The V Word

In this special episode of In Their Shoes, Dr. Jenn and Executive Producer, Beth Bonilla, interview Fidji Sumo, Vice President and Head of Facebook App, as she talks about building a stronger kind of leadership through chronic, often stigmatized health conditions.

It's a long awaited episode: COVID vaccines in pregnancy & lactation, and why Dr. Jenn & Dr. Erica 100% support you getting that vax! We'll dive deep into everything we know and don't know so far, and even bring in some patriarchy-infused history (like we do) about why pregnant and lactating people were actively excluded from the trials. Here. We. Go.

There are just DAYS left until the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election and we want to be 100% crystal clear that there is only one correct way to vote if you care about reproductive health, which is connected to literally EVERYTHING. Listen in as we re-cap all the ways every single issue on the ballot comes back to reproductive health & reproductive justice. 

IF YOU HAVE NOT YET VOTED: send us your cell number and email so we can bug you daily to do it! And also check out these helpful links:

• VOTE SAVE AMERICA - BE A VOTER: Register to vote, find out where your nearest polling location is, figure out how to safely mail in your ballot, and more.
• VOLUNTEER! Figure out how to phone bank, send texts, & help with polling places near you.

In this episode, Dr. Jenn & Executive Producer, Beth Bonilla, talk with NARAL Pro-Choice America President, Ilyse Hogue, about anti-choice politicians’ ongoing efforts to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to restrict reproductive healthcare and ban abortion.

Ilyse’s perspective on this topic is especially salient right now - she also has a new book coming out in partnership with NARAL Opposition Research Director Ellie Langford. The forthcoming book, The Lie that Binds, connects the dots between a decades-long effort to mobilize the Radical Right around the issue of abortion and today’s all-out war on reproductive freedom that leaves the future of Roe hanging in the balance.

Her podcast by the same name, was also just released last week and is a MUST listen!

Francine Coeytaux is a GIANT in the field of reproductive health- there's no easier way to say that. Among other things, she's the Co-Creator and Co-Director of Plan C--an organization of veteran reproductive health advocates, researchers, and modern age digital strategists who are all working towards the common goal of making medication abortion available to the people who need it most.

Now more than ever, amidst a global pandemic, HERE is a plan to curtail limited access to Plan A (birth control), Plan B (emergency contraception), and in-office abortion care. As millions of women all over the world have shown through countless studies, self-managed abortion with the relatively newer technology of abortion medications, is incredibly safe and effective.

STUDY references in episode: 

Raymond E et al., TelAbortion: evaluation of a direct to patient telemedicine abortion service in the United States, Contraception, 2019, 100(3):173–177, https://www.contraceptionjournal.org/article/S0010-7824(19)30176-3/abstract.

In the midst of a global pandemic, we MUST support and uplift pregnant, postpartum, and parenting folks. Producer Aysha Choudhary sits down with Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a board-certified psychiatrist and freelance writer specializing in women's mental health and perinatal psychiatry.

Dr. Lakshmin is a Clinical Assistant Professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University School of Medicine, where she is a clinical supervisor in the Five Trimesters perinatal psychiatry clinic. Dr. Lakshmin is most passionate about empowering women and sees her clinical work as a perinatal psychiatrist as an extension of this mission. She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, and her advice has been featured in Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, Bustle and various other media outlets. 

The Supreme Court has likely already announced its decision re: June Medical Services v. Russo by the time you're listening to this, and the horrific implications of a loss are heart-stopping. To help you realize the real implications that laws like these have on women and families, here is Ariana telling her truth: what happened when, in the midst of receiving news of her baby's deadly condition, anti-abortion legislators obstructed medical care.

FIND OUT ABOUT ANTI-ABORTION LAWS IN YOUR STATE:

Guttmacher Institute: https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/state-facts-about-abortion

This week we talked with Dr. Anjali Malik who is a breast imaging radiologist in Washington DC about Covid's impact on screening and how to navigate moving forward. Dr. Malik serves a Medical Advisor for Bright Pink--an organization that educates and empowers young women on their breast and ovarian health. Executive Producer, Bethney Bonilla, has this interview. 

This week we want to talk about what's going on in the world and challenge you to think about it from a Reproductive Justice framework. Not sure what that is? Don't worry- Our friend, Dr. Jamila Perritt is here with us to share the central tenants and talk about how educating yourself about this movement and framework is crucial to understanding how every aspect of what is happening right now--including a global pandemic, racism, and police brutality--is all connected as part of a cohesive public health and human rights issue.

Dr. Perritt is is a fellowship trained, board-certified Obstetrician and Gynecologist with a comprehensive background in Family Planning and Reproductive Health. Dr. Perritt provides on the ground, community- based care focusing primarily on the intersection of sexual health, reproductive rights and social justice. You can follow her on Twitter at @reprorightsdoc, and you should absolutely do that right now.

It's that thing that goes in your vagina to do your pap smear, check for infections, put in your IUD, monitor bleeding, and everything else in gynecology: your friend, the speculum! Cold, metal (sometimes plastic), rachety, pinchy... you know the drill.
In this episode Executive Producer, Beth Bonilla, talks to Fahti Khosrowshahi, CEO and Founder of Ceek Women's Health about specula in general and the company's mission to overhaul the speculum as we know it. Specula don't need to look or feel like medieval torture devices. Listen in to learn more about how this renovation is transpiring.

Postpartum Psychosis is a rare but very real illness that affects approximately 1 to 2 out of every 1,000 postpartum people. We don't talk about it as much as other postpartum mood disorders like depression and anxiety, and perhaps because of the extreme stigma these moms experience as a result.

In this episode, we break down what exactly is postpartum psychosis, who is most likely to be affected, and how to get help. 

We also talk to Eve Canavan, recipient of the British Empire Medal, Coordinator of the UK Maternal Mental Health Awareness Week for The Perinatal Mental Health Partnership, about her own powerful experience as a postpartum psychosis survivor.

In this episode of Ask A Lady Doc, we talk with Chief Medical Officer and Co-Founder of CurieMD, Dr. Leslie Meserve. After seeing her own mother struggle to find a doctor qualified to treat menopause, Dr. Meserve recognized that a majority of the 50 million menopausal women in the U.S. face significant barriers to treatment. These include misinformation, stigma, and a national shortage of physicians trained in midlife women’s health & as a result, three in four women who seek help for menopausal symptoms don’t receive treatment.

To compliment our last AALD episode with Dr. Amy Voedish on menopause, the primer, we're answering the next logical question which is, "What's a gal to do if she doesn't have access to a provider who is knowledgeable in menopause care?"

Listen in to hear how telemedicine is changing menopause care & how you can easily access board-certified midlife health experts, and, if necessary, also receive FDA-approved hormone replacement therapy medications through CurieMD.

Abortion care is time-sensitive essential health care. Even just a few days can make a difference in what options are available - and even if the option is available at all. A global pandemic is not the time to push a political agenda that interferes with people’s lives and rights.

As NARAL & The Center for Reproductive Rights states, politicians are exploiting the fear and urgency of this moment to push their political agenda to ban abortion. Elected officials should be focused on responding to the crisis at hand, not playing politics with people’s health care.

“The historical misclassification of most abortions as “elective” is also central to the vulnerability of abortion care. There is no debate that a minority of abortions are necessary to prevent death or serious physical harm. But this strictly medical model fails to capture the reality that the non-medical reasons that women exercise their constitutional right to abortion are often as important to them and their families as averting a serious health consequence. The long-standing insistence on using the word “elective” to describe the vast majority of abortions frames women’s equality as a luxury and women’s autonomy as expendable. Categorizing abortions as “elective” or “therapeutic” is more of a moral judgment than a medical judgment,3 and it allows people who use these terms to determine a woman’s level of deservingness on the basis of her reason for choosing to pursue abortion."

Abortion during the Covid-19 Pandemic — Ensuring Access to an Essential Health Service

Michelle J. Bayefsky, B.A., Deborah Bartz, M.D., M.P.H., and Katie L. Watson, J.D.

In this episode of Ask A Lady Doc, we talk with Dr. Amy Voedisch, who specializes in family planning and menopause care at Stanford University, about all the ins and outs of mid-life women's healthcare. This is a no-nonsense, tell me every single thing I need to know about what perimenopause and menopause look like kind of episode with one of our favorite lady docs of all times.

Producer, Aysha Choudhary has this interview.

In so many ways, climate change disproportionately affects women's health, from increased exposures to heat, poor air quality, extreme weather events, altered vector-borne disease transmission, reduced water quality, and decreased food security. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reported that women, and especially those in poverty, face higher risks than men, and experience a greater burden of climate change impacts (surprise, surprise, right?).

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Barbara Erny from Physicians for Social Responsibility about Climate Change and how it disproportionately affects women’s health. Dr. Erny is also a member of the Board of Directors for Acterra, which is a nonprofit environmental education and action organization in the Silicon Valley, and an ophthalmologist. Get ready to be surprised, angered, and energized to make change!

Let's be honest, this is a scary time to be pregnant, but despite the uncertainty of unprecedented times and a global pandemic, people everywhere are starting and building families, bravely. Here is everything you need to know about pregnancy and COVID-19, regardless if you're about to deliver or are considering when to start trying to conceive. Dr. Jenn & Dr. Erica go through everything we know and don't know so far in this first installment of our COVID-19 special coverage.

This is PART 2 of a special two-part In Their Shoes episode about donor conceived individuals in the age of commercially available genetic testing. This is the idea that, for example, the parent you thought was your parent your whole life, is in fact not your biological relative. In this day and age, where genetic testing through companies like Ancestry and 23 & Me is so readily available and financially feasible, it is becoming more and more common to hear stories about people finding relatives they never knew they had.

This is the story of one such woman. To protect her and her family’s privacy, we’re calling her Claire. Claire bought one of these tests, mailed in the tiny sample of saliva required, and a few weeks later, found her entire world turned inside out. The father she had always known and loved–the man who raised her since birth– was, in fact, not related to her at all, and she suddenly found herself in a sticky web of assisted reproductive technology truths and family secrets. Here’s part one of her story.

RECOMMENDED READS!
Inheritance, by Dani Shapiro

All things Carolyn Hax at The Washington Post

This is PART 1 of a special two-part In Their Shoes episode about donor conceived individuals in the age of commercially available genetic testing. This is the idea that, for example, the parent you thought was your parent your whole life, is in fact not your biological relative. In this day and age, where genetic testing through companies like Ancestry and 23 & Me is so readily available and financially feasible, it is becoming more and more common to hear stories about people finding relatives they never knew they had.

Here's your C-section primer on all things surgical delivery: why people have them, why they don't have them, and some detailed personal stories from women who've experienced them firsthand. Dr. Jenn & Dr. Erica cover it all, including how to address unnecessary stigma and guilt.