Reviews tagging 'Pregnancy'
The Pain Gap: How Sexism and Racism in Healthcare Kill Women by Anushay Hossain
11 reviews
raemow's review against another edition
3.5
Graphic: Pregnancy, Miscarriage, and Child death
tmchopra's review against another edition
4.5
Graphic: Medical trauma, Child death, Pregnancy, Murder, Gaslighting, Medical content, Death, Death of parent, Sexism, and Racism
Moderate: Chronic illness, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Terminal illness, and Sexual violence
thesapphiccelticbookworm's review against another edition
4.25
Graphic: Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Medical content, Child death, and Medical trauma
Minor: Transphobia and Homophobia
triple_m's review against another edition
4.0
I wish I had the authors optimism for the future. Even though she had written an entire book on fatal flaws of American practices, I still felt she looked at the country with rose-colored goggles.
Moderate: Racism, Pregnancy, and Child death
bxtskr's review against another edition
3.75
Graphic: Pregnancy, Physical abuse, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Medical trauma, Racial slurs, Ableism, Sexual assault, Rape, Fatphobia, Infertility, Sexual violence, Sexism, Medical content, Classism, and Chronic illness
misssleepless's review against another edition
3.0
Moderate: Misogyny, Rape, Blood, Child death, Racism, Gun violence, Medical content, Abortion, Death, Domestic abuse, Hate crime, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Sexism, Sexual violence, and Xenophobia
meltingpages's review against another edition
3.5
The writing is also a bit weird, a few times I thought that my audiobook was repeating sentences but the author would just repeat herself pretty frequently. I also couldn't quite grasp who exactly this was for, if it was meant to educate people not familiar with the topic or to give additional information to people who know already about reproductive justice. It also skipped around from the author's personal life, to anecdotes from other women, to quoting legislature that was passed or is being lobbied for.
Overall, it's an extremely important topic and the book is definitely worth it for that alone, but it just wasn't what I was expecting it to be.
Moderate: Pregnancy, Sexism, and Racism
Minor: Medical trauma and Medical content
atramental's review against another edition
4.0
Graphic: Ableism, Chronic illness, Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, and Sexism
Minor: Abortion
mondovertigo's review against another edition
2.0
Graphic: Medical content, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Racism, Abortion, Sexism, and Death
Moderate: Sexual violence
courtneyfalling's review against another edition
3.5
Positive aspects: I liked how this book rooted itself in the author's perspectives as an immigrant and woman of color. The pandemic statistics and stories are hugely relevant and necessary updates to pre-pandemic scholarship. I liked how chapters focused not just on physical and maternal health barriers but also on mental health barriers, especially when depression and anxiety are the logical culminations of increased career and caretaking burdens. And I liked that this book ends with some tangible tips for women, especially WOC, to track their medical care and advocate for themselves in an overwhelming system. A lot of these books end relatively hopelessly, and although this acknowledges the need for significant institutional change beyond any individual's capacity, these tips are vital for folks' survival right now.
Negative aspects: This takes on a highly neoliberal and reformist tone about medicine. Prior to reading, I thought a solid, introductory account on medical bias from a WOC was the main book I was missing in this genre. I'm realizing it may instead be a book on this topic through a more radical lens, explicitly critiquing the medical-industrial complex. I say this because even this book takes on an overarching argument that, whatever bias exists against women at large, the issue is worse for WOC. The better and needed alternative might be centering WOC first then extrapolating outward to what exists and may come to exist for larger swathes of the population (or just focusing on WOC). As one example of the analytical shift I mean, there's a section here about how women's under-treatment in procedures that really shouldn’t be outpatient is a sexist vestige and we need more time, in-patient attention, and pain medication and resources for these procedures. But the medical-industrial complex as a whole is trending toward churning patients in and out quickly with no real care for them. The overall trend isn't stagnant or improving, it's actively worsening, and this happens to be how it's manifesting for women as a particularly vulnerable population with a long historical legacy of medical mistreatment. Similarly, the "I have faith in Biden" argument is laughably bad to me, the reverence for the US as a (potential) gold standard of healthcare that can trickle down into other countries ignores ongoing imperialism and much more insightful and useful understandings of political economy, and the 'vaccine hesitancy in Black communities' discourse strikes me as inappropriately framed (because yes, Tuskegee is a real and awful legacy, but we need to look at material barriers to vaccination in Black communities driving low vaccination and high death rates, rather than buying into a narrative that ultimately blames the 'sensitive feelings' of Black folks). And even the sections on mental health stray away from 'hard' examples of psychiatric disabilities beyond depression, including altered states, autism and ADHD, comorbid physical and mental health conditions, and so on.
Graphic: Medical trauma and Pregnancy
Moderate: Misogyny, Racism, Death, and Child death