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Articles on Women's bodies

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The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed Texas’ abortion restrictions to take effect. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

As Texas ban on abortion goes into effect, a religion scholar explains that pre-modern Christian attitudes on marriage and reproductive rights were quite different

The Supreme Court declined to rule on a Texas law that bans all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. However, abortion and contraception were quite common among pre-modern Christians.
The story of Walatta Petros, a 17th-century Ethiopian noblewoman who was later made a saint, shows that Christianity has a complex history with abortion and contraception. A 1721 manuscript/Wikimedia Commons

Christian attitudes surrounding abortion have a more nuanced history than current events suggest

Abortion and contraception were quite common among premodern Christians, who also celebrated women’s celibacy as superior to marriage and childbearing.
Titian’s 1583 painting Venus of Urbino: historically, pleasure was not the only, or even the main, expectation from sex for women. Wikimedia Commons

From reproducers to ‘flutters’ to ‘sluts’: tracing attitudes to women’s pleasure in Australia

Australian women were once largely seen as reproducers, rather than lovers: sexual pleasure was suspect. Attitudes have changed, yet our culture is still troubled by female desire.
US President Donald Trump signs the presidential decree banning the funding of international NGOs supporting abortion. Saul Loeb/AFP

Gender and climate change: pictures that speak for themselves

In public events Donald Trump has displayed the traits of a dominant masculinity. Yet the American president’s policies represent an anthropological and ecological model that’s outdated.
People should not interpret the study as saying that every woman who has been overweight for some time in her life will develop cancer at some point. UConn Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity

The longer a woman has been overweight or obese, the higher her cancer risk: study

A longitudinal study featuring nearly 74,000 US women has found that the longer a woman has been overweight or obese during her adult life, the higher her risk of developing cancer.
A woman wears a cowboy hat emblazoned with a uterus to show her support for abortion care in Texas. Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Un-Trapped: Supreme Court strikes down Texas law limiting abortion

TRAP laws – targeted regulation of abortion providers – have been a way for states to limit abortions. The Supreme Court Monday struck down a Texas TRAP law, saying it did not protect women.
Girls are socialised early and told normal functions of the female body must be spoken of, if at all, in strictest privacy, indirectly, and not to men. from shutterstock.com

Vulvas, periods and leaks: women need the right words to seek help for conditions ‘down there’

There are endless euphemisms for women’s conditions and body parts. If you can’t name a body part, how can you seek medical help if something appears to be wrong with it?

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