, Zsuzsanna, Hungary was never an option, as IVF is only available for heteronormative couples or single women nearing the end of their fertile years.

With the Czech Republic and Slovakia having similar restrictions on same-sex couples, Laura, who prefers to use just her first name, started her IVF in Vienna, which allows non-heteronormative couples to receive treatment. She did have some medical examinations before treatment in Hungary, but these were done in private clinics -- not, she says, because of homophobia from state doctors but because of language barriers.

The shortcomings of the Hungarian state health sector go beyond fertility centers. Due to what critics say is a lack of funding, Hungarian hospitals often have insufficient equipment and a shortage of staff. According to one estimate, Hungary's health-care sector has a shortfall of 25,000 medical workers, which is only expected to worsen in time as fewer young people go into the field.

One hospital in Szolok, a city with 71,000 inhabitants, recently announced that it can only accommodate births on Mondays and Wednesdays, while another rural hospital's maternity ward shut down due to a lack of medics.

I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures."

Freelance consultant and mother Kazinczy, who in 2021 organized a protest against the ban on private clinics in front of the Hungarian parliament that attracted some 50 people, says that her dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the qualifications or expertise of doctors in state-run institutions. Rather, she says, it has to do with the large number of patients they receive, the lack of specialists, and the relatively low salaries doctors receive.

"[It's a] production line," says Borbala, 30, a mother of a 5-week-old baby who went through state fertility treatment and who also prefers only to give her first name.

"They are there to make us a baby, even if that doesn't sound so nice. Despite this, everyone was nice and compassionate," she writes in an e-mail.

For Borbala, who suffers from endometriosis and adenomyosis, IVF was successful the first time she tried. She had various surgeries for her health conditions, her IVF treatment, and the birth of her child all at the same state hospital.

"From the beginning, I focused on the expertise and not the surroundings, like the dirty corridors and the old furniture," she says, and her experience, overall, was positive. "I do not doubt that I would come back. I felt safe."

Despite her positive experience in the state sector, she is worried about the government takeover.

"I hate the process of the government taking over these institutions with my whole heart. I'm afraid that it will mean them being so overwhelmed and underpaid that it will result in thousands of unsuccessful procedures. We were lucky, [getting treatment] in the middle of the capital. The real problems are in the rural areas," she says.

Beyond Orban's pronouncements about reversing the Hungarian population decline, many doctors, health workers, and patients are scratching their heads as to why the government has decided to target the private sector. In power for 12 years, Orban's government has long been criticized by the European Union, of which Hungary is a member, for presiding over an allegedly corrupt public procurement system, widespread conflicts of interest, lack of judicial independence, and restrictions on media freedom.

"I simply don't see any logic to this," says Alexandra Toth, a gynecologist and infertility specialist formerly at Budapest's private Reprosys clinic. "I would like to believe that their reason is that they want to make the process available for more people. But I don't really see the truth in that. There are long waiting lists, there isn't any quality control, and there's no competition anymore. I just don't see how this [new system] could be better."

Toth, who is currently working at a private gynecology clinic in downtown Budapest, says she was approached by a state-funded IVF clinic about the possibility of employment. The negotiation "died down," she says, after she communicated her needs from a professional perspective. Having previously studied in the United States, she says she told her prospective employer about the importance of certain practices and protocols, but, she says, she never heard back about whether these things would be available there.

The clinic Toth works at now is bright, full of natural light, with high ceilings and modern, shiny machines. She says many of the women who come to the clinic say they would like to hear a second opinion after consulting a doctor at a state institution. The clinic she works at can undertake certain gynecological examinations and procedures related to fertility treatment but not offer IVF.

It's good that people come for a second opinion, she says, "but there are people who come and ask us to explain what's happening. Because they have only spent two times five-minute [appointments] with a doctor and have plenty of questions before the procedure."

Toth's biggest concern is that there will be even more restrictions in the future. In April, the government announced the need for more oversight of the type of clinic where she now works, where they don't even carry out IVF procedures.

"I have a feeling that they will want to restrict private clinics even more," she says. "And I think they might try to do the same with foreign IVF treatments, too."

In February, the government announced the Directorate of Human Reproduction, which in the future will head the reconstruction of the sector. The president of the directorate is Vesztergom Dora, a doctor and well-known specialist in the fertility field and the sister-in-law of Hungary's president, Katalin Novak. RFE/RL reached out to Dora but didn't receive a response.

For those hoping to become parents, the added layer of insecurity to an already stressful and emotional process is grueling. Many former private patients were upset that their eggs were stored in a clinic that is now state-funded. Others managed to make last-minute transfers to clinics abroad or other state institutions they preferred to the one they were assigned.

For Kazinczy, the issue is pressing, as she plans on having a second child. The private institution that facilitated the birth of her first child is now run by the state, she explains, while chasing her son around the playground.

"This is the most tender part of our lives," she says. Her son stops at the swing and demands his mother join him in the miniature castle. "And we would like to know what's happening in the next few years."

View original post here:
Despite Population Decline, The Hungarian Government Is Making It Harder To Have (IVF) Babies - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty