Episode #7: Women and Health, Part II

Photo credits: @Beyonce // 3Dperson // Thread the Wick (Etsy) // Brent & Kilburn Times // Unknown

WOMEN AND HEALTH, PART II In which Emma and Charlotte discuss pregnancies, population control and protective men, and what it means to have a naked approach to life. Plus: why ‘super’ doesn’t always equal better.

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FOOTNOTES

• Charlotte says episode 6, but it’s episode 7. Listen to ep #6 – the Christmas special – here;
• The first episode on women and health is here – we talk ableism, vanity and heart attacks, and lots more;
• ‘Sweden challenges Trump on abortion’ The Local, 9 February 2017;
• Here’s the Department for International Development; Charlotte's work on development policies includes 'Tropical Allsorts: the Transnational Flavour of British Development Policies in Africa' Journal of World History, Vol. 26, No. 4 (2016), pp. 839-864 (click here to download it), and 'The winds of change are blowing economically: the Labour Party and British overseas development, 1940s-1960s' in Smith, Andrew W.M. and Jeppesen, Chris (eds.) Britain, France and the Decolonization of Africa: Future Imperfect? (London: UCL Press, 2017) - available as a PDF from the publisher at discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1543203/1/Britain-France-and-the-Decolonization-of-Africa.pdf;
• The UN lists abortion policies around the world here; in Sweden, pregnant women are entitled to abortions without explanation until week 18 or - in special circumstances - week 22. Second trimester abortions are subject to approval by the National Board of Health and Welfare (Socialstyrelsen). The first abortion law of 1938 offered abortions on humanitarian and medical grounds, and for eugenic reasons (see Mattias Tydén's chapter on 'The Scandinavian States: Reformed Eugenics Applied' in Bashford, A. & Levine, P. The Oxford Handbook of The History of Eugenics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 363-376). The current Swedish abortion law has been in place since 1974, with amendments in 1995 and 2007. In the UK (minus Northern Ireland), abortions are available under certain conditions: to save a woman's life, for health, economic or social reasons. Two registered medical practitioners must certify that the conditions have been met. In Northern Ireland, the woman's health must be at risk. The difference is a result of Northern Ireland being allowed to opt out of the Abortion Act in 1967. The Abortion Support Network helps people from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the Isle of Man travel to English abortion clinics. Support their work at www.asn.org.uk and follow them on Twitter @AbortionSupport. You might also want to read Laura Silver's article on 'Irish Abortion Rates Are Down And It Could Be Because More Women Are Buying Illegal Pills Online', Buzzfeed, 13 June 2017.
• ‘Northern Irish women offered free abortion services in England’ The Guardian, 23 October 2017;
• Diana Johnson, the Labour MP for Hull North, wrote about her campaign to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales for the Huffington Post in March 2017;
• [Lord] David Steel, the architect of the Abortion Act 1967, wrote about the need to reform it for The Independent on 26 October 2017;
• Swedes claim a bronze in the competition to drink the most coffee per capita in the world;
• Expecting Better was written by Professor Emily Oster (Brown University) and published by Orion in 2014. Follow Professor Oster on Twitter @profemilyoster;
• Alcohol and pregnancy: read the UK guidelines here, then take a look at Brewdog's Nanny State here;
• When talking about breastfeeding and alcohol, Emma is referencing the work of Professor Agnes Wold, a bacteriologist at Gothenburg University. Here’s an article in Swedish about it. Follow Professor Wold on Twitter @AgnesWold;
• When are you over the limit where? Wikipedia has a handy guide. Scotland has a lower limit than the rest of the UK (www.gov.uk/drink-drive-limit). In Sweden, it's a crime to drive with a blood alcohol content of minimum 0.02 per cent or more, or a breath alcohol content of 0.10 milligrams per litre or more. In the UK (minus Scotland), the limit is 35 micrograms per 100 millilitres of breath. After digging deep into her brain and finding nearest calculator, Emma thinks the comparison is 0.01mg/100ml in Sweden and 0.035mg/100ml in the UK (minus Scotland, of course, where it's 0.022mg/100ml). Let us know if that's wrong - we're all ears @TNKpod and tomorrowneverknowspod@gmail.com. Those of you who listened to episode #2 - on what women in power wear/pantsuits, pussybow blouses and Frida Kahlo - might remember that Barbara Castle introduced the breathalyser in the UK. #ThankYouBarbara;
• The NHS has info on foetal alcohol syndrome here. It's a spectrum disorder, as outlined by Drinkaware here. Read more about the work of the National Organisation for Foetal Alcohol Syndrome-UK here; 
• The Thalidomide Society supports those affected by the use of the drug. They are also working on an oral history of the scandal; 
• No chlorine in our saunas!

• Should this GIF or the image at the top of this page not be enough, US Weekly has collected photos of Beyoncé pregnant here. You can/should follow Bey on Instagram @beyonce;

• Here’s a TIME article on Demi Moore’s 1991 Vanity Fair cover;
• All You Need To Know About the Baby On Board Badge (thank you, TFL);
• Charlotte quotes from Marge Piercy’s ‘Something to Look Forward To’ (read the whole poem here):

“My friend Penny at twelve, being handed a napkin
the size of an ironing board cover, cried out
Do I have to do this from now till I die?
No, said her mother, it stops in middle age.
Good, said Penny, there’s something to look forward to.”

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

• Charlotte recommends Heartburn by Nora Ephron, which was originally published in 1983. The New York Times' reviewer definitely struggled to separate the author from her work, and Ephron wrote about the fact-fiction clash for The Guardian in 2004;
• Emma recommends The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. His Nobel Prize lecture is available here. Don’t miss ‘How I wrote The Remains of the Day in four weeks’ by the same author here.

NEXT EPISODE…

…will be the first recorded in 2018, and we'll be discussing resolutions. Sign up to our newsletter to get the episode footnotes in your inbox, and subscribe here to make sure that you're the first to know when Ep #8 is available!

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Our intro/outro music is Planning The Heist (stock media provided by Pondtunez / Pond5)