Issue 12

ATRIUM The Report of the Northwestern Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program
Winter 2014

Bad Girls

A publication of the Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
 About the Cover: Bad Girls
Rather late in the process of editing this issue of Atrium, I started to I wish A.H. were alive to see how the world has changed, as
wonder whether the postal service might give us trouble about our evinced by the self-possessed and beautiful image of Inga Duncan
front cover. It features, after all, a topless woman. This question should Thornell on the cover of this Atrium issue. Inga, a prosperity coach and
have occurred to me sooner, especially given that I ran into a postal blogger, lives in Seattle with her husband and dogs. Following genetic
problem with a journal cover for my very first academic publication. analysis of her breast cancer risk, Inga opted for double prophylactic
That 1995 article for Victorian Studies had examined the medical mastectomy. But instead of choosing surgery to recreate breasts, as some
treatment of men and women once labeled “hermaphrodites.” It women have gotten the message “good girls do,” Inga partnered over
reproduced a number of relevant photographs and sketches from a month of Sundays with the tattoo artist Tina Bafaro to create an
fin de siècle medical journal articles, and the exquisite, evocative visual garment to “cover” her surgical scars.
editors of Victorian Studies had decided to use With art, and not more surgery, Inga “continued a woman.”
one as the issue’s cover. The medical photo- I contacted Inga and asked her to be our cover model because I
graph, from 1897, was of a topless woman had read that Facebook had used its anti-nudity policy to ban a photo
with small breasts (see right). of her mastectomy tattoo, a photo taken from the book Bodies of
The subject, identified as A.H., a twenty- Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo, by Margaret Mifflin.
four-year-old English domestic housemaid, Turns out Facebook had done no such thing. The rumor was born from
had come to the local surgeon to ask why she and lived simply on the pervasive cultural myths of what happens to bad
had never menstruated. Upon examining girls—women who not only are breastless, but still sexy, and tattooed,
A.H., Mr. G. R. Green discovered in the and lacking in the shame our culture readily offers strong women.
maid two testicles, and no ovaries. Green When I received Inga’s positive response to my request to be our
decided that “the best solution of the difficulty” cover “bad girl,” I smiled upon learning from her that she had once
—the difficulty being, simply, a housemaid with testicles—had worked as a model patient for medical schools. As she put it in the
to be a double orchiectomy, i.e., removal of both testes. With the email, her job back then was to “teach humanizing to interns.” Inga
patient’s consent, Green performed the operation at the Ripon has, then, a long history of raising bright questions about when medi-
Cottage Hospital. According to Green’s report, A.H. then cine may decide who among us is teacher or patient, weakened or
“continued a woman.” empowered, exotic or erotic, normal or pathological, feminine or
Seeing A.H.’s grainy photo simply as a curious medical artifact, masculine, bad or good.
the editors of Victorian Studies had not thought twice about putting What do women today with A.H.’s condition do, following their
it on the journal’s cover. But they soon discovered that, in order to orchiectomies? They take one another by the hand, to have the
comply with anti-obscenity postal regulations, when shipping the excision scars tattooed with orchids. And then they continue women.
journal to Canada the volume would have to be wrapped in plain
brown paper. Alice Dreger
Guest editor, Atrium 12
Photo credit for cover art: Tina Bafaro, http://www.bafaro.com/bio.html

The Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program

Faculty Scott Moses, MD–Assistant Professor of Obstetrics and

Gynecology and of MH&B; Director of Ethics Education,
Catherine Belling, PhD–Associate Professor of MH&B
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology
Rebecca Brashler, LCSW–Assistant Professor of Physical Medicine
Debjani Mukherjee, PhD–Associate Professor of Physical Medicine
and Rehabilitation and of MH&B
and Rehabilitation and of MH&B; Director, Donnelley Ethics
James Bresnahan, SJ, JD, LLM, PhD–Professor Emeritus of MH&B Program, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago
Tod Chambers, PhD–Associate Professor of MH&B and of Michael Oldani, PhD–Adjunct Assistant Professor of MH&B
Medicine; Director of MH&B
Suzanne Poirier, PhD–Adjunct Professor of MH&B
Megan Crowley-Matoka, PhD–Assistant Professor of MH&B,
Sarah Rodriguez, PhD–Lecturer in MH&B
Director of Graduate Studies, MH&B
Teresa Savage, PhD, RN–Adjunct Assistant Professor of Physical
MK Czerwiec, RN, MA–MH&B Artist in Residence
Medicine and of MH&B
Alice Dreger, PhD–Professor of MH&B
Mark Sheldon, PhD–Senior Lecturer in Philosophy and in MH&B
Joel Frader, MD–Professor of Pediatrics and of MH&B
Catherine Wallace, PhD–Lecturer in MH&B
Elisa Gordon, PhD, MPH–Research Associate Professor of Surgery
Katie Watson, JD–Assistant Professor of MH&B; Editor, ATRIUM
(Institute of Healthcare Studies) and of MH&B
Laurie Zoloth, PhD–Professor of Religion and of MH&B
Sydney Halpern, PhD–Lecturer in MH&B
Kristi L. Kirschner, MD–Professor of MH&B and Physical Staff
Medicine & Rehabilitation Myria Knox–Program Assistant
Kathryn Montgomery, Julia and David Uihlein Professor Emerita of Bryan Morrison–Program Assistant
Medical Humanities and Bioethics; Professor Emerita of Medicine

Northwestern University offers a

MASTER OF ARTS IN MEDICAL HUMANITIES AND BIOETHICS: the interdisciplinary study of meaning and medicine.
bioethics.northwestern.edu
RenderedMute
Teresa Blankmeyer Burke

This is how to render a deaf girl mute.

Take One: I am chatting with a hard of hearing physician following a professional meeting. The
conversation swerves from bioethics to personal lives, and I am asked whether I have children.
Upon my affirmative answer, the doc inquires whether they are my biological children. When I
reply, “Yes,” his response shakes me to the core: I am incredibly selfish for bearing my biological
children without knowing whether they would inherit my disability.

Take Two: I am dining with a childless-by-choice

Ivy-League-trained hard of hearing educator, who
tells me that deaf and hard of hearing parents
who decide to bear biological children are cruel,
abusive, and self-centered for not thinking of
what a terrible life their children will have with
a disabled parent.

I respond to these admonishments as a classic

good girl: I sit there, silent, listening to their view
of my decision to become a biological mother.
That these professionals know what it is like to
be deaf or hard of hearing is not lost on me. That
we have reached different conclusions about the
worth of our lives is lost on them.
A philosopher by temperament as well
as by training, I consider their remarks. Was I a
bad person for thinking that a deaf life was not
so terrible? That, if my child happened to be deaf,
then surely I might be able to manage this? That
deaf ways of being in the world can be joyful
and sublime? Had I committed the cardinal sin
of motherhood by saddling my children with
a terrible burden from birth—that of having a
disabled mother?
It is only now, as I write this essay, that
I wonder if the difficulty I had in finding an
obstetrician willing to go unmasked during labor A mother signs ‘mommy’ to her son. 1
and delivery was a response to my disability. I
interviewed almost a dozen, but not a one was willing to let me lipread as I birthed. Was this
a medical sort of shunning? If I were audacious enough to become pregnant, then I ought to
shut up and comply with standard medical practice, even if it meant I would not understand
what was being said.
But I knew that I would need to communicate during labor and delivery. I wanted
to be able to understand any instruction or encouragement given to me. I wanted to be an
active participant. After all, this was my body giving birth! All I needed was to be able to see
the doctor’s lips. Was this too much to ask for?
(continued on next page)
 RenderedMute (continued from previous page)

Fast-forward six years. I am a graduate student who has brought my nine-month-old

daughter for a well-baby check-up at the university teaching hospital. My university does not
provide medical insurance as part of the graduate student funding package and I am one of
many brown mothers in the clinic, but the only deaf one. The medical student who initially
examines my daughter makes a comment. I miss it, and ask the student to repeat what she
has said. Upon my informing the medical student of my hearing loss, the tone of the entire
visit changes. My daughter’s medical exam is interrupted as the medical student shifts her
attention to me. I am given a lecture on birth control and how to avoid becoming pregnant
again, since we got lucky this time, but my next child might not be so lucky.
I am not only nonplussed, but struck by the irony of “hearing” this from a dark-
skinned woman of color who has undoubtedly experienced her own share of discrimination
based on physical characteristics. I think about the kinds of things our children inherit from us.
The ability to discriminate subtle gradations of color. Things like the family academic lineage
and a people’s history of persecution that my child of Jewish heritage inherited from his father.
Things like a dimpled smile and a family history bound up with slavery and genocide that
my child of African and Native American heritage inherited from her father. Things like
compassion for people who have a different way of being in the world.
Before bearing my biological children, I thought about the prejudices they might
face—discrimination deeply rooted in historical fact, but also in the experiences of their
able-bodied fathers. I did not consider the cruelty of bringing a child into a world where she
or he would be highly likely to experience discrimination. I was not dissuaded by the taunts
I had experienced as a child myself for having a mother of Arab-American heritage.
But defying social discrimination is the province of good girls. Burdening innocent
children with disability—whether their own or that of their mother—is the mark of an
egregiously bad girl.
“How so?” I wonder.
Is there a threshold against which potential disabled mothers ought to measure
their desire to become biological mothers against the harm their children might experience?
And if there is such a threshold, are the harms of social discrimination related to disability
unique? Or are these just a piece of the harm-continuum we consider when bringing any
child into the world?
“But wait!” you interject. Social discrimination is different from physical disability!
True, that.
To have a body that doesn’t fit into a world designed for a narrow range of bodies
is frustrating. Dismaying, even. To have a body that experiences physical pain offers up a
different kind of calculus from the one I performed when deciding to be a biological mother.
Assuming that discrimination experienced by a deaf child (or any child of a deaf mother) is
sufficient to forego procreating is an act of medical prejudice. Leaping into biological moth-
erhood, not knowing whether your child will be deaf or hearing, not believing your disability
will harm your child, not knowing what the future will bring—well, this couldn’t possibly
2
be an act of love, could it?
This is how to render a deaf mother fierce.

Teresa Blankmeyer Burke, PhD, is a philosopher and bioethicist at Gallaudet University. Her research focuses
on bioethical issues of concern to the signing deaf community, in particular issues of genetics and reproduction.
In addition to her scholarly work, Dr. Burke serves as bioethics expert to the World Federation of the Deaf
and chairs the National Association of the Deaf Bioethics Task Force. She is currently writing a memoir
about her experience of being a widowed mother living in the wilderness of Wyoming.
The Baddest Births in Town
Elizabeth Bogdan-Lovis and Raymond De Vries

You’re pregnant. You’re happy. Your partner is happy. Your

parents are happy. Everybody is happy. We love babies. But
wait. You will soon find out that our love for babies has
a dark side. That little “+” on the pregnancy test? It was
your ticket to (cue Rod Serling) the Moral Twilight Zone
of Pregnancy. There are now countless ways a good girl
like you can go bad.
You did what? You had a glass of wine? Ate soft cheese?
Refused to give up sushi? Skipped childbirth yoga? What?
Clearly you do not love your child.
Living in this moral twilight zone, you will discover
what you only suspected before: your cervix is not just that
nubby little opening to your uterus, it is also the portal
of society’s control of over women. From your first sexual
activity, to your election of abortion, to how you behave
while pregnant, to your choice of where, when, and with
whom you will birth your baby, to your management of
menopause, your cervix—what it lets in and what it lets out
—will be the subject of intense social interest and surveillance.
And while all pregnant women walk the line between
“good girls” (those who eat right, exercise, and put speakers
on their bellies to let their future children listen to classical
music) and “bad girls” (those smoking, drinking, soft cheese-
eating ne’er-do-wells), the ultimate bad pregnant girls—the
baddest of the bad—are those who decide to birth their
babies at home, turning their backs on the “benefits”
offered by hospital-based obstetric technology.
Reactions to a recent article about home birth in the
New York Times Magazine gives us a glimpse of just how evil
these home-birth-choosing bad girls are (Shapiro 2012).
The comments section opens with advice from a paramedic
who “has had to respond to some horrific incidents at
birthing/midwifery centers and home births [and has] seen putting your child’s safety first, not prioritizing an idealized
babies die because of the choice the parents made to have ‘birth experience’ for yourself. . . . The home birth move-
out-of-hospital births . . . babies who would not have died ment is about moms’, frankly, selfish desires to have a
if born in hospitals.” He tells home birth mothers: “If you certain kind of ‘experience,’ egged on by a new industry
choose to have a home birth, you better be prepared for of midwifery eager to take their money: it’s certainly
your baby to die due to a lack of immediate neonatal not about infant health.” Picking up this theme, another
advanced life support medicine.” commenter adds: “Homebirth kills babies. No homebirth 3
Other commenters wonder: why would a pregnant midwife will tell you [this]; 100% of their income depends
woman reject “the safe, sanitary, and skilled support” avail- on pretending.”
able in the hospital and make a choice that jeopardizes the “Wait,” we can hear you saying, “these comments are
health and well-being of the baby? There can be only one just random reactions of New York Times readers. What
reason: these women are selfish, guilty of the “self-indulgent, do professionals say?” In 2006, the American College of
‘it’s all about ME’ solipsism unique to privileged Americans.” Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG 2006) issued a
The comments continue: “Being a (good) mom is about policy statement on out-of-hospital births, announcing:

(continued on next page)

 The Baddest Births in Town (continued from previous page)

Rejecting the idea that all births are

fraught with risk, these women see
no need to surround themselves The cultural change in attitudes about life’s uncertain-
ties is shown in this “Ngram.” We plotted uses of the noun
with the full armament of obstetrics, forms of the words “fate” and “risk” in all English language
books published in the United States in the Google library
“just in case.” between 1800 and 2008. Notice how we now talk far less
about “fate,” something uncontrollable, and much more
“ACOG strongly opposes out-of-hospital births.” ACOG about “risk,” a phenomenon we think we can “manage.”
explains: “Ongoing surveillance of the mother and fetus is In obstetrics, risk is supposedly managed via new
essential because serious intrapartum complications may technologies. If listening to the baby’s heartbeat every 15
arise with little or no warning, even in low risk pregnancies” minutes with an old-fashioned stethoscope pressed to a
(ACOG 2006). Five years later, ACOG offered a more mother’s belly was good, continuous electronic monitoring
nuanced “committee opinion on ‘planned home birth.’” must be better. If Nature sometimes refused to get labor
This opinion began by explaining that “[ACOG] respects started “on time,” no problem; we can induce. Heck, we
the right of a woman to make a medically informed deci- could now get a jump on Nature and get your labor going
sion about delivery,” but goes on to suggest that women on a day that suits your work schedule (and ours)! The
who exercise that right and choose to birth at home must pain of labor? Who needs that? Gone, with the help of
be, well, bad or crazy or both, because, according to ACOG, an epidural.
“planned home birth is associated with a twofold to three- How could this be bad? Why not get on that boat?
fold increased risk of neonatal death when compared with The majority of pregnant women in America, those
planned hospital birth” (ACOG 2011, p. 425). No sane, perceived as the good girls, are on board. Fewer than one
non-selfish, good and loving mother would subject her percent of births in the U.S. happen at home. Hospital
baby to a “threefold increased risk” of death! birthers trust the technologies of obstetrics. A recent national
So what drives an otherwise good woman to the dark survey of women who birthed in the twelve-month period
side? What are homebirthing women choosing and, more extending from July, 2011, through June, 2012, found
importantly, what are they refusing? Rejecting the idea that that “mothers agreed that getting more rather than fewer
all births are fraught with risk, these women see no need to maternity tests and treatments is generally better quality
surround themselves with the full armament of obstetrics, care (63% versus 22%)” (Declercq et al. 2013, p. 71).
“just in case.” Even worse, these women have the audacity Bring it on!
to tell obstetric specialists that the many tools doctors use So why do some women let that boatload of medical-
to reduce risk—electronic fetal monitoring, induction, ization sail without them? We think it is less about their
cesarean surgery, to name a few—actually increase risk. selfish desires or the wily ways of greedy midwives than it is
Somehow, these “bad girls” missed the boat that carries about science. Ironically (given our science-obsessed society),
other pregnant women down the river of medicalization. these women are “bad” because they based their birthing
This boat set sail somewhere around the middle of the decisions on the best scientific evidence available. Skeptical
twentieth century. Before then, there was a society-wide about the data touted by ACOG, these women are inclined
“acquiescence to the inevitable”; fate was recognizably to believe the more objective findings found in a review of
fickle, and there was little or nothing one could do to the research on the safety and place of birth done by the
reliably forestall all bad things. As the horrors of the World Cochrane Collaboration: “Increasingly better observational
Wars faded, we were slowly seduced by the idea that we are studies suggest that planned hospital birth is not any safer
not the slaves of fate. Innovative technologies to visualize, than planned home birth assisted by an experienced mid-
4 test, and measure previously unknown biopsychosocial wife with collaborative medical back up, but may lead to
minutia would deliver information to steer us around the more interventions and more complications.” (Olsen and
nasty bits of life and lead us to a safe and healthy future. Clausen 2012; emphasis added).
By analyzing this information, we could “manage” risk Huh? Hospital birth might cause complications?
and banish the frightening uncertainties of life. Only the The authors of the review explain: “impatience and easy
foolhardy, the Luddite, or the hippie living off the grid access to many medical procedures at hospital may lead
would reject the promise of safe living afforded by the to increased levels of intervention which in turn may
science of probabilities. lead to new interventions and finally to unnecessary
 Fate v. Risk, 1800–2000
0.012% fate_NOUN risk_NOUN

0.0096%

0.0072%

0.0048%

0.0024%

0.00%
1800 1810 1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000
Use of the words “fate” and “risk” (as nouns) as a percentage of all words in the Google library, by year, 1800-2000. For more information on this technology,
see http://books.google.com/ngrams.

complications.” The script usually goes like this: “That Elizabeth (Libby) Bogdan-Lovis is Assistant Director at the Michigan
epidural has slowed your labor so we need to augment with State University Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences.
She draws on insights gained from analyzing the past 40 years of
Pitocin. Oops, now your contractions are too strong, so we
escalating childbirth medicalization to examine parallel trends in other
need to give you just a little sedative. Gee, your labor has areas of medicine. Her participation in Cochrane Collaboration
stalled. Time to do a cesarean section.” activities began shortly after its 1993 inception; she employs women’s
Because they are floating with the cultural current, child-birthing “choices” as a vehicle to inform the growing attractiveness
the women on the good ship S.S. Medicalized Pregnancy of evidence-based autonomy, and she has published extensively on this
topic. [email protected]
are given a pass if something bad happens at their hospital
birth, even if it was the result of this cascade of unnecessary Raymond De Vries, a sociologist at the University of Michigan Center
obstetric interventions intended to manage risk. “How for Bioethics and Social Sciences in Medicine, is author of A Pleasing
Birth: Midwifery and Maternity Care in the Netherlands and
unfortunate,” they are told, “but thank goodness you co-editor of Birth by Design: Pregnancy, Maternity Care, and
were in the hospital! They did everything they could.” Midwifery in North America and Europe. He is working to promote
They sure did. a more caring and just maternity care system in the United States.
But when something untoward occurs in an out–of- twitter: @agoodbirth, email: [email protected]
hospital setting? Bad girl! Heaven help the few women who The authors are guest editors, along with Charlotte De Vries, of a
begin labor at home and then seek obstetric help because special issue of the Journal of Clinical Ethics on the place of birth
of an unexpected complication. Unlike women who went (volume 24, number 3, Fall 2013).
to the hospital in early labor and then need to be taken to References
the operating room for an unforeseen problem, women American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). 2006.
“ACOG Statement of Policy #81: Out-of-hospital Births in the United States.”
who transfer from home to hospital are punished. The
most infamous case involves a home birth mother whose American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). 2011.
“Planned home birth. Committee Opinion No. 476.” Obstetrics &
child was born severely mentally and physically impaired Gynecology 117(2, Part 1):425-428.
as a consequence of the mother being forced to wait two
Declercq, E.R., C. Sakala, M.P. Corry, S. Applebaum, and A. Herrlich,
hours for an “emergency” cesarean section by the obstetric Listening to Mothers SM III: New Mothers Speak Out (New York: Childbirth
staff at Johns Hopkins University Hospital (Wenger and Connection, 2013).
Rector 2012). Olsen, O. and J.A. Clausen, “Planned Hospital Birth versus Planned Home
Our social covenant with medicine reflects faith and Birth,” Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, issue 9 (2012). 5
trust that we are getting the best that medicine has to offer. Shapiro, S.M. “Mommy Wars: The Prequel,” New York Times Magazine
Those who challenge that covenant by suggesting that the (23 May 2012), retrieved at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/magazine
/ina-may-gaskin-and-the-battle-for-at-home-births.html.
newest and the latest medical intervention might not be the
best medicine are begging to be vilified. And if that chal- Wenger, Y. and K. Rector. “Jury Awards Waverly Family $55 Million in
HopkinsMalpractice Case,” The Baltimore Sun (26 June 2012), retrieved at
lenge comes from women who are known to be carrying http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-06-26/health/bs-md-ci-malpractice-
the future of society in their wombs? Lord, have mercy. award-20120626_1_malpractice-awards-in-state-history-gary-stephenson
Forgiveness in the Abortion Clinic

Lori Freedman

During her abortion procedure, the patient turned to Claudia*, a fifty-year-old Latina licensed
vocational nurse who sat beside her, holding her hand, and whispered, “Can you lean this way?”
Claudia perched forward on her stool to get closer to the patient and suddenly the patient grasped
the crucifix that dangled from Claudia’s necklace. The patient implored her not to move. Claudia
recalled her surprise: “I had everything done to me, but I never had this.” The patient was very
focused on the crucifix and seemed to stop paying attention to what was going on in the room.
Claudia asked the head nurse to take the patient’s vital signs; the patient was medically high-risk
and Claudia couldn’t take vitals from her position. Claudia stayed fixed in place, back aching
slightly, throughout the rest of the fifteen-minute procedure while the patient held the crucifix
close to her own heart. At the end, Claudia recalled, “I said to her, ‘Mi hija, it’s over.’ And she
said, ‘It is?’” And then the patient took Claudia’s hand, kissed it, and said, “You’re an Angel.”
Claudia was shocked and moved by the gesture. No patient had said that to her before. When
she went to check on the patient later in the recovery room, the patient thanked her repeatedly.
With visible emotion, Claudia finished the story: “I almost keeled over when she told me
this—she goes, ‘Now I know I’ve been forgiven.’ And that was it. I think I’ve had that in my
head—you know how you think about stuff like that—that thing lasted me for the whole month.”

Claudia told me this story thirteen years ago, while I was conducting ethnographic research
as a participant-observer in a hospital-based abortion service. I spent considerable time there helping,
observing, and intermittently conducting as many interviews as I could with counselors, doctors,
and nurses, in order to gain a rich view of abortion clinic life. This study became my master’s thesis,
but nothing else. I feared publication might amount to a gratuitous exposé of people I respected
dearly. I couldn’t think of any policy or academic imperative that necessitated revealing the intimate
dynamics of this particular social world—certainly nothing that could make the potential feelings
of betrayal worthwhile. Ultimately, I just tucked it away.
But recently, I heard the Rev. Rebecca Turner speak about how some abortion patients
have unmet spiritual needs, and my ethnographic memories came flooding back. Her organization,
Faith Aloud, like another organization called the Clergy for Choice Network, connects pro-choice
clergy with religiously diverse women to help address their spiritual concerns about their abortions
in ways that counselors, nurses, and doctors often cannot. The Faith Aloud website tells potential
clergy volunteers, “Many women have felt shame and stigma forced on them by their religious
groups, their families, and the society. We want to provide women with the spiritual comfort of
knowing that God is with them through all things.”
Listening to Rebecca Turner talk about the work clergy members do to spiritually meet
women where they are, I remembered how surprised I had been during my ethnographic work to
find that the counselors, nurses, and physicians often informally addressed women’s spiritual needs.
They ministered, in a sense, to their patients, some from a spiritual place of their own, and some
from a gut feeling about what women needed to hear.
The counseling and nursing staff in the abortion clinic where Claudia worked were mostly
6 middle-aged and vocationally trained. They were predominately Latina, like their patients, but
some were Filipina, African-American, or white non-Hispanic. One particularly intriguing aspect
of this abortion service was how these staff members were largely recruited from other parts of the
hospital rather than from the ranks of the college feminists who staff many outpatient abortion
clinics. In many ways the hospital clinic felt and looked much like any other ward, but for the
simultaneously unsettling and reassuring lack of clinic-naming signage and the visible emotionality
of some patients.

* Names of clinic personnel are pseudonyms.

 Clinic workers told me that they addressed patients’ emotions as they arose in all their
forms, including sadness, fear, relief, guilt, and shame. Notably, some patients expressed this shame
in religious terms and were not easily consoled by responses based on concepts of reproductive
freedom and rights. Beatriz, a Latina recovery room nurse, herself very religious, shared how she
approached patients who were experiencing spiritual angst.
[I] do a lot of spiritual counseling with them because of their guilt. They cry
and they think that they will never have forgiveness from God. Sometimes they
say, “I hope God forgives me for this,” or “My mother thinks that I’m really a
sinful person,” or they cry and say, “I feel so bad about what I did and what
happened to me.” So I say, “Well, many times we have to do things in this life,
some kinds of decisions that are very painful, and that sometimes we have no
choice or sometimes it seems like there’s no way out. But God understands and
he knows what’s happening…and you can ask forgiveness to God and he forgives
you immediately. It doesn’t take years for that.”
Beatriz and Claudia starkly challenged my own unexamined assumptions that religion
and abortion mixed like oil and water. I marveled at their easy confidence that they could help
these women spiritually. There is no script for such moments, certainly no mainstream religious
scripts that so readily grant women who get abortions forgiveness in such reassuring ways. In fact,
data show that women who get abortions are likely to keep it a secret
precisely because they fear they will receive harsh disapproval.1,2 They
“Many women have felt fear they will be judged and that the people that they care about will see
them as less than what they were.
shame and stigma forced
Ironically, for these patients, the abortion clinic may be one of
on them by their religious the few safe spaces to seek spiritual counsel. Leticia, a Latina counselor,
observed to me that patients who are socially or emotionally isolated are
groups, their families, and more likely to divulge their spiritual concerns: “They talk a little more
with me when there’s not a relative that can understand the situation…
the society. We want to when there’s nobody, no support system, that’s when the women will
approach me and tell me about their feelings at that moment.” These
provide women with the
nurses and counselors may have had such candid conversations about
spiritual comfort of know- forgiveness not only because patients lacked alternate sources of support,
but also because the staff and patients shared ethnic and religious
ing that God is with them identities. Along these lines, a white nurse named Anne contended,
“I think sometimes you can say the right thing for people who are
through all things.” religious, particularly if you come from the same background.”
Faith Aloud website
Today, research and teaching about abortion regularly
address stigma, ambivalence, regret, and complexity.3,4 We are exiting a
political moment (that lasted decades) during which women’s spiritual
and emotional pain around their own abortions was often poorly understood or even perceived
as threatening to women’s rights by giving voice to moral questions, thereby presumably ceding
ground to abortion’s opponents. Such women were often met with impassioned pleas to keep 7
silent and with rhetoric that repeatedly asserted that most women feel relief (subtext: “So, what’s
wrong with you?”). Influenced by the work of leaders and members of the Abortion Care Network
to address this problem, new literature on the topic wades into nuance, acknowledging the effects
religious teachings against abortion have had on the women who both share those beliefs and,
because of the circumstances of their lives, decide to have an abortion.5,6
(continued on next page)
Forgiveness in the Abortion Clinic (continued from previous page)

I am taken back to these decade-old observations as I currently conduct research on the

effects of religious doctrine on obstetrics and gynecology practice in Catholic hospitals. One in six
patients in the United States receives care in a Catholic hospital where abortion, sterilization, birth
control, and infertility services are prohibited. In my interviews with
doctors who have worked in Catholic hospitals, I have learned that treat-
...data show that women ment options for women facing some of the most difficult pregnancy
who get abortions are complications and losses, such as incomplete miscarriage in the second
trimester, are restricted as well.7 These physicians tell me that, as they
likely to keep it a secret tried to offer their patients the best care they could, they felt their hands
were tied by doctrine.
precisely because they
Stories from my earlier research of nurses and counselors min-
fear they will receive istering to the need for forgiveness in the abortion clinic provide a useful
reminder of the value and importance of religious beliefs for some patients,
harsh disapproval. They but they also illustrate how religious practice in ob-gyn care is best directed
fear they will be judged by the patient, not the institution. I am learning in my current project
that, in the context of Catholic hospitals, hospital ownership dictates
and that the people that the role of religion in women’s reproductive lives by using doctrine to
they care about will see restrict access to care in ways that neither those working there nor patients
necessarily want. Whereas women like Claudia, Beatriz, and Leticia met
them as less than what individual women’s needs and concerns in the moment, with faith in a
forgiving and understanding God, the Catholic health doctrine govern-
they were. ing hospitals prescribes a one-size-fits-all religious approach.
As such, the individual suffering of spiritually diverse women
goes unaddressed in the name of God—a problem made worse when the
Catholic hospital is the only game in town. Religion and abortion can and sometimes do mix well
at the individual level when patients speak their concerns and are ministered to by compassionate
people, be they abortion clinic staff or supportive clergy, who meet them where they are.

Lori Freedman, PhD, is a sociologist and author of the book, Willing and Unable: Doctors’ Constraints in
Abortion Care. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive
Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco. She conducts research within the Advancing New Standards
in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) program. [email protected]

1
Katrina Kimport. “(Mis) Understanding Abortion Regret. Symbolic Interaction 35.2 (2012): 105-122.
2
Kate Cockrill, Ushma D. Upadhyay, Janet Turan, and Diana Greene Foster. “The Stigma of Having an Abortion:
Development of a Scale and Characteristics of Women Experiencing Abortion Stigma.” Perspectives on Sexual and
Reproductive Health 45:2 (2013), 79-88.
3
Katrina Kimport, Kira Foster, and Tracy A. Weitz. “Social Sources of Women's Emotional Difficulty after Abortion:
Lessons from Women’s Abortion Narratives.” Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 43:2 (2011), 103-9.
4
Alissa C. Perrucci. Decision Assessment and Counseling in Abortion Care: Philosophy and Practice. (Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2012.)

8
5
Carole Joffe. “The Politicization of Abortion and the Evolution of Abortion Counseling.” American Journal of Public
Health 103:1 (2013), 57-65.
6
Peg Johnston. A Guide to Emotional And Spiritual Resolution After an Abortion. (Binghamton: Ferre Institute, 2008).
7
Lori Freedman and Debra Stulberg. “Conflicts in Care for Obstetric Complications in Catholic Hospitals.”
American Journal of Bioethics Primary Research. (Epub December 18, 2012.)
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/21507716.2012.751464#.Ud3CmayyyEo
Nicola Streeten
Choices

Nicola Streeten has worked as an illustrator since 1996. In 2011, Myriad Editions issued Streeten’s Billy, Me & You, the first
published graphic memoir by a British woman. About the artist’s own experience of bereavement following the death of her
child, Billy, Me & You was recognized by the British Medical Association (BMA) with the citation of “Highly Commended”
in the Popular Medicine category of the 2012 BMA book awards. Streeten is currently completing Hymn, a fictional
graphic novel exploring the ethical issues surrounding abortion, scheduled for publication in 2015 by Myriad Editions.
Streeten received an Arts Council England award for the research and development of Hymn.
 In the Manner of a Bad Girl
Paul Vasey while Trisha puts on a good show, she’s not really a bad girl.
In reality, Trisha is the sole breadwinner for her large family
Trisha is waiting by the bustling food market in downtown and she works like crazy to support them. She’s also the best
Apia, the capital of Samoa, as I arrive to pick her up one research assistant in the world.
minute past our designated meeting time. Samoans will never If Trisha lived in just about any Western country she’d be
be confused with Germans in the punctuality department, diagnosed with “gender dysphoria,” a mental disorder which
but Trisha decides to milk the situation for all it’s worth. is thought to cause big-time distress. What a bizarre concept
“You’re late!” she proclaims in an exasperated tone. This that would be to apply to Trisha. When I ask her if she is
draws the attention of people in the market. “Do you know upset by her femininity, she looks at me like I’ve gone nuts.
how long I’ve been waiting?” she asks with a dramatic flourish. Why would the most beautiful fa’afafine in the world be
“About 30 seconds?” I retort, rolling my eyes. This sends distressed by her obvious fabulousness?
Trisha diving forward to swat me, but I dodge her, jumping Because pandemonium doesn’t break out when Samoans
backwards. The onlookers are clearly entertained by this im- see a “guy” walking down the street in a dress, fa’afafine don’t
promptu street performance involving a palagi (white man). grow up being constantly bombarded with the message that
Motioning at Trisha, I address the crowd. “Ma’i i le ulu” they’re sick. My team’s research has documented how the accom-
(“sick in the head”). This gets laughs all around. The palagi modating Samoan approach to gender-atypical boys means
has a sense of humor and he can speak some Samoan. that “distress” about their femininity never comes into play.
Trisha decides to switch gears. Pursing her lips and Samoans simply acknowledge that feminine males are part of
batting her eyes she asks, “Darling, don’t you love me any- the cosmos and they move on. They don’t throw the transgen-
more?” Confident that my answer will be in the affirmative, dered away like garbage, nor do they try to “fix” them medically,
she doesn’t wait for my response, but instead instructs me and as a consequence, the society benefits as a whole.
to “run over to that shop and get me a cool drink.” I do her My team’s research has also shown that, like many
bidding and arrive back to hear a woman in the market androphilic males in the West, children who are fa’afafine
telling Trisha how lucky she to have a palagi of her very stick close to their relatives. In North America, this gets labeled
own, as if I’m some sort of exotic pet, like an ocelot. “separation anxiety,” another supposed disorder, but not so in
Trisha Tuiloma is my Samoan research assistant and Samoa. We’ve found that this anxiety is mostly about concern
for the past seven years we have been conducting research for the wellbeing of one’s family. So it actually reflects prosocial
together on sexuality in Samoa. Trisha is not a woman in empathy, not pathology. What a lesson the West has to learn
the conventional sense, but she is not a man either. She is from these tiny islands.
a fa’afafine—a member of a large Samoan community of Because some of our previous research in Samoa has
transgendered males. In Samoa, young boys who exhibit shown that women with fa’afafine relatives have more babies
girlish behaviors and interests (like helping with housework than those without, we are trying to figure out whether this
and playing with girls) are placed into this special gender might help explain why male androphilia persists from one
category and are treated differently from typical boys or girls. generation to the next, even though fa’afafine themselves
Most fa’afafine grow up to be androphilic, i.e., sexually don’t reproduce. In our current research, we are trying to pin
attracted to adult men. Unlike the way transgender has down the mechanism underlying these relative differences in
typically been dealt with in the modern West, fa’afafine offspring production. The cause(s) could be anything from
don’t change their bodies. So they have male bodies, to social to physiological to psychological.
some extent they live like women, and they take men as Trisha and I eventually arrive at our destination and
lovers. I know that can be hard for you to wrap your head prepare to interview a group of women who are the sisters of
around. It took me a while to get it. Basically, how you fa’afafine. Some of the questions we will ask are of a delicate
perform gender trumps what you do with your genitals. nature. For example, we’ll want to know at what age the
As Trisha and I are on our way to our first set of inter- women had their first periods. We know that, in order for
views for the day, Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made us to get this data, the women need to feel comfortable and
10 for Walking” blares from the radio. Trisha sings along, relaxed. Trisha springs into action, explaining that she herself
stomping her feet and waving her hands. She keeps up a had her period three times last month and is pregnant with
running commentary about people on the side of the road. her fifth child. The women roar with laughter.
Pointing to one young man she exclaims, “Oh, he’s got a “Yeah,” I add, “so far she’s had two dogs, a pig, and a frog.”
BIG one!” and tosses me a knowing glance. More guffaws. Mission accomplished. Trisha and I settle
“Bad girl,” I say, and she laughs. in for some serious data collection, and I count my lucky stars
In the Samoan language, fa’afafine means “in the manner that we’re a team.
of a woman,” a reference to how the fa’afafine behave and
Paul Vasey, PhD, trained in primatology, anthropology, and psychology.
live. I’ve come to think of Trisha as behaving in the manner He is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of
of a bad girl. She transforms mundane workdays into irrev- Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. More information about his work is
erent spectacle. But as we’ve grown closer, I’ve learned that, available at www.uleth.ca/-paul.vasey.
Trisha strikes a ‘Bond Girl’ pose>
 Bad Girls Can't Win
allowing women new inde-
pendence. Besides allowing
women to physically distance
themselves from home, the
bicycle provided women with
the opportunity to distance
themselves from the early
Victorian ideal of weak and
passive females and to gain
empowerment through
outdoor sport.
Even though it became
more acceptable over time
for women to participate in
cycling, they were still expected
to display restraint and refine-
ment in order to conform to
socially prescribed notions
of ‘ladylike’ behavior. If they
did not subscribe to this ideal,
they were considered ‘bad’ or
‘deviant’. Some men (both
physicians and laymen)
were so opposed to women’s
involvement in sporting
bicycling clubs that they
Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in an obviously-staged photograph circa 1973, when the two engaged in the so-called invented pseudo-medical and
“Battle of the Sexes” tournament. AP Images/Anthony Camerano
moral reasons why women
Pam R. Sailors, Sarah Teetzel, and Charlene Weaving should not cycle. Writing about the American cultural history
of women in sports, Mariah Burton Nelson has noted that:
Since the beginning of women’s participation in modern
Cyclists’ saddles […] were said to induce menstrua-
athletics, sports have been used as an excuse to medicalize
tion and cause contracted vaginas and collapsed
women’s bodies, to enforce heterosexual norms, and to
uteri. While appearing to enjoy an innocent, healthful
define strictly who will count as a “real” woman. Yet for
ride, female cyclists might use the upward tilt of the
their part, athletic girls and women have (intentionally
saddle to engage in the ‘solitary vice’ of masturbation.
and unintentionally) used sport to subvert and even defy
And, skirts hiked provocatively above the ankle,
gender-based discrimination.
12 female cyclists might contribute to immorality by
The late 1800s saw a significant increase in women’s
inciting lewd comments from male pedestrians.1
participation in modern sport, especially in cycling. In order
to cycle with efficiency and comfort, women moved away Women could not simply enjoy the act of cycling for its
from traditional long and heavy skirts that could easily get own sake. Unable to tolerate women’s participation in physical
caught in wheels or spokes. Instead, they wore tight fitting activity, some nineteenth-century physicians linked athletics
knee-length hose called “bloomers.” Naming this innovative to childbirth complications, stating that strong developed
clothing after American women’s rights advocate Amelia arms and legs would be detrimental to child birthing. Writing
Bloomer made sense, as the bicycle had a significant impact on in the British Medical Journal in 1867, one physician stated
bluntly the extent of control physicians expected to have
over women’s bodies, and indeed over their entire beings:
As a body who practice among women, we have
constituted ourselves, as it were[,] the guardians of
their interests, and in many cases[,] the custodians
of their honor. We are[,] in fact, the stronger and they
the weaker. They are obliged to believe all that we tell
them[;] we[,] therefore, may be said to have them at
our mercy.2
Even today, outdated claims about sport participation
damaging women’s bodies continue to surface. For example,
in 2009, female ski jumpers attempted to be included in the
Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games program, and in
response, Gian-Franco Kasper, President of the International
Ski Federation, indicated that the reason women should not
participate in ski jumping is because it could result in damage
to their uteri or lead to infertility. These ideas were presented
Babe Didrikson, American boxer, shown (left) warming up at Art McGovern’s Gym in New
without any actual supporting medical evidence, and neither York City, 1933, and (right) dressing up according to feminine expectations, 1932. AP Images
Kasper nor others of his ilk expressed any concern that male
ski jumpers might damage their reproductive organs or risk Women athletes could counter this stereotyping and
infertility. It is not difficult to find other examples of “protec- backlash only by changing “heterosexual failure” to “success”
tion” of women athletes’ bodies: rules prohibit women’s ice through demonstrated allegiance to mainstream heterosexu-
hockey players from body checking, and in speed skating and ality. Cahn presents the story of Babe Didrikson as a perfect
cross country skiing, women are restricted from competing role model of “conversion” from ugly athlete to happy
in the longer distances allowed in the men’s competitions. heterosexual homemaker:
What these double standards show is that women’s bodies
In the early 1930s the press had ridiculed the
continue to be viewed as frail and incompatible with “men’s”
tomboyish track star for her “hatchet face,” “door-stop
sports. Women who challenge these double standards are
jaw,” and “button-breasted” chest. After quitting track,
often regarded as bad athletes and bad women.
Didrikson dropped out of the national limelight, mar-
Women athletes have also suffered discrimination when
ried professional wrestler George Zaharias in 1938,
they have been seen as exhibiting ‘mannish’ characteristics in
and then staged a spectacular athletic comeback as
body or behavior. Writing about the historical intertwining
a golfer in the late 1940s and 1950s. Fascinated by
of gender, sexuality, and sport, Susan Cahn has examined
her personal transformation and then, in the 1950s,
medical studies on women and physical exertion in the late
moved by her battle with cancer, journalists gave
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some medical
Didrikson’s comeback extensive coverage and helped
experts of that period argued that physical activity would
make her a much-loved popular figure. In reflecting
unleash wild sexual desire in women, while others claimed
on her success, however, sportswriters spent at least as
it would provide a healthy outlet for sexual desire. However,
much time on Didrikson’s love life as her golf stroke.
there was no disagreement among the experts when it came to
Headlines blared, “Babe Is a Lady Now: The world’s
their belief that supposed female masculinity or “mannishness”
most amazing athlete has learned to wear nylons and
equated to sexual unattractiveness and deviance. Initially
cook for her huge husband,” and reporters gleefully
“mannishness” implied being unable to capture male atten-
described how “along came a great big he-man wrestler
tion, but later it also came to connote the absence of desire
and the Babe forgot all her man-hating chatter.”4
for men. Cahn labels both conditions “heterosexual failure,”
meaning a failure to adhere to cultural heterosexual norms Even though Didrikson was said to be “the world’s 13
for body and behavior. Cahn argues further that the medical most amazing athlete,” society’s focus fell on her “greater”
field’s preoccupation with sexual deviance contributed to the accomplishment—escaping her mannishness by leaving
twentieth-century medicalization of homosexuality and the sport behind for the world of heterosexual subservience.
marking of lesbianism as pathological. Given this, and the The unjust and connected stigmatization of lesbians
accompanying connection of mannishness and athleticism, it and of women athletes continues to plague women’s sport
is unsurprising that a general stereotype of all female athletes in our own time, as evinced by lack of media coverage and
as lesbians was firmly in place shortly after World War II.3 pressure on women athletes to project a heterosexual image.

(continued on next page)

 Bad Girls Can't Win (continued from previous page)
For example, media representations of women’s beach vol-
leyball sexualize players while simultaneously emphasizing
their required adherence to stereotypical heterosexual female
roles. Within just a couple of years of winning a second gold
medal at the 2008 Olympics and becoming a mother, beach
volleyball player Kerri Walsh signed a sponsorship agreement
with Procter & Gamble to promote Pampers diapers as part
of their “Thank you, Mom” campaign. In her public work,
she carefully portrayed herself as both sexualized athlete and
mother—a classic whore/Madonna dual expectation for
women—proclaiming that her young sons would be wearing
their Team USA diapers while she sported her bikinis. Simi-
larly, track athlete Alysia Montano always wears a flower in
her hair when she competes, dispelling hints of mannishness
while competing fiercely, all in an effort to exhibit femininity
while simultaneously showing strength.
Athletes who refuse to engage in this kind of heterosex- Certificate of Femininity for María José Martínez-Patiño, 1983
ualized “good girl” performance are consistently penalized
and labeled “bad.” In 1981, when tennis star Billie Jean King
was forced to reveal that she had engaged in a lesbian rela-
tionship, she appeared before the media with her husband
by her side to denounce her lesbian relationship as a mistake.
Still, King lost almost all of her commercial sponsorships,
and the Women’s Tennis Association issued a warning that
revelations of lesbianism by other players would not be tol-
erated. More than thirty years later, women’s sports’ leaders
and institutions remain generally averse to any perception of
lesbianism, as shown by women’s college basketball standout
Britney Griner’s decision not to acknowledge publicly her
lesbianism until after graduation. According to Griner, her
María José Martínez-Patiño is now a Professor of Education and Sports Science
coach had warned against speaking out earlier because she at the University of Vigo in Spain, and has been working with the IOC’s Medical
thought it would make it more difficult to recruit players Commission to revise their gender-testing policy. Photos are used with permission
from Prof. Martínez-Patiño.
to the school.
Women athletes have also had their sexual anatomy toward competitors whose chromosomal patterns differed
subject to extreme surveillance. This has been done in the from XX: “I consider that our duty as doctors comes before
name of protecting women’s sports for “true” women, but everything, even Olympics, and that if we find such hybrid
has often, in practice, meant harm to individual women ath- beings, we must if possible treat them and at the very least,
letes. When the International Olympic Committee (IOC) help them to accept their fate as we ourselves do when we
formed a Medical Commission in 1966, one of its first tasks discover a shortcoming of some kind in ourselves.”5
involved investigating how to best classify athletes as women Women who possessed a Y chromosome would hence-
and men without subjecting them to the nude parades and forth be considered unwelcome in sport, as they were not
genital inspections that had been occurring in some major “real” women. Women with masculine physical appearances,
competitions. The Medical Commission decided that all like women who were found to carry a Y chromosome, were
female competitors at the Olympics would require a “Cer- ridiculed, had their past accomplishments negated, or simply
14 tificate of Femininity” that would be issued after undergoing disappeared from the international sport scene. The 100-
a Barr body test, which involved the analysis of an athlete’s meter sprint Olympic champion from the 1964 Games, Eva
chromosomal patterns as obtained from a mouth swab of Klobukowska from Poland, was barred from participating
the inner cheek. Athletes whose results indicated the XX in the 1968 Olympics after a Barr body test identified the
chromosome pattern typically associated with women were presence of XX/XXY mosaicism in her sample. Her medals
awarded a certificate. Competitors whose test results showed and records were also revoked. Former USSR track and field
chromosomal patterns other than XX were considered to stars Irina and Tamara Press, who together broke world
have “failed” the test and were barred from competing in records in their events more than 25 times, failed to appear
the women’s events. The language used by one IOC Medical at the 1968 Olympics or ever again in international sport
Commission member in describing the consequences of a competitions. Their absence after the introduction of sex
failed test demonstrates the patronizing and negative attitude verification procedures, as well as their masculine physical
appearances, fueled speculation that they were “really” men and even protests regarding their right to participate. Rather
and did not deserve their medals. These “bad girls” were no than celebrating these women’s achievements in sport, media
longer welcome in sport. attention tends to focus on questions about the fairness of
Those few women who refused to back down and their participation and whether they are “cheating.” The
withdraw from sport following the identification of a “chro- recent media coverage of mixed martial arts fighter Fallon
mosomal abnormality” faced a huge battle to eliminate the Fox’s male-to-female transgender history, which highlighted
XX requirement for women’s competition. Hurdler María some of her competitors’ views that it is selfish and unfair
José Martínez-Patiño fought to address the discriminatory for her to compete in the women’s division, demonstrates
policies after she was informed in 1986 that more sensitive the anti-inclusive attitudes that remain in sport.
medical equipment had identified she had XY chromosomes, Through the heterosexism, sexism, and transphobia
despite having “passed” the test two years prior. Martínez- that continue to pervade sports, women athletes are still
Patiño has explained: being constructed—over 150 years since the introduction of
the bicycle—as ‘bad girls,’ lacking in bodily agency and sub-
As I was about to enter the January, 1986, national
jectivity. Still today, women are having to push for inclusion
championship, I was told to feign an injury and to
in Olympic events like ski jumping, to fight for uniforms
withdraw from racing quietly, graciously, and perma-
that represent and respect them as true athletes, and to suffer
nently. I refused. When I crossed the line first in the
the tendency of the media to focus mainly on their appear-
60 m[eter] hurdles, my story was leaked to the press.
ance. Women who push for fairer policies and women who
I was expelled from our athletes’ residence, my sports
fail to adhere to heteronormative expectations are presented
scholarship was revoked, and my running times
as ‘bad girls’ in sport. So it is that, still today, women athletes
were erased from my country’s athletic records. I felt
who fall outside of cultural criteria for ‘femininity’ are
ashamed and embarrassed. I lost friends, my fiancé,
treated as cheaters, frauds, and poor sports: ‘bad girls’ all.
hope, and energy.6
Martínez-Patiño was eventually reinstated to compete in Pam Sailors, PhD, is a professor in the Philosophy Department and
1988 after she had established that she gained no athletic Associate Dean of the College of Humanities and Public Affairs at
Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. Her recent work in
benefit from her XY chromosomes, because she has andro- philosophy of sport has addressed running, roller derby, gender, and issues
gen insensitivity, which actually puts her at a competitive of equity. A former College tennis player, Pam is now a competitive
disadvantage hormonally compared to typical XX females. runner and has run over 300 races, including 33 half marathons and
Through the efforts of Martínez-Patiño and others 26 full marathons. [email protected]
advocating for elimination of the XX requirement, the IOC
agreed to stop conducting the Barr body test as a condition Sarah Teetzel, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology
and Recreation Management at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg,
of eligibility prior to the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Canada. Sarah was a university varsity swimmer and continues to
But the removal of the chromosomal sex testing policy swim with a Masters group. [email protected]
in the late 1990s did not mark the end of debates over who
should be permitted to compete in the women’s category. Charlene Weaving, PhD, is an associate professor in the Human
The worldwide media attention focused on Caster Semenya Kinetics Department at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia,
after she won the women’s 800 meter race at the 2009 World Canada. In 2010, she co-edited an anthology, Philosophical Perspec-
tives on Gender in Sport and Physical Activity, published by Routledge.
Athletics Championships in Berlin demonstrates the contin- Charlene was a university varsity rugby player and currently enjoys the
ued interest in classifying, labeling, and policing women’s challenges of big mountain skiing. [email protected]
bodies. In response to massive public speculation about
whether Semenya was female, male, or intersex, the Interna- 1
Mariah Burton Nelson. (1994). The Stronger Women Get, The More Men
Love Football. New York: Avon Books, p.16.
tional Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) released
a new policy on hyperandrogenism in sport, which was
2
Patricia Vertinsky. (1990). The Eternally Wounded Woman: Women,
Doctors and Exercise In The Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester:
adopted by the IOC prior to the London 2012 Olympic Manchester University Press, p.39.
Games. This policy explains that athletes whose sex is under 15
3
Susan K. Cahn. (2010). “From the ‘muscle moll’ to the ‘butch’
suspicion will be examined and classified by a team of experts ballplayer: Mannishness, lesbianism, and homophobia in U.S. women’s
from the fields of endocrinology, gynecology, genetics, and sports,” in Philosophical Perspectives on Gender in Sport and Physical
Activity, edited by Paul Davis and Charlene Weaving, New York:
psychology, among others, that will render a decision about Routledge, pp. 145-159.
the athlete’s eligibility as a woman. 4
Cahn, pp. 152-153.
In addition, since 2004, the IOC Medical Commission
has enforced the “Stockholm Consensus,” a policy that spec-
5
International Olympic Committee Medical Commission. (1968).
Medical Commission of the Olympic Games Reports: 1 Grenoble 2 Mexico.
ifies the conditions under which transgender women (and James Worrall Collection, Box 25, International Centre for Olympic
men) are eligible to compete at the Olympics. Yet even Studies.
transgender women who meet the criteria and compete in 6
María José Martínez-Patiño. (2005). “Personal account: A woman tried
the women’s category continue to face ample discrimination and tested.” Lancet, 366: S38.
 Jane Addams: A Bad Girl Good for Training Doctors?
Aron Sousa

If we had the opportunity to ask Jane Addams (1860-1935), founder of Hull House and recipient of
the Nobel Peace Prize, what it means to be a good or bad person, I have the sense she would have much
to say about character—in the nineteenth-century sense of character as something to be consciously
sought, built, and expanded. Louise Knight’s tender biography, Jane Addams: Spirit in Action, draws a
convincing portrait of Addams’ genuine struggle to create for herself a good character, one constructed
of self-sacrifice without self-absorption. For Addams, being good or bad seems to have been as much
about attitude and orientation as behavior.
Indeed, Addams appears to have been convinced by the physician Silas Weir Mitchell that
her period of significant depression, while she was in medical school at the University of Pennsylvania,
was the result of self-absorption. For Mitchell, and then also for the depressed Addams, to be a woman
working to achieve her long-held dream of being a doctor was to be self-centered in a way dangerous
specifically to women. That her dream was to be a doctor working among the poor did not mitigate the
medical opinion of Dr. Mitchell nor her subsequent negative self-assessment.* For Miss Addams in her
early twenties, to be a woman medical student meant being selfish, too little engaged with family—
lacking in good character. She was bad, and therefore sick, and likely to remain so if she stuck to her
plan of becoming a physician. So she did not.
Fortunately for the world, bad medicine and bad health did not stop Addams, as she took on
the goal of being good in deed and attitude. I don’t get the sense that goodness was a simple thing for
Jane Addams. In her books on the sex trade (A New Consciousness and an Ancient Evil, 1912) and youth
(The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, 1909) she is generous and understanding of the dilemmas
and decisions of the downtrodden. But she also argued against the self-regard of philanthropists, and
thought that beneficence and the self-satisfaction that comes with being a benefactor were the wrong
16 motivation for work with the poor or dispossessed. She positioned Hull House, the first Settlement
House in the United States, to work with the people of Chicago’s 19th Ward as a part of their neighbor-
hood, rather than as a social service agency providing succor. Where traditional philanthropy might have
focused on direct aid, the residents of Hull House designed their own programs to be useful to neighbors,
putting effort into improving their lots in life. Through Hull House, the neighborhood enjoyed adult
education in cooking, sewing, trades, and language, a kindergarten, a lecture series, performances, and
community meeting rooms. No one builds an institution like Hull House without significant self-regard
and ego, but by intentionally “working with” her disadvantaged neighbors, Adams created good in her
community without the bad character traits that she believed had derailed her previously.
*
There is another history to be written on the bad doctor, bad girls, and bad medicine as they played out in story of Dr. Mitchell;
one could begin by reading the work of another of his patients, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
 By all accounts Jane Addams was an honest person, a good collaborator and neighbor, and a
devoted partner to Mary Rozet Smith. By 1912, she had been a part of nearly every major progressive
effort in the country, and had become a very successful author and highly sought-after speaker. Some
describe the ovation she received at the 1912 Progressive Party Convention as rivaling that received by
Teddy Roosevelt himself.
And then the trouble started to really accumulate. People like the president of Harvard started
criticizing her for brazenly entering politics by seconding the nomination of Roosevelt at the party con-
vention. Her status as a mature, single woman was now scorned and derided, as it challenged the place of
women married and rooted in family life. (Curiously, her relationship with Smith was either not noticed
or not to be publically commented on.) Then, as nations began to prepare for war, and finally war came
to Europe in 1914, the U.S. forces favoring militarism lined up in opposition to those strongly advocating
peace, including Addams. Before the U.S. entered the war, Addams stood as an important voice in an
organized and active international peace movement. But after
the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915, the political climate
changed. Roosevelt began attacking Addams, The New York Maybe medical schools
Times joined in, and then newspapers across the country would produce more badass
piled on.
When the U.S. officially entered the fray in 1917, the physicians and fewer bad
war declaration was accompanied by the Espionage Act, which physicians if there was more
made speaking against the war or the government an arrestable
offense. When speaking publicly, Addams was limited to speaking focus on usefulness rather
of the futility of war in general terms, for instance, opining that than self-regard, on courage
only good could overcome evil, or making reference to Tolstoy’s
concept of non-resistance. Soon her speaking invitations dried rather than beneficence.
up, and those speeches she did give were met with stony silence
or even boos. Many of her oldest friends and collaborators
decided to support the war and abandoned her. Funding for Hull House dried up, and detractors
befouled the house door. Some called Addams a danger to the nation. Others spoke of lynching her.
Jane Addams had to know she had become bad in the eyes of many, but even as the political
tides turned against her, she remained a badass renegade, a voice to be reckoned with. When Illinois
allowed women to vote in the election of 1916, the Republicans and Democrats were both anxious
to claim Addams’ first presidential vote. (She went with Wilson.) Despite the challenges of the time,
she kept Hull House afloat and served as president of three international peace committees. Her work
informed Wilson’s plan for the peace, and yet after the war she argued, presciently, that the peace agree-
ment and reparations forced on the Central Powers by the Allies were unjust and would not lead to a
lasting peace. Then the Depression descended and brought a new progressive energy to the country,
allowing her again to be recognized as a true American leader. Finally in 1931, for her more than twenty
years of work on behalf of peace, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize—perhaps the ultimate sign of
an individual being understood not to be self-absorbed.
I became interested in Jane Addams because her philosophical and educational work at
Hull House had a strong influence on John Dewey, whose educational work seems ripe for use in
contemporary medical schools. I spend a good deal of my time thinking about how best to educate
medical students, and I looked to Addams because I hoped to use her ideas about adult education and
about uniting the practical and the theoretical in education. Her ideas and those of Dewey still drive my
thoughts on medical education, but I have come to realize that Addams gives us more to think about 17
than educational practice; she helps us think about character.
Most medical schools have some chunks of curriculum that attempt to inculcate altruism and
beneficence into medical students. Whether curriculum can do that is an important empirical question,
but nowadays I think maybe we should not even try. Maybe medical schools would produce more
badass physicians and fewer bad physicians if there was more focus on usefulness rather than self-regard,
on courage rather than beneficence. What if we somehow helped our medical students become what
Addams became by virtue of leaving medical school?
Aron Sousa, MD, is Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Medicine at Michigan State
University’s College of Human Medicine. He is a general internist with interests in medical education and in the use
evidence in the practice of medicine. He often tries to grow Sequoiadendron giganteumin his basement.
 All Due
Weight to
Sympathy
Indrany Datta-Barua Dr. Emily Blackwell attributed weakness of woman’s nature while also
much of her success to her eschewing seeking to change that nature.
Though her older sister Elizabeth had traditional femininity. She described Today we live in a different world,
already paved the way as the first woman herself as “very persevering and very where women make up half of medical
to graduate from an American medical resolute—and very ambitious,” with school classes, thanks to to the pioneering
school in 1849, Emily Blackwell found “a something sprawling in my character work of women like the Blackwells. We
the medical profession far from accepting and way of doing things” (quoted in are now fortunate to no longer be limited
when she began her own career. Emily Faderman, 1999). If to be a “true woman” by low expectations or educational barri-
had applied to eleven schools before being in the nineteenth century was to be “the ers. Nor are we seen as less womanly by
accepted by Rush Medical College, but teacher of children, the genial companion virtue of pursuing medicine.
then was expelled after a year due to pres- of man, the loving mother of sons” (Susan However, I worry that medicine
sure from the Medical Society of Illinois. B. Anthony quoted in Faderman, 1999), today entails an overvaluation of “lofty
Tenacious, she finally earned her degree in then, according to her life partner Dr. aspirations” and “sprawling characters”
1854 from Western Reserve University’s Elizabeth Cushier, Emily Blackwell was and a remnant of disdain for “womanly
School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio. more than happy, proud in fact, to have airs.” In my own medical training, I have
Like many women before her, Emily “stepped out from her place in creation” seen a friend laughed away from study
Blackwell often entertained the idea of (quoted in Faderman, 1999). tables for exposing a lilting voice and
disguising herself as a man when she met As an educator, Dr. Blackwell hoped bubbly laugh, and I have had to comfort
with opposition to her success. But she to foment the same spirit in her students: a soft-spoken classmate ignored repeat-
also longed to “establish great principles, “If I might but see that I was doing some- edly by (often female) faculty for being
to found great institutions, to be one of thing to raise them not in position only seen as too passive. I worry that we
the foremost rank through whom the but in nature—to inspire them with women have devalued and even lost
great ideas of the age are developed” higher objects—loftier aspirations— sight of that part of our nature, whether
(quoted in Faderman, 1999), ambitions to teach them that there is a strength acculturated or essential, that makes us
incompatible with anonymity. In 1857, of woman as well as of man.” In letters to particularly suited for doctoring.
Emily and Elizabeth founded the New her sister, she often fretted about interns I was fortunate while a student at
York Infirmary for Women and Children with “womanly airs” and disdained tradi- CWRU to be placed in the Blackwell
and, a decade later, the Women’s Medical tional femininity as diametrically opposed Society, where I was mentored by Dr.
College of the New York Infirmary, the to her own character (quoted in Fader- Elizabeth McKinley, the only female
18 first institution of its kind. After Eliza- man, 1999). In their “Address on the society dean. There is no doubt that
beth’s departure, Emily continued as the Medical Education of Women” (1864), Dr. McKinley was the right leader for
primary administrator of the Infirmary the Blackwell sisters acknowledged societal a society named after Emily Blackwell.
and College for nearly thirty years. contributions to what they saw as femi- Indeed, upon her recent retirement,
Her alma mater, Case Western Reserve nine flaws: “[The education of women] is the society was appropriately renamed
University School of Medicine (CWRU), desultory in its character: girls are seldom “Blackwell-McKinley.”
has honored her legacy as a physician and drilled thoroughly in any thing; they are In my first meeting in 2009 with
educator through the Blackwell Society, not trained to use their minds any more Dr. McKinley, I happened to mention
one of four academic societies that guide than their muscles; they seldom apply that I liked hockey and so learned that
current medical students from matricula- themselves with a will and a grip to she had been a field hockey player. (In
tion to graduation, and the only society master any subject.” Thus, Dr. Emily fact, she had been invited to try out for
named for a woman. Blackwell despaired of an essential the Olympic team [McKinley, 2013].)
Needless to say, I was thrilled to learn was her sensitivity—a femininity that the firsthand the psychological toll that illness
that my mentor was something of a “bad Blackwells might have thought “bad” for takes on the patient and family. She shares
girl”—that is, not entirely “girly” and for- women entering the medical profession that journey through her writing, and, as
midable to boot. Being quite tall, she had —that made a lasting one. when she told me about the steroids, she
the potential to be physically imposing, has also intimately shared her body for the
but she always spoke softly and politely As today’s “bad girls” of benefit of others. If that is not common
(like many other hockey players I’d met). to being a woman, I don’t know what is.
medicine, we should accept the The Blackwells lived in a time when
She was a welcome foil for the other soci-
ety deans who, at least in public settings, “good girls” in ourselves and women faced immense cultural hurdles.
had the boyish tendency to play to the others, embracing the tradi- Therefore, it was reasonable that Dr. Emily
crowd. Without being dry or serious, she Blackwell’s priority be to train women to
took care of business, was active in course
tionally feminine qualities of be single-mindedly resolute and ambitious.
development, and mentored many, even sympathy and sensitivity in However, we also have it in us to be teachers
adopting students not in her society. order to make ourselves the and companions, loving and sympathetic,
All this and more she accomplished as Dr. McKinley has taught me.
while battling breast cancer. Diagnosed best healers and teachers that “Let us give all due weight to sympa-
in 1996, following treatment she enjoyed we can be. thy, and never dispense with it in the true
ten years apparently cancer-free. Then one physician… Warm sympathetic natures,
day she rolled over in bed and broke a rib, In the beginning of my association with knowledge, would make the best of all
signifying metastasis. By the time my class with Dr. McKinley, I was a bit reserved physicians,” acknowledged the Blackwells
sat in our first lecture three years later, she with her, wondering just how much of my in their “Address” (1864). However, the
was receiving chemo, hormone therapy life outside of school to share, worried that task before them was to obtain the right
having failed her. Her battle was no secret it would shade her judgment of my fitness to education for women. Now our task is
to us students. She organized a class every for this profession. Already I had gotten to achieve our fullest potential. As today’s
semester called “Cancer Survivorship” negative feedback from other faculty “bad girls” of medicine, we should accept
and necessarily made announcements about where I was applying my energies. the “good girls” in ourselves and others,
when she would be unavailable due to Perhaps it was her “bad girl” nature embracing the traditionally feminine qual-
treatment. Eventually, the progression of that allowed her to relate, but it was ities of sympathy and sensitivity in order
the illness required her to retire from her Dr. McKinley’s warmth that supported to make ourselves the best healers and
duties as dean, but by that time, she had me. She endorsed my plan to spend the teachers that we can be.
persevered well beyond expectations. summer between first and second year Editor’s note: While this issue was in press,
I have one particularly striking mem- touring in a band. She smiled from ear- Dr. McKinley died at home, surrounded by
ory of meeting with Dr. McKinley early to-ear when she saw me perform at an her family.
in my fourth year. At this point, I had outdoor festival, hugging me and asking Indrany Datta-Barua, MD, is a 2013 graduate
heard that the severity of her disease was if she could keep the pictures she had of Case Western Reserve University School of
profound. As she shuffled through stacks taken. Meanwhile, through her Cancer Medicine and now a Psychiatry resident at Tufts
of books and files, looking for my portfo- Survivorship elective, she exposed my Medical Center. In 2013, she designed and led the
“Art+Medicine” elective at CWRU, where medical
lio and the draft of my personal statement, classmates and me to integrative and
students examined illness-related themes in art
I found myself thinking she looked and complementary therapies, enabled other of different media and workshopped their own
sounded quite like herself. Then she sud- cancer survivors to share the stories that creative pieces together. She would like to acknowl-
denly placed her hands flat on her desk, they wanted to tell (as opposed to the edge the new dean of the Blackwell-McKinley
looked right at me and laughed, “They medical histories that we were trained to Society, Lynda G. Montgomery, MD, M.Ed.,
for her guidance during that course as well as
have me on steroids now, and I’m so loopy. elicit), and provided a space for reflection
for the idea for and critical feedback on this essay.
I am always misplacing things.” Thus, she when one of my closest childhood friends Dr. Datta-Barua has interests in Palliative
subtly but clearly spelled out for me just was diagnosed with cancer. Medicine and Psycho-oncology, and she
how serious the situation was, the use of Dr. McKinley attributes the focus of currently blogs for Cleveland Clinic Wellness.
steroids indicating that the disease was her teaching, particularly the values and [email protected]
now impacting her central nervous system. skills that she emphasizes, to her experi- Works cited 19
There is no question that Dr. ence, calling cancer itself a “teacher” for Blackwell, E. & Blackwell, E. (1864). Address on the
McKinley shares a similar strength with her. Perhaps it is poetic that it is breast Medical Education of Women. New York, NY: Baptist
the early women pioneers in medicine, cancer, that most overtly feminine of dis- and Taylor, Book and Job Printers.
pursuing her goals in the face of great eases, that imbued her teaching with the Brett, R. (2010, Sep 9). Cancer teaches doctor to
become a better healer. Plain Dealer. Retrieved from
obstacles. Given her perseverance, I doubt prioritization of empathy and sensitivity. http://www.cleveland.com/brett/blog/index.ssf/
that Dr. Emily Blackwell could have As one local reporter wrote of Dr. McKin- 2010/09/cancer_teaches_doctor_to_becom.htm.
chided her for “womanly airs.” Indeed, ley, “Now she teaches students to listen Faderman, L. (1999). To Believe in Women: What
the “bad girl” qualities that she shared to their patients’ fears, their struggles, Lesbians Have Done for America—a History. New
York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.
with Emily Blackwell—ambition, resolu- their stories—not just treat their diseases”
McKinley, E. (2008-2013). Saving my Life one
tion, a “sprawling character”—made a (Brett, 2010). Having lived with cancer poem at a time. [Web log]. Retrieved from http://
striking first impression on me. But it for over ten years, she has experienced savinglissa.blogspot.com/.
 “Head Nurses”

Graphic: Sexability

William Peace

After a decade of increasingly severe neurological deficits, I was paralyzed in 1978 at the age of 18.
Prior to the widespread development and use of antibiotics, people who had experienced a traumatic
spinal cord injury (SCI) usually died. But by the time I was paralyzed, thanks to broad-based
advances in medical care, men and women with SCI were not merely surviving, but thriving.
All of a sudden, healthcare professionals were confronted with a population of paralyzed people
such as myself who expected to live a long life post injury.
The job of “rehabilitating” a person fell to physiatrists and other rehabilitation professionals
such as physical, occupational, and speech therapists. Even as a young man, I quickly learned that
these professionals had no clue what to do. My generation of paralyzed people was essentially a
pod of guinea pigs. On the forefront of the creation of modern-day rehabilitation, we all embraced
experimentation. A Wild West mentality prevailed: no idea was too crazy, nothing dismissed. The
focus was on getting paralyzed people ready for the real world.
At the time, I had few thoughts about the social structure of rehabilitation. A single
emotion drove me and most of my peers: fear. What was I going to do with the rest of my life?
20 I had just graduated from high school and all my friends were heading to college. I expected to
do the same. I would like to say that my primary reason for going to college was to get a great
education. Education was a priority, but as a newly paralyzed man, I had something far more
basic in mind. No, not walking—my bulky Everest & Jennings wheelchair was more than enough
for me. In fact, I considered that piece of junk a modern marvel. I had something more important
in mind: I wanted to have sex. But did my dick still work? Could I still fuck?
 Prior to leaving rehabilitation, I was a good patient. I worked hard to learn my “ADLs”
—activities of daily living. I accepted without thought that I had to be able to do everything
myself. Asking another person to help me was never a consideration—it was a sign of weakness,
an anathema. I was brainwashed into an extreme sort of self-sufficiency and independence. Then,
the week before I left rehabilitation, I asked the attending neurologist, “Can I have sex?” His
reply unnerved me: “I don’t know.” These words reinforced something I could not articulate at
the time: I had, in fact, learned virtually nothing from the health care professionals charged with
teaching me how to really live with a SCI. The real lessons and practical information—and all
of my SCI sexual education—had come from my paralyzed peers.
Part of that included an education about the “bad girls” of rehabilitation. Bad girls were
broken up into two distinct and indeed opposite groups: one set formed the “dick police”; the
other, the “head nurses.” The dick police had no redeeming value. Early mornings and late after-
noons were when they roamed the hallways. When you hear the cart, I was told, hide. The cart was
filled with catheters and was pushed by a nurse who was on the lowest rung of nursing seniority.
These “bad girls” were young woman and inevitably pretty. Fresh out of nursing school, they had
to spend their days teaching people like me how to get a catheter in and out. The first time I held
a catheter with a very pretty bad girl deputized as a member of the dick police, I was shocked.
You want me to shove that tube up and into my dick? You have got to be kidding me. This was
bad enough but my “teacher” was barely older than me. She wanted to demonstrate the correct
technique and I was supposed to replicate her efforts. The word humiliating does not begin to
cover what I felt.
When the bad girl from the dick police wrapped her hand around the shaft of my
penis, my descent into entropy seemed complete. I may have thought I was still the same person
I was before I was paralyzed, but when the dick police came around, there was no doubt my life
had taken on an Alice in Wonderland type of existence. Pretty young women were searching me
out in a way I never dreamed possible. So, like those who had warned me, I learned to avoid the
dick police.
But late at night, my roommates told me about the other group of bad girls—the ones I
desperately wanted to meet. These bad girls were called “the head nurses.” Initially I thought this
was an urban legend if not a bad practical joke. Yet I was told again and again that, at some point
during my rehabilitation, a nurse I knew or had never seen would answer the call bell late at night
and give me a blowjob. There was no privacy in rehabilitation centers at the time. Rooms usually
held four to six men. All that separated me from the other paralyzed guys was a flimsy curtain.
We did not even have a television in the room. Just the physical set-up alone made the stories
seem like impossible fantasy.
But sure enough, late one night I was awoken by the guttural sounds of deep moaning. I
turned to see the silhouette of a young shapely woman giving my roommate a world-class blowjob.
I remember this night with crystal clarity because it was the first time since being paralyzed I got
an erection. My dick was alive! Who needs a doctor when you have a head nurse!
A week or two later, I received my own visit. It started out badly. It was late at night
and I had pissed all over myself and the bed. I hit the call button, upset. I thought I had had
a handle on bladder management at that point. The nurse that came to help was one with
whom I was very close. She changed my sheets and came back as I was washing myself. I was
playing with myself without much luck. She explained I had to be a bit more vigorous and
try non-traditional approaches. 21
Then she rubbed my leg and pulled the skin on my inner groin, and sure enough I grew
hard. I started to cry in relief. She wiped away my tears and then went down on me. She brought
me to orgasm, and I was taken aback when I realized no ejaculate had emerged. She explained to me
that this is common for paralyzed men and that it involves a retrograde ejaculation. She assured me
it would not affect my fertility or my sex life in a major way. My son is living proof she was correct.
(continued on next page)
 “Head Nurses” (continued from previous page)

That night forged a lifelong friendship with this woman, one that lasted until her death
two years ago. Once in a blue moon, she or I made reference to that night, the night she reaffirmed
my manhood and masculinity in a way I will forever appreciate.
Newly minted crippled men inform me that “head nurses” no longer exist. In fact,
when I tell this story about two sorts of “bad girls” I encountered in rehabilitation circa 1978,
most people do not believe me. I am accused of telling fish tales.
Obviously my experiences constitute a lost part of medical history—lost perhaps because
people are too uncomfortable with it. The fact was that rehabilitation stays at the time were long
and intense, physically and emotionally. The medical professionals that did the hard work were
almost all young attractive women, not much older than myself; the patients were almost exclu-
sively young men. The occupational and physical therapists and the nurses touched our bodies
in intimate ways on a daily basis. They held us when we cried. To relieve the pressure we felt,
much sexual innuendo and many sexually provocative jokes were exchanged. Drugs, prescribed
and recreational, were shared and consumed. Sexual relations happened between patients and
staff. Some married.
Truth be told, I could tell many stories that would be far more objectionable to most
people than my “head nurse” experience. But what is etched in my mind some thirty-five years
later is the compassion that woman showed me—the compassion so many of these women
showed us young men. This woman was able to provide me a level of care and a connection that
no longer exists. I should note that not all men received such a visit; this was not a standard part
of nursing care. Married, older men, and those who did not work exceptionally hard to become
independent never got a visit from a “head nurse.” Such visits were reserved for men such as
myself. I was young, naïve, sexually inexperienced, polite, driven to succeed, and
was in need of basic knowledge that was not forthcoming. Into this void the nurse
... what is etched in my injected a compassionate eroticism that made me a better man, one capable and
prepared to function in a hostile post-SCI world. This was, after all, a time when
mind some thirty-five years there was no such thing as disability rights or disability studies. The ADA did not
yet exist.
later is the compassion Part of me longs for the old days for newly crippled men. It’s true that
rehabilitation thirty years ago was primitive. Many people who failed to progress
that woman showed me— or displayed too much anger or clinical depression were quietly sent to another
the compassion so many facility. I now shudder and wonder what happened to these lost souls. But it was
more typical to spend months in a rehabilitation facility where life-long friendships
of these women showed were forged. I knew a few quadriplegics that spent over a year at a rehabilitation
facility. Today—forget extended rehabilitation experiences. Newly paralyzed
us young men. people are shipped out within weeks and so are in my estimation set up to fail.
Rehabilitation facilities are often quite nice and located in rural areas. But they
now serve as short-term bubbles of social understanding. Worse yet, much time is
wasted discussing a cure to SCI and less time is spent on practical matters for a post-injury life.
Obviously a cure is an admirable hope, but a desire for cure is much less important than the sort
of kindness a “bad girl” such as a “head nurse” can offer a paralyzed man who is wondering about
the present and future of his sexuality.
I am not suggesting we return to our primitive past. Advances in rehabilitation and
22 social progress have revolutionized the lives of many persons who suddenly find themselves
paralyzed. But I will never forget the “bad girls” who gave me quite an educational experience—
who gave me myself.

William J. Peace, PhD, is the 2014 Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities
at Syracuse University. His book Evolution and Revolution is the definitive biography of Leslie A. White.
Peace has also published in a host of peer-reviewed journals such as The American Anthropologist, Journal
of Anthropological Research, and The Hastings Center Report. Peace is also on the Board of Directors of
the grass roots disability rights organization Not Dead Yet. His research interests include bioethics, disability
studies, body art and modification, and the history of anthropology.
“BAD GIRLS”
from the World of Disability

Alison Lapper Pregnant, Marc Quinn, Carrara marble, 2005, Photo: Tim Graham, Getty Images

Kristi Kirschner Most of what I learned about life with disability came not
from medical training but from my engaging with these women,
Two decades ago, early in my career as a rehab doctor, I many of whom have also become dear friends. How I loved
helped to found a reproductive health care center for women hearing their conversations. They talked about all the things
with disabilities.1 The smartest thing my colleagues and I did women often talk about when they get together: relationships,
in creating that center was to engage a community board of dating, sexuality, birth control, the challenges of exercise, diet
about twenty women with a variety of physical disabilities and managing their weight, their views on genetic counseling,
to guide us. And what dynamos these women were! We had pregnancy, abortion, parenting, and how to dress. Only it was
women of all ages, disabilities, socioeconomic classes, races, different. Why did people assume that “crips” should date only
and ethnicities—some proudly self-identifying as disability other “crips”? What types of clothes worked best if one used a 23
activists and feminists, others not so sure. What was clear wheelchair or had a catheter? When should you talk to a poten-
from these early meetings was that disabled women were tial partner about having a catheter, or that you could become
coming into their own. They were tired of being treated as dysreflexic during intercourse? Did a woman’s right to choose
asexual, second-class patients, excluded from gynecological abortion trump concerns that selective abortion of a fetus with
exams and mammograms by inaccessible clinics and hospi- a disability (such as Down syndrome) is a form of genocide?
tals. From the seeds of the feminist movement and the I remember in particular their heated debates about two
disability civil rights movement, and with the recent passage brave, high profile, and controversial women who blazed new
of the ADA in 1990, a new focus on the needs and rights paths by defying cultural stereotypes about the disabled female
of disabled women had begun to take root. body. These two women weren’t “bad” in the simple sense of
being disobedient or naughty—though there was a bit of that.
(continued on next page)
 “BAD GIRLS”
from the World of Disability (continued from previous page)

They were confident, mischievous, sexy, and good-looking. The group also introduced me to Alison Lapper. Born in
These women challenged us to look at their naked, feminine 1965 with phocomelia (absent arms, and foreshortened legs),
and, yes, atypical bodies. They were unashamed, uncloaked, institutionalized at birth by a rejecting mother who also refused
with nothing to hide. to allow her adoption by a loving foster family, Lapper had to
The first of these two women, Ellen Stohl, shocked fem- fight for every step of her independence and self-esteem. Though
inists and disability activists alike by posing nude for Playboy she was eventually fitted with prostheses, she rejected them and
in 1987. From the waist up, Stohl was indistinguishable from developed her own way of doing things, including cultivating a
other “playmates.” From the waist down, she was atypical be- career as an artist in the media of photography, digital imaging,
cause she had paraplegia. The difference wasn’t immediately and painting. She often focused her work on the subjects of
obvious to the casual observer. Indeed, as feminist disability physical normality and beauty, playing with images of her own
studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson subsequently body, tapping into its ironic similarity to the iconic Venus de
noted, Stohl could have “passed” as non-disabled, as the Milo. When, as a single woman, she found herself unexpectedly
accompanying accoutrements of her disability (such as her pregnant, Lapper rejoiced in the normality of her reproductive
wheelchair) were downplayed.2 But it was clear in the Playboy organs. Lapper even chose to pose nude for sculptor Marc Quinn
narrative, and several accompanying photos of a clothed Stohl in 1999, when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant.4
using a wheelchair, that she was, indeed, a disabled woman. The resultant startling massive white marble sculpture
(3.55 meters high), Alison Lapper Pregnant, occupied the fourth

The disabled body is plinth in Trafalgar Square from September 2005 to October
2007 and stimulated much buzz. Quinn had been looking for
a design that would bring needed femininity to the square, and
intensely beautiful— his choice of Lapper for subject certainly raised the theme of
gender and power while also opening questions about disabil-

memorable, unexpected, ity, power, sexuality, and motherhood.5 He noted that, while
most public sculpture amounts to “triumphant male statuary”
and almost never features people with disabilities, Trafalgar
and lived in with great Square was one of the few public spaces where disability was
represented, namely in the form of the statue of Lord Nelson
self-awareness. —RIVA LEHRER
with his apparent missing arm. In preparing his work for the
Square, Quinn noted that:
Nelson’s Column is the epitome of a phallic male mon-
Prior to the motor vehicle crash which caused Stohl’s
ument ... In the past, heroes such as Nelson conquered
paraplegia (three years before her Playboy feature), Stohl had
the outside world. Now it seems to me they conquer
been a model and actress. She had been accustomed to the
their own circumstances and prejudices of others, and
positive attention young attractive women receive. With the
I believe that Alison’s portrait will symbolize this .....
onset of her disability, though, she was thrust into a new
From working with disabled sitters I realized how
reality—one involving covert social and cultural norms.
hidden different bodies are in public life and media.
On the inside she knew she was the same woman, albeit
Her pregnancy also makes this monument to the
now with a physical difference. On the outside, she knew
possibilities of the future.6
her sexuality and physical attractiveness had become suspect.
Feeling invalidated, frustrated, and even angry she reached As expected, the sculpture provoked much public debate
out to Hugh Hefner in a letter, writing: about beauty and difference and was again in the public eye
at the 2012 summer Paralympics when a giant replica (43 feet
The reason I choose Playboy for this endeavor is that
high!) was displayed in the opening ceremony.
sexuality is the hardest thing for disabled persons to
This then brings me to the last of the three “bad” girls
hold onto. ….Well, I believe it is time to show society
I want to profile in this piece: the artist Riva Lehrer. Riva
the real story. Anyone can be sexy; it is a matter of
and I met about ten years ago through a disability arts festival
how a person feels about himself or herself….”3
planning committee in Chicago.7 She was then in the midst of
24 The women of our community board aligned with creating her Circle Stories—collaborative portraits of disabled
Stohl’s sentiments, but not necessarily with her choices. artists in which the artist is portrayed in a setting of their
They agreed that health care and society often viewed them choosing (either real or fantastical).8 Riva’s sense of exquisite
as asexual, unattractive, and diminished. But was posing for detail, brilliant use of color, and explorations of themes of
Playboy really an act of empowerment, or was it co-optation atypical beauty permeate each of her works. She has written:
by a dominant male-culture magazine that objectified
The disabled body is intensely beautiful—memorable,
women? Was it playing to a form of voyeurism? In the end,
unexpected, and lived in with great self-awareness. These
was it a really a step forward for disabled women, or was it
are not bodies that are taken for granted or left unexplored.
a step backward? I simply loved the fact that we could be
This beauty has often stayed unseen despite the constant,
having this conversation, that these women could agree to
invasive public stare. Disability is complex; it demands
disagree but ultimately desire the same options and access
images that combine hard facts with unexpected gifts.
as other women.
 Cauda Equina, Riva Lehrer

I remember when I first saw Riva’s painting of a nude grey- scale ischial tuberosities, femurs, and sacrum. The
full figure standing against the startling cerulean backdrop. animal’s long shadowy skull is tilted back looking toward
The figure initially appears young, twenties perhaps, her red the woman. Her sensual nakedness feels invaded by the
hair pulled back into a jaunty ponytail grazing her left shoul- radiographically-exposed anatomical details.
der blade, her bangs casually brushed to the side. We see her The portrait’s initially puzzling title, Cauda Equina
mostly from behind, her body with a quarter-turn toward (“Horse’s Tail”), becomes jarringly clear. The woman has spina
the right, her arms raised and externally rotated behind her bifida. The anatomical difference in her neural tube (at a point
neck. As with a Mary Cassatt painting, one can easily imag- where the filamentous tail of the spinal cord is in fact known in
ine the subject captured unaware, perhaps in the midst of medicine as the “cauda equina”) gives rise to her small stature, 25
performing her morning toilette. her curved spine, her thin limbs.
Upon further study, the eye is drawn to the exquisite Unashamed by her physical difference, the woman’s
details—the woman’s large sinuous, hands, the collapsing carriage is proud, sensual, defiant even. How delightful to
scaffolding of her chest wall. Her low back is lordotic, pelvis learn that the woman is none other than the artist, Riva Lehrer.
tilted with her left hip rising higher than right. Her pink I was mesmerized by the portrait at the time I purchased it
flesh is firm, her upper arms muscular, her buttocks pert years ago, and still am.
and slightly rounded. I asked Riva to engage with me in a conversation about her
And then we see it—a ghostly mammalian skeleton work, and the evolution of her work over the years as she has
hovering in the background. The spine of the skeleton is explored themes of beauty and disability by painting bodies.
massively elongated, its right posterior acetabulum merging What follows are lightly edited excerpts from that conversation:
with the woman’s left hip, drawing the eye to her grainy
(continued on next page)
 “BAD GIRLS”
from the World of Disability (continued from previous page)

KLK: When I showed my colleague and guest editor of wants to explore that in their portrait. I NEVER try to
this issue of Atrium, Alice Dreger, your Cauda Equina self persuade a person to pose unclothed unless it arises naturally
portrait, she immediately saw a connection with the work and importantly during our process.
of seventeenth-century German-born Dutch anatomist, I should say something about that process. I’ve developed
Bernhard Seigfried Albinus. Are you familiar with his Clara a collaborative method that begins with a long series of inter-
Rhinoceros piece? I’m wondering whether he consciously views. I ask my portrait subjects about the effect that their
influenced your approach to own piece? bodies have had on their lives, and vice versa. My subjects
are given quite a bit of control of the visual narrative. Their
RL: Yes, I know that series of engravings quite well. I teach opinions and ideas are crucial to the final image. These
anatomy at the School of the Art Institute, and drawing are not commissions. I usually choose subjects because of
for medical students at Northwestern. I’ve used Albinus the work they do, and
engravings in class off out of a fascination
and on for years, and find with how they inhabit
the incongruous pairing their bodies.
pretty darn amusing. That The majority of my
said, I’m not consciously subjects are disabled,
aware of being influenced though not all of them
by that image in particu- are visibly different.
lar. Every portrait I make An increasing number
is a layering of ideas and are not disabled at all. It
desires. Part of this one surprises people to learn
came from thinking about that some of the most
imaginary anatomies, fraught egos I’ve worked
such as those that might with have belonged to
belong to centaurs and non-disabled people.
mermaids. It seemed to Perhaps this is because
me that I became both those with variant bodies
animal and mythic from are forced to try to reach
the waist down because levels of peace with their
of the mutation in my appearance. The experi-
spinal column. The cauda ence of being looked at is
equina was a perfect way a familiar daily struggle.
to meld myself toward For some, being observed
a bestiary. in the studio is a way
KLK: Some of your to engage that struggle
portraits are naked, some directly and fruitfully.
not. How do you choose Most of the nudes
how much of the body I’ve done have actually
to show? been self-portraits, as
with Cauda Equina.
RL: I rarely ask others to Self-portraiture lets me
pose nude for me, because explore ideas that might
of the toxic history of be too painful for others.
medical imagery around I can work with my own
the disabled body. (And, Clara Rhinoceros, Bernhard Seigfried Albinus, 1749 body in extreme ways

for that matter, the problematic history of the female nude.) that might be too scary for someone else, and I don’t have
When a viewer sees a naked, variant body, I believe that his or to worry about hurting another human being. I know what
26 her tendency is to reduce that person to a specimen, that is, I can tolerate. Still, I’m trying to push that line with my
to become unseeing of nuance and attributes that would newest collaborative works. I’ve been asking those who
give you a deeper, more complex entrée into that person’s work with me to go to edgier places than ever before.
life. Disabled people (if they are visibly disabled) often live Another important part of the process is that I work
with constant observation and painful judgment. I never in thematic series. This allows me to explore the similarities
want to replicate that in either the making of, or final and variances between individuals, and between disabled and
product of, a portrait. able-bodied lives. I ask a central question and see how it plays
When I have portrayed someone nude, it’s almost always out in divergent ways. This series approach has included
because it fits with what we're trying to say about who this is. Totems and Familiars, which looked at personal symbols as
Sexuality within disability is an intricate and essential subject, sources of strength; Mirror Shards, which places collaborators
and I always welcome the places we can go when a collaborator in animal costumes to consider loss and metamorphosis; and
If Body and Ghost I feel that we’re
Parade, which both haunted by invisible
document the invisi- bodies, and that they
ble bodies (those disrupt our ability to
which we used to live in the ones we
have, wanted to have. I’m depicting
have, or expect to these ghost selves
have) that haunt using medical im-
our experience of agery and devices.
embodiment. Right now I’m doing
a portrait of a South
KLK: Your subjects
African curator,using
are almost always
maps and acupunc-
staring directly at
ture meridians to
the viewer. Tell me
explore issues of
about that.
racial dislocation.
RL: That comes Sheri/Dragon (portrait of Sheri Rush), Riva Lehrer I’m also writing
from two sources. a book about being
One, I want to begin from a position of power. I want the a member of a transitional generation, the first one to live
person I’m drawing or painting to not be a passive subject, with significant disabilities that the previous generation did
but fully, actively engaged in the act of looking at me while I not, for the most part, survive. We lack elders or precedents.
look at her or him. Looking away immediately puts someone Everything had to be invented as we grew up. It’s also about
in a much more objectified state. When I agree to be stared my family, about art, and sex, and my haunted elementary
at while staring, it makes things significantly more equal than school. The title is Golem Girl Gets Lucky.
a one-way exchange. I do on occasion have my subject look
elsewhere, if we’re going for an intentional feeling of privacy For more on Riva Lehrer’s extraordinary work, see her website:
or distance. rivalehrerart.com.
I make portraits so that I can let people exist in the world Kristi L. Kirschner, MD, is Professor of Medical Humanities and
in a way they generally can’t do for themselves. Often this has Bioethics with a secondary appointment in Physical Medicine and
had a transformative effect. I want this to be a mutual trans- Rehabilitation at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
formation. I’ve been changed through portrait relationships She is particularly interested in how concepts of disability and quality of
every bit as much as anyone who has sat for me—or more. life affect medical decision-making, the reconstitution of identity in the
context of disability, and cultural representations of disability in the arts.
Having subjects look at me, at the viewer, and at themselves Since January 2010, her clinical work has been based at Schwab Reha-
in the mirror of a portrait is to begin that change. bilitation Hospital on the west side of Chicago. She specializes in the
care of patients with neurological disabilities, focusing on adult spina
KLK: I imagine your paintings are somewhat like your chil- bifida, neuromuscular diseases, and cerebral palsy.
dren. I’m sure it’s hard to pick a favorite, but do you have one
or two that would rise to the top of your list? Why? 1
At the time, I was on staff at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago; the
RL: Oh, boy. I don’t really like looking at my work after I do program was originally known as the RIC Health Resource Center for
Women with Disabilities and later as the RIC Women with Disabilities
it. It takes about ten years before I stop seeing the problems, Center. The program closed in 2010. For a description of the program see
mistakes, and failures. I only have one of my works hung in www.hhs.gov/od/summit/whitepaper.doc .
my house, which is Zora: How I Understand. It’s a portrait of 2
Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, “Integrating Disability, Transforming
my dog that I completed just before she died. My portraits Feminist Theory,” in The Disability Studies Reader, L J. Davis, ed., second
edition (New York: Routledge, 2006): chapter 21; quotation on p. 267.
of Zora tend to be the pieces I want to look at most and that
I regret having sold. Other works represent major transitions
3
Ellen Stohl to Hugh Hefner, as quoted in an interview with Chet Cooper
for ABILITY magazine, at http://www.abilitymagazine.com/charles-
or milestones, as with Corner (Terra Incognita), the first full hugh$20Hefner-stohl.html (accessed June 19, 1013).
nude self-portrait I ever did. I think of it as the wall I had to 4
Alison Lapper, with Guy Feldman, “Beauty Unseen, Unsung” (excerpts
break through before I could do my real work. from My Life In My Hands [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005]), The 27
Guardian, September 2, 2005, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/artandde-
KLK: Where do you hope to go next with your work? sign/2005/sep/03/art1 (accessed July 24, 2013).
RL: I’m working on the Ghost Parade series now. I’m asking 5
Anonymous, “Fourth Plinth: Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant,”
at http://www.london.gov.uk/fourthplinth/commissions/marc-quinn
people about the bodies they thought they’d have as children; (accessed June 19, 2013).
bodies that they wanted to have; bodies they lost due to 6
Quinn, quoted in ibid.
physical history (illness, surgery, weight change, gender
change, pregnancy, etc); and their fantasy bodies (not in 7
See http://bodiesofworkchicago.org.
the “I want to look like Audrey Hepburn” sense, but asking 8
From Riva Lehrer’s website: http://www.rivalehrerart.com/#!circle-stories/
whether they’d ever wanted wings, or horns, or tiger stripes). c68x (accessed October 29, 2013).
 Sayantani DasGupta

Reproductive public health campaigns

may harness not only beliefs about what

Bad Girls,
constitutes a good family or proper sexu-
ality, but also deep-seated social concerns
and even hostility about poverty and race.
Several recent anti-teen pregnancy cam-
paigns can be examined as examples of

Bad Babies,
moral panic, manifesting a broad public
concern over “bad girls” making “bad
babies.” In the words of sociologist Stanley
Cohen, moral panics are “condensed
political struggles to control the means of

Bad Bumps
cultural reproduction.” Cohen explains,
“successful moral panics owe their appeal
to their ability to find points of resonance
with wider social anxieties.”1 It is clear—
from restrictive abortion laws in Texas and
Ohio to shaming and blaming anti-teen
pregnancy campaigns in New York and
Chicago—pregnant bodies, particularly
teen, of color, or impoverished pregnant
bodies, are the site of widespread anxieties
about social welfare, economic deteriora-
tion, and unregulated female sexuality.
As someone working in the interstices
of narrative, health, and social justice,
the question of interest to me here is not
whether teenage pregnancy is bad for
young women, or even if shame is an
effective motivator for behavior change
(which I would argue it is not). The ques-
tion is what other work such campaigns
are doing. In other words, what additional
cultural stories are anti-teen pregnancy
campaigns telling? And are those narra-
tives socially just or unjust?
Three types of visual tropes seem
to recur in teen pregnancy campaigns in
the U.S.: bad girls, bad babies, and bad
bumps. “Bad girl” stories are those that
chastise (potential) teen mothers for not
being able to engage in socially sanctioned
28 teen girl activities. One poster in Milwau-
kee’s “Baby Can Wait” campaign, for
instance, features a cheerleading-uniform
-clad African-American teen carrying
an infant in a baby carrier. The anxious
appearing young woman is tossed in
the air by other cheerleaders, her baby
strapped in front of her, while the head-
line scolds, Think your teen life won’t
change with a baby? 2
 Similarly, a 2013 Candie’s shoe dollars each year. The campaign has thatsabortion.com, spans the young girl’s
company public service campaign drawn harsh criticism for its sexist, racist, abdomen, making it unclear if the girl
features celebrities such as Fergie and and classist undertones. Haydee Morales, in the image is the (not) aborted child
Carly Rae Jepsen on hot pink posters vice president for education and training or the (eventually) sexually active teen
with slogans such as You’re supposed to be of Planned Parenthood of New York, has of concern.
changing the world, not changing diapers, suggested that the “True Cost” campaign In contrast to bad girl and bad baby
and (next to the image of a baby crib) gets it backward. In her words, “It’s not campaigns, bad bump advertisements
Not how you pictured your first crib, huh? teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but intentionally make suspect pregnancy
Get pregnant and you won’t be moving poverty that causes teen pregnancy.”4 itself by superimposing pregnant bellies
out of your house anytime soon.3 Such Like racist fantasies about “welfare on “wrong” bodies. Consider, for example,
campaigns position teen pregnancy queens,” the (not so) hidden narrative Chicago’s 2013 “Unexpected?” campaign,
against an idealized, aspirational story beneath the “True Cost” campaign speaks which features young men with protuber-
about American teenage life: from to a racialized panic about bad girls pro- ant, pregnant bellies. Intending to shock
cheerleading to moving out of one’s ducing bad babies who will strain the viewers into recognizing the unplanned
parents’ house to perhaps even musical social system. Interestingly, the 2013 nature of most pregnancies and to empha-
superstardom. “True Cost” ad series shares much visually size the responsibility of teen fathers, these
Some campaigns try to stop the with an earlier New York-based campaign, ads simultaneously transmit a deeply
“bad girl” by portraying the potential one that features a photo of an elementary transgender-phobic narrative. The truth
“bad baby.” In 2013, the New York City school-age girl of color under the slogan: is, in 2013, bodies which do not look
Mayor’s Office and Human Resources The most dangerous place for an African traditionally female gendered can and do
Administration launched a new cam- American is in the womb. Although this get pregnant (while bodies which look 29
paign called “The True Cost of Teen privately-funded 2011 anti-abortion traditionally female gendered sometimes
Pregnancy.” The ubiquitous bus and campaign clearly intends to tap into do not). But as with the broadly comic
subway posters feature wailing toddlers historical concerns about eugenics and absurdness of male pregnancy in films
and babies (mostly of color) alongside reproductive health, it simultaneously like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Junior,
a variety of fear-mongering captions: plays into the same moral panic about this anachronistic campaign reinforces
Honestly, Mom, chances are he won’t stay unfettered female sexuality among teens a traditional gender binary while essen-
with you; I’m twice as likely not to graduate of color as does the 2013 “True Cost” tializing pregnancy as a function of only
high school because you had me as a teen; campaign. In the 2011 image, a banner non-transgendered (i.e., cis-gendered)
and, Got a good job? I cost thousands of bearing the campaign’s contact site, female bodies.
(continued on next page)
 Bad Girls,
Bad Babies,
Bad Bumps (continued from previous page)

The roots of these anxieties stem

from race and class panic; in the popular
imagination, wealthy, white women are
delaying and perhaps avoiding preg-
nancy altogether, while the “wrong”
kinds of babies are being born to teen
mothers with alarming frequency. In
practice, these campaigns shift the locus
of concern from a systems-based analy-
sis—from looking, for instance, toward
more funding for parenting education,
reproductive health care, or anti-poverty
campaigns—to an individual-level
responsibility, placing the burden of any
number of social ills on the shoulders of
sexually active young women. In doing
so, these anti-teen pregnancy campaigns
based on moral panic are themselves a
bad, socially unjust business.

Sayantani DasGupta, MD, MPH, is faculty

in the Master’s Program in Narrative Medicine
at Columbia University and in the Graduate
Program in Health Advocacy at Sarah Lawrence
College. She is Co-Chair of the University Semi-
nar in Narrative, Health, and Social Justice,
and a Faculty Fellow at The Center for the
Study of Social Difference, both at Columbia
University. She is the author or editor of many
articles and essays, and three books, including
an award winning collection of women’s illness
narratives, Stories of Illness and Healing:
Interestingly, older white female in their late 20’s and early 30’s, infertility Women Write their Bodies.
bodies also appear in bad bump cam- is a disease for which pregnancy is a cure. [email protected]
paigns. In the U.K., a 2013 campaign But when pregnancy is socially undesire- 1
S. Cohen. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. New
called “Get Britain Fertile”—designed able, as for teens of color, then pregnancy York: Psychology Press, 2002.
to shock “good” women into having is a disease socially spread by sexually 2
K Dries. Chicago is the latest city to tackle teen
babies earlier—featured a well-known active young women themselves. Indeed, pregnancy with weird ads. http://jezebel.com
white female TV presenter, 46-year old as with obesity, the language of epidemic /chicago-is-the-latest-city-to-tackle-teen-preg
nancy-wit-508902075 Accessed 5 July 2013.
Kate Garraway, made up to look “like is often used to refer to teen pregnancy,
a heavily pregnant 70 year old.”5 This suggesting that it represents a pathology.
3
The Candie’s Foundation. http://www.candies-
foundation.org/ Accessed 5 July 2013.
image is undoubtedly intended for a Even while we see evidence of a
4
Quoted in K. Taylor. Posters on teenage
different socioeconomic demographic notable panic about women’s reproductive pregnancy draw fire. New York Times.
from most of the teen pregnancy health sweeping the nation, the Centers March 6, 2013.
campaigns, and has xenophobic, anti- for Disease Control and Prevention report 5
E. Gray. ‘Get Britain Fertile’: Does this fertility
immigrant implications that are beyond that teen pregnancy is on the decline across ad campaign ‘shame’ woman? Huffington Post.
30 the scope of this discussion. (Whose ethnic groups in the U.S. Yet the politi- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/
get-britain-fertile-fertility-ad-campaign-british-
Britain does the campaign want to cal right and left seem to be aligned in shame-women_n_3353160.html May 29, 2013.
“get fertile”? Doubtfully an immigrant their burgeoning moral panic regarding
Britain.). Yet it is interesting to consider teen pregnancy. Public health campaigns
such an anti-infertility campaign against including bad girl, bad baby, and bad
anti-teen pregnancy campaigns. These bump narratives shame and blame girls
ads taken together suggest that, when who are already teenage mothers while
pregnancy is socially desired, as it might be reinforcing broad social anxieties about
for middle class or wealthy white women these young mothers and their children.
“Horrid”
at Life’s End
Marsha Hurst

I first considered writing this piece in the early spring of 2013. The Atrium call for
“Bad Girls” flashed at me from my computer screen, resonating, reverberating, just
as my monthly weekend of caring for my ninety-three-year-old mother approached.
I dreaded this caregiving weekend: traveling across state lines to witness my mother’s
isolation in the house she had refused to leave and in which she was now virtually
imprisoned; the emotional strain of futile efforts to engage her mentally; the physical
strain of transferring her dead weight from bed to wheelchair to toilet to bed; and my
self-flagellation for this resentment.
“Are you my mother?” I would ask, like the baby bird in the 1960 P.D. Eastman
book I read to my grandchildren.
And a voice would respond: A good daughter would never have to ask that question.
Must we, as adult women, still be marked as “bad girls” when refusing the call
to play the role of loving caregiver?
Years ago, I read Julie Hilden’s book, The Bad Daughter (1998), and, even
though I could never have imagined my own mother as the alcoholic and then demented
woman Hilden describes, I felt—if not admiration for Hilden’s rejection
of the dominant caregiving narrative trope—some thrill, some secret
tantalizing horror at her deviance, her defiance. For Hilden, the call
There was a little girl, to take care of her mother was a test she had “failed.” And when she
failed that test, she had become “bad” (p. 106).
who had a little curl, Hilden was marked, “punished,” in her own life for being
a bad daughter, and perhaps this is to be expected when we believe we
right in the middle are “bad girls.” After all, as Carol Levine notes, society assumes women
are “hardwired” for caregiving (2007, p. 242). We do not cross wires
of her forehead. without consequences. Virginia Woolf famously asserted in 1931 that
she had to “kill” that “angel in the house”—the ideal of Victorian
womanhood embodied by her own mother, Julia Stephens, that still
When she was good, hovers, haunts, and whispers to women—before Woolf could write
as she wanted (Hussey, 2013, p. 37).
she was very, very good, We women still grow up with the gendered narrative of
the ethics of familial care. Our parents diaper and feed us when we 31
and when she was bad, are babies and we, as daughters, diaper and feed them when they are
dependent elders. Indeed, “the daughter track” is what Jane Gross
she was horrid. called this narrative trope in her New York Times “New Old Age” blog
in 2005. I resent the call to daughterly duty suggested by “the daughter
track,” but at the same time, when I consider my own all-male offspring,
I fear my daughterless future. Often as I would toilet or dress or help
my mother to bed, I was struck by the physicality of care, the intimacy of my woman
to woman touching, undesired on my part, undesirable on my mother’s. Repeatedly I
moved the brush through limp, gray, lifeless hair; my washcloth over folds of flesh; my
hands under toneless limbs. I viscerally connect with the images of Joyce Farmer in the
(continued on next page)
 “Horrid”
at Life’s End (continued from previous page)

graphic novel Special Exits (2010): sponge bathing her stepmother, changing the wet bed
linens for her father, bear hugging the dead weight of immobile parents as she strains to lift.
In my “Illness/Disability Narratives” class, a student creates her own graphic, a comic strip
of her thirteen-year-old self grossed out by having to apply
deodorant to the underarms of her father, debilitated by stroke.
Surely though, I, a grown woman, should not feel this way about
my own mother.
In the hours it took me each month to get to my
mother’s house, I worked on myself, promising that this time
I would embrace my caregiving role—and my mother. Writer
Helen Shulman’s vow (2007) would become my own: “[M]y
father had always stood by me, he’d loved me and cared for me
my whole life, and in turn, I loved him without reservation.
So I made a pledge. ‘I will help him as long as he needs it.’”
I knew my mother had been a good mother. I believed I loved
her without reservation. But her last year of decline made a
mockery of my vow. Did I honestly love, without reservation,
this old woman, even though she had been my mother? Not
surprisingly to me, Schulman lived to regret her pledge.
In her recent memoir (2013), Jo Maeder recounts
giving up her career, friends, and her life in New York to care
for her aging and failing mother in the South. In this version
of the returning daughter narrative, though, Maeder’s daughter
track leads her back to a mother who had been so uncaring,
so inadequate, that Jo and her brother had chosen to move to
another state with their father when their parents had divorced.
Wellcome Library, London, Colour Lithograph c. 1850, by James Morison
I know others who have had a complete conversion to become
the dutiful caring middle-aged child of a formerly abusive or neglectful parent. Perhaps there
is a sense of completeness, a striving for wholeness in the mother-daughter relationship that
never before existed. The “martyr daughter” sacrifices herself on the altar of that relationship.
Maeder’s version of the martyr daughter narrative, though, has an upbeat moral to the story:
By giving up her own life, Maeder gains a surrogate “spouse,” a new cultural home in the
South, and, yes, even religion.
In the ideal good girl caregiving story, the caregiver receives nothing in return. It is,
to borrow a concept, the purest mitzvah, or good deed: one that cannot be reciprocated. The
goodness comes from caring. At the end of the film “Marvin’s Room” (1996), Diane Keaton’s
character says that her twenty years of caregiving for her father “gave her so much love.” Not that
those she cared for gave her so much love, but that caregiving itself expanded the love in her life.
Yet this loving, selfless fulfillment of the good-girl caregiver role gives us so many
ways to be bad. We can do everything right and still be the “reluctant caregiver” (Span,
2013), caring for, but not about, parents or in-laws or older relatives: looking like the good
girl to the outside world, and feeling like the bad girl internally. Our badness is hammered
home to us each time we are praised for our goodness. Can I really—at my age—still feel
guilty for doing the right thing with the wrong attitude? We all know the answer.
Caregiving, for me, coincided with the loss of the mother who had mothered me,
32 the woman I had loved and admired. As she faded mentally, I imagined the photoshopping
of her mind, the brushing out of complex colors with whiteness, until her mind was just
another part of the physical body that needed care. I had nightmares of her body living on
for years, a lump of needy flesh—the promise she had extracted of being allowed to stay
in her own house now irreversible by incapacity, her carefully executed advance directives
muted by her body’s persistence.
“I lost my mother years ago, when she developed dementia,” said my friend to me,
as she dutifully boarded the train for her own monthly maternal visit. Psychologists have
called this “ambiguous loss” (Boss & Kaplan, 2004). Those of us who experience “ambiguous
loss”—mental but not physical loss of a parent—“both accept and reject the caregiving role.”
But badness and goodness are not supposed to be ambiguous attributes.
 Until late in my mother’s life, I had managed to be the proverbial good girl. I fulfilled
all of my mother’s expectations: I got the education she never had, I achieved the career that
was so important to her, I built the family that completed a woman’s life. My occasional “bad
girl” performances amounted merely to episodes in a life, not the way my mother saw me as a
person. But tap gently, I later discovered, and every good daughter with elderly parents seems
to have a “bad girl” caregiving story. Don’t you remember, says a childhood friend whose
mother I adored, how I went to Bermuda four days before my mother died of cancer? You
should hear me talk behind my mother’s back, said another friend, cracking jokes about her
mother that her mother can no longer hear. We act out like the two-year-olds we once were.
My mother loved white blouses, crisp and tailored. All of the pictures of her at the
peak of her career, in the prime of her life, featured a white blouse. Whenever I wore a white
blouse around her in those last years, she would recall how much she loved that look. In advance
of what would turn out to be her last Mother’s Day, I bought the largest crisp white tailored
blouse in the store. (My mother was now formless, sagging, her breasts dragged down to meet
her bulging stomach, her body slouching in the wheelchair.) I set the shirt aside to bring.
Then in mid-March, I had heart surgery and didn’t tell my mother. I felt sorry for
myself, having a mother and not being able to tell her I was having heart surgery. I said to
myself there was no need to make her anxious. But what I meant was that she was no longer
my mother. She could no longer be there for me—so what was the point? In early May, I
brought the blouse with me on my caregiving weekend. But I couldn’t give it to her. She was
not my mother. It would have been like dressing a manikin. No, worse: I would have to look
at her in the crisp white blouse and think about what she was not.
I returned the blouse and spent the credit on some t-shirts to cover my heart’s scar.
As I began this piece, my mother died. Going through old photos, I found one of
my mother with her own then aging and ailing mother. I recalled, seeing this, that my mother
placed her own mother in a nursing home—and never forgave herself for being, at the end,
a bad girl. A nursery rhyme my mother used to recite to me goes like this:
There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead.
When she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid.

Marsha Hurst, PhD, is on the faculty of the Program in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, where
she teaches graduate courses on illness/disability narratives and on narratives of death, dying, and caregiving,
and co-chairs the University Seminar on Narrative, Health, and Social Justice. Hurst is co-editor with
Sayantani DasGupta of Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies (2007) and author,
most recently, of articles on palliative care, end of life, and narrative. Her advocacy work focuses on end of
life care and on families of children with special health care needs. [email protected]

References
Boss, P., & Kaplan, L. (2004). Ambiguous Loss and Ambivalence When a Parent Has Dementia.
Contemporary Perspectives on Family Research, 4, 207-224.
Eastman, PD. (1960). Are You My Mother? NY: Random House.
Farmer, J. (2010) Special Exits: A Graphic Memoir. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics.
Gross, J. (2005, November 24). Forget the Career. My Parents Need Me at Home. New York Times.
Hilden, J. (1998). The Bad Daughter: Betrayal and Confession. New York: Workman Publishing, Algonquin Books.
Hussey, M. (2013). Introduction to Notes from Sick Rooms. In Woolf, V. and Stephens, J. On Being Ill with Notes
from Sick Rooms. Ashfield, MA: Paris Press. 33
Levine, C. (2007). Night Shift. In DasGupta, S. & Hurst, M. (Eds.), Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their
Bodies (pp. 241-246). Kent, OH: Kent State University Press.
Maeder, J. (2013). When I Married My Mother. Nigeria: Beulahland Books.
Schulman, H. (2007). My Father The Garbage Head. In Casey, N. (Ed.), An Uncertain Inheritance: Writers on Caring
for Family (pp. 1-11). New York: William Morrow.
Span, P. (2013, February 20).The Reluctant Caregiver. New York Times.
Woolf, V. (1931). Professions for Women. Retrieved from http://s.spachman.tripod.com/Woolf/professions.htm
August 20, 2013.
Zacks, J. (Director). (1996). Marvin’s Room [film]. Los Angeles, CA: Scott Rudin Productions.
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Women’s Work
Lisa H. Harris (well, not really; I know full well that most women seeking
abortions are mothers, or will be later). And fetuses die at
I carefully balance the tray of metal instruments, bloody my hands. Oddly, though, it is not with these recognitions
gauze, and the sterile bowl full of tissue, and make my way that I feel transgressive. Instead I am overtaken with this
out of the procedure room to the sink. I set down the tray, feeling when I use ordinary kitchenware in the course of
Snapshot "

and pour the bowl’s contents into a hand-held kitchen an abortion procedure.
strainer. It is an ordinary kitchen strainer that I purchased at Maybe kitchenware reminds me of my own defiance
the bed-and-bath store down the street, even remembering of gender-role stereotypes: I am a woman working as a doc-
the 20%-off coupon my father had saved for me. I run tor, rather than baking and doing arts and crafts at home—
water through the strainer to clear away the blood, and although I enjoy those things, too. I certainly find irony
empty the strained contents onto another tray. The patient in the fact that abortion—this most contested part of U.S.
whose abortion I have just done was early in her pregnancy. social life, which paralyzes legislators and holds federal
No fetal parts are visible yet, and it is hard to distin- budgets hostage—uses everyday objects. No doubt I get
guish the gestational sac, which would only be the size of a hint of delight imagining the shock to conservative
a cotton ball, from the uterine lining and blood clots that sensibilities that comes with realizing that kitchen tools,
emerged with it. So I move the tissue into a square Pyrex objects of domesticity, are simultaneously tools of repro-
baking dish and turn on the light box to illuminate the ductive agency. And I feel relief using domestic objects for
dish from below. (The light box came from the craft shop safe abortion care, so women don’t need to rely on other
next door to the bed-and-bath store). Transillumination domestic objects (knitting needles, coat hangers) to end
helps me identify fluffy white tissue, and reassures me I’ve their pregnancies. But mostly these objects are reminders
!

removed the pregnancy. And only now, as I use ordinary

Design: Anonymous Design, Inc.

that “women’s work” includes abortion. Anti-abortion

kitchen tools and craft supplies, do I feel transgressive. politics and rhetoric rely on the lie that abortion is not a
I do society’s “dirty work,” as sociologists would say. legitimate part of women’s everyday lives and experiences.
So I transgress all day long, physically and socially. I drive But, in fact, it is.
past picket lines. I use ultrasound to see inside bodies. I enter
body cavities with metal instruments. I erase evidence of Lisa Harris, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Obstetrics &
sexual transgressions. I turn women into non-mothers Gynecology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan.