“They took it out in pieces,” she told me. My friend was discussing a pregnancy that she had very much wanted as a married woman in her 20s. It had failed inside her and had to be removed, as she said, in pieces. Otherwise, she would have died of sepsis. She was devastated by this loss. […]
Dr. Abby Hafer
Abby Hafer is a biologist, educator, and public speaker. She has a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University and teaches human anatomy and physiology at Curry College. Her written works include the books The Not-So-Intelligent Designer, and Darwin’s Apostles. She debunks the gender binary, Creationism/Intelligent Design, and anti-abortion myths using humor and bullet-proof science.
Posted inHealth, Reproductive rights
Do pregnant women have fewer rights than the dead?
My grandmother had a rare blood type. Every so often, she’d get a phone call from the local hospital: could she please give blood—now? This was in the days before blood could be frozen, so blood of a rare type was rarely on hand when someone needed it. So if a person had a rare […]
Posted inBiology
A biologist explains why ‘heartbeat laws’ are nonsensical
The proliferation of anti-abortion ‘heartbeat laws’ cynically conflate the spontaneous pulsing of cardiac cells with the beating of a heart, and the beating of a heart with the presence of a soul. Such magical thinking belongs nowhere near the laws of a secular democracy.