I am autistic and, at the age of 21, after a year of fighting for it, I successfully underwent tubal ligation surgery. Here’s why I did it—and why the Court’s decision to overturn Roe will ultimately hurt other disabled and neurodivergent women and nonbinary people like me.
Tag: Breast Cancer
The Pregnancy Test: Cancer Treatment in a Post-Roe America
On the morning of May 2, hours before the leaked Supreme Court draft striking down Roe v. Wade, I sat waiting for an infusion of Herceptin, an essential drug I was prescribed when diagnosed with breast cancer. Herceptin has saved countless women’s lives since 1990, but it can cause fetal harm.
I was denied medical care until I could prove I wasn’t pregnant. Where was my agency in this situation? And what if I had been pregnant? Would I have been denied the very drug that saved my life and which protects my future—which ensures that my young children will continue to have a mother—in order to protect a pregnancy I did not want or plan to keep?
Losing Roe v. Wade Is a Matter of Global Significance
Where we have tended to divide the United States artificially from the rest of the globe on issues of human rights, we can do so no longer. When Roe falls here, it will reverberate around the world. And as country after country laps us on the route to progress, that will reverberate here in turn.
Maybe in the wake of Roe’s demise, we will take inspiration from our global colleagues and muster, at long last, the collective resolve needed to craft a permanent legislative solution preserving the right to choose safe abortion.
Dr. Tina Hernandez-Boussard: Data Science as a Path to Inclusivity and Diversity in Medicine
For Tina Hernandez-Boussard, solving the inequities within our healthcare system is only possible when we ensure that the people who collect, analyze and interpret data to make decisions, are as diverse as those who will be affected by those decisions.
The Trailblazer Who Ensured Women With Breast Cancer Had a Choice
When Babette Rosmond published her book The Invisible Worm 50 years ago, it was a daring act of courage and a call to arms to all women with breast cancer, beseeching them to ask their doctors about treatment options instead of passively accepting a radical mastectomy.
The book was funny, as Rosmond manages to weave her dog’s sex life and her love of the Beatles into the story of her cancer. But it was serious as well. A patient—especially a woman—questioning male surgeons was revolutionary for the time. The Invisible Worm, she stated, was not solely about a lumpectomy but rather personal choice.
Cancer and COVID: Avoiding Delays In Treatment and Research Saves Lives and Families—Including Mine
Decreased screening rates and fear of COVID has delayed cancer diagnoses for many, delaying treatment and possibly worsening outcomes for cancer patients. Pandemic related reduction of cancer research and treatment threatens to derail future efforts to find more effective detection and treatment methods. Similar to COVID-19, the disparities have disproportionately impacted communities of color.
The Most-Read Ms. Stories of 2021
Ms. readers are fed up. You know how I know? Your reading patterns.
Explore the most popular articles published this year on MsMagazine.com—measured by page views, average time spent on each page, times shared and a few other technical measures.
The Grace Project Is Facing Breast Cancer Through Photography: ‘We Get to See Women Transform into Goddesses’
Despite their many visible differences, a group of women are bound together by more than breast cancer: They are linked through an ambitious portrait series meant to explore body image, illness and self-esteem called The Grace Project.
Strength in Stories: The Transformative Power of Talking About Breast Cancer
For the last 25 years, Living Beyond Breast Cancer has changed the narrative for women with breast cancer.
Women Are Being Hurt the Most by the Drug Pricing Crisis
When profit-maximizing “pharma bros” hike up the price of drugs, they are disproportionately harming women.