#pregnancy and reproductive

[scriptlgbt]

I'm writing a story and I'd like to how trans people get/treat STDs. If they haven't had bottom surgery is it no different than someone with those parts who is cis? But if they have, what differences are there? How about someone with no genitals?

In general it's pretty much the same as it would be for cis people. Bloodwork and a urine sample are the standard, and aren't really any different based on what someone's genitalia is like.

Pap smears and other sorts of exams can be dysphoria inducing as well, and there's some situation where it may be difficult to use a speculum because of atrophy (which can be for all sorts of reasons, hormones, vaginismus, imperforate hymen, intersex stuff). And people whose vaginas are surgically constructed don't typically have a cervix, so pap smears don't really get done as far as I know. (Sometimes speculums are used for other things though, like making sure everything is healing right, trimming or removing stitches from surgery, etc.)

But for the most part, the differences for STI testing specifically are mostly social, and can go different ways based on who is administering the test. Pap smears are in particular stressful for trans people who may have genitalia that's been altered by hormones. (I know it's irrational but the worry about getting a boner during a pap test, for instance, has crossed my mind a lot.)

Some other testing can be thrown for a loop because of the way procedure etiquette works. I had to have a transvaginal ultrasound once to check for ovarian cysts and there were definitely parts of it that were weird for me. (Transvaginal ultrasounds involve the ultrasound wand going inside the front hole for an accurate reading of specific parts of the reproductive system.) For instance, the ultrasound tech was a cis man and as part of their protocol, a cis woman nurse had to be in the room while I underwent this procedure. I hadn't asked about that ahead of time or really thought anything about it - I was in the emergency room trying to get to the bottom of extreme abdominal pain and I figured I could endure what I needed to. But in an ideal world, I'd be able to ask for a non cis person to be in the room with me I think. (I came in an ambulance, which would not take my partner with me.) (It turned out to be a 4mm kidney stone by the way, no ovarian cysts.)

Another anecdote that may be relevant to this topic is that sometimes doctors get weird about not knowing what you're testing for, because they don't know what body parts you have (and which were added at what points, made of what material). Prior to the transvaginal ultrasound, a doctor asked me what "chromosomes" I had. I honestly told him I did not know, I hadn't ever had a karyotype test as far as I knew. The doctor stumbled over himself a lot and I don't remember what else he said right after that, other than he was fumbling, got corrected, and that he was clearly Trying His Best. I interrupted the second or third useless question with, "are you asking if I have ovaries in case it might be a burst ovarian cyst or something?"

He was instantly relieved and said yes, so I told him.

There's a big problem I've noticed, that when people talk about these sorts of topics, they aren't specific enough in order to address what they mean. We use euphemisms like "assigned female" because people don't know that someone "assigned female" can have literally any body type. People seem afraid to name body parts, so they use euphemisms that rely on stereotypes and assumptions in order to be understood. But when you realize that people "assigned female" can be intersex, can have hysterectomies, can have testes, can have phalloplasties, and that everyone's parts are more or less analogous (skenes gland = prostate, etc), you realize how useless these broad categories are. If you want to ask if someone could carry a pregnancy, ask if they could carry a pregnancy. Not if they have certain chromosomes or were DFAB. Specifics matter. If I knew I was XY, that doctor would probably have assumed that the pattern of people with XY chromosomes not menstruating would include me. And if I did have ovarian cysts, or even a pregnancy, this could have dramatically impacted my health outcomes. (There have been stillbirths because of situations like this where people did not act fast enough because of ignorance around trans bodies.) I could have given in and guessed my chromosomes when the doctor asked, but what if my answer turned out to not be true? And what if the lack of confidence in my answer saved my life in some way?

I realize this is pretty far deviated from your original topic, but in terms of testing difficulties, it does feel like the sort of anecdote that would be very informative about these issues.

- mod nat

[reasonsforhope]

"The first modern attempt at transferring a uterus from one human to another occurred at the turn of the millennium. But surgeons had to remove the organ, which had become necrotic, 99 days later. The first successful transplant was performed in 2011 — but even then, the recipient wasn’t immediately able to get pregnant and deliver a baby. It took three more years for the first person in the world with a transplanted uterus to give birth. 

More than 70 such babies have been born globally in the decade since. “It’s a complete new world,” said Giuliano Testa, chief of abdominal transplant at Baylor University Medical Center.

Almost a third of those babies — 22 and counting — have been born in Dallas at Baylor. On Thursday, Testa and his team published a major cohort study in JAMA analyzing the results from the program’s first 20 patients. All women were of reproductive age and had no uterus (most having been born without one), but had at least one functioning ovary. Most of the uteri came from living donors, but two came from deceased donors.

Fourteen women had successful transplants, all of whom were able to have at least one baby.  

“That success rate is extraordinary, and I want that to get out there,” said Liza Johannesson, the medical director of uterus transplants at Baylor, who works with Testa and co-authored the study. “We want this to be an option for all women out there that need it.”

Six patients had transplant failures, all within two weeks of the procedure. Part of the problem may have been a learning curve: The study initially included only 10 patients, and five of the six with failed transplants were in that first group. These were “technical” failures, Testa said, involving aspects of the surgery such as how surgeons connected the organ’s blood vessels, what material was used for sutures, and selecting a uterus that would work well in a transplant. 

The team saw only one transplant fail in the second group of 10 people, the researchers said. All 20 transplants took place between September 2016 and August 2019.

Only one other cohort study has previously been published on uterus transplants, in 2022. A Swedish team, which included Johannesson before she moved to Baylor, performed seven successful transplants out of nine attempts. Six women, including the first transplant recipient to ever deliver a baby back in 2014, gave birth.

“It’s hard to extract data from that, because they were the first ones that did it,” Johannesson said. “This is the first time we can actually see the safety and efficacy of this procedure properly.”

So far, the signs are good: High success rates for transplants and live births, safe and healthy children so far, and early signs that immunosuppressants — typically given to transplant recipients so their bodies don’t reject the new organ — may not cause long-term harm, the researchers said. (The uterine transplants are removed after recipients no longer need them to deliver children.) And the Baylor team has figured out how to identify the right uterus for transfer: It should be from a donor who has had a baby before, is premenopausal, and, of course, who matches the blood type of the recipient, Testa said...

“They’ve really embraced the idea of practicing improvement as you go along, to understand how to make this safer or more effective. And that’s reflected in the results,” said Jessica Walter, an assistant professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, who co-authored an editorial on the research in JAMA...

Walter was a skeptic herself when she first learned about uterine transplants. The procedure seemed invasive and complicated. But she did her fellowship training at Penn Medicine, home to one of just four programs in the U.S. doing uterine transplants. 

“The firsts — the first time the patient received a transplant, the first time she got her period after the transplant, the positive pregnancy test,” Walter said. “Immersing myself in the science, the patients, the practitioners, and researchers — it really changed my opinion that this is science, and this is an innovation like anything else.” ...

Many transgender women are hopeful that uterine transplants might someday be available for them, but it’s likely a far-off possibility. Scientists need to rewind and do animal studies on how a uterus might fare in a different “hormonal milieu” before doing any clinical trials of the procedure with trans people, Wagner said.

Among cisgender women, more long-term research is still needed on the donors, recipients, and the children they have, experts said.

“We want other centers to start up,” Johannesson said. “Our main goal is to publish all of our data, as much as we can.”"

-via Stat, August 16, 2024

[nemfrog]

Human reproduction. Anatomie élémentaire en 20 planches. 1831/1839.

Internet Archive

[allthecanadianpolitics]

The federal government has introduced legislation that would require charities providing reproductive health services to state clearly whether they offer abortion or abortion referrals. Organizations that fail to clearly tell their clients whether they provide these services could risk losing their charitable status. Marci Ien, the minister for women and gender equality, said Tuesday the legislation is meant to combat the spread of "misinformation" by some charities that operate crisis pregnancy centres. "People are walking in the doors of pregnancy crisis centres expecting to receive information on all options that are available to them," Ien told a press conference. "They are met with organizations that are imposing their anti-choice convictions on them."

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[mysharona1987]

Just a hint, here: it should be the one who *won’t* be undergoing major surgery and will be fine within, like, a day.

[fixing-bad-posts]

Men do get pregnant. a man had a child, so.

[thashining]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joy-Ann Reid (@joyannreid)

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the GOP’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

Read more here: https://bit.ly/4ed8FZM

[hellyeahscarleteen]

Some Important Help Resources for Those in the United States

We want to make sure that you know about -- and share -- some more safe direct help resources available on Scarleteen and elsewhere, as well as some content on our site that might now or soon be particularly relevant to you if you live in the United States:

These images include the following resources:

Direct Help Resources That Don't Call the Police:

Call Blackline: 800.604.5841 (centers BI&POC)

Deaf IGNITE at Willow Domestic Violence Center: 585.348.7233

Domestic Violence Support: thehotline.org

DEHQ: 908.367.3374 (centers the South Asian community)

LGBT National Help Center: 888.843.4564

Scarleteen: Text 206.866.2279 or visit scarleteen.com/ask

StrongHearts Native Helpline: 844.762.8483 (centers Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

Thrive Lifeline: Text “THRIVE” to 313.662.8209 (trans-led text-based support line centering marginalized communities)

Trans Lifeline: 877.565.8860

Abortion Resources:

Pregnancy Support:

All-Options Talkline: 1.888.493.0092

Scarleteen: Text 206.866.2279 or visit scarleteen.com/ask

If You Need an Abortion:

Plan C: www.plancpills.org

Aid Access: aidaccess.org

I Need An A: ineedana.com

Abortion Funds:

National Network of Abortion Funds: abortionfunds.org

Support Before, During, or After Abortion:

Hesperian: The Safe Abortion App

Dopo Co-Op: wearedopo.com (abortion doulas)

Exhale Pro-Voice: Text 617.749.2948 or visit exhaleprovoice.org (focuses on post-abortion support)

Miscarriage & Abortion Hotline: Call or text +1.833.246.2632 or visit mahotline.org

Scarleteen: Text 206.866.2279 or visit scarleteen.com/ask

Legal Support:

Repro Legal Helpline: 844.868.2812

To Identify and Avoid Crisis Pregnancy Centers:

crisispregnancycentermap.com

Content at Scarleteen That May Help:

Rebel Well: A Starter Guide to a Trumped America

The Scarleteen Safety Plan

How to Access a Safe, Self-managed Medical Abortion

Abortion and Digital Privacy: How to Protect Ourselves

Self-care Amidst a Deluge of Anti-trans Legislation

You can also always use Scarleteen’s direct services to get one-on-one, tailored help (always by people, never AI) or to get help finding additional resources. ❤️

[froody]

The argument around elective abortions for fetuses with profound disabilities are like “I aborted my deeply wanted and loved child because the quality and quantity of their life would be abysmal and I could not stand the idea of giving birth to a child I could never take home who would spend their short existence hooked up to innumerable machines and pumped full of medication.” and antiabortion activists hear this and say “You killed your child because you couldn’t stand the idea of having a disabled kid. You evil eugenicist fuck. The doctors could have been wrong and they could have been fine but you’re such a bad parent you gave up on them before they were even born.”

[reasonsforhope]

"Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have made a critical breakthrough that promises better outcomes for pregnancies threatened with pre-eclampsia, a condition that arises due to insufficient blood flow to the placenta, resulting in high maternal blood pressure and restricted blood flow to the fetus.

Pre-eclampsia is one of the leading causes of stillbirths and prematurity worldwide, and it occurs in 3 to 5% of pregnancies. Without a cure, options for these patients only treat symptoms, such as taking blood pressure medication, being on bed rest, or delivering prematurely—regardless of the viability of their baby.

Making a decision to treat pre-eclampsia in any manner can be a moral conundrum, to balance many personal health decisions with long-standing impacts—and for Kelsey Swingle, a doctoral student in the UPenn bioengineering lab, these options are not enough.

In previous research, she conducted a successful proof-of-concept study that examined a library of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs)—which are the delivery molecules that helped get the mRNA of the COVID vaccine into cells—and their ability to reach the placenta in pregnant mice.

In her latest study, published in Nature, Swingle examined 98 different LNPs and their ability to get to the placenta and decrease high blood pressure and increase vasodilation in pre-eclamptic pregnant mice.

Her work shows that the best LNP for the job was one that resulted in more than 100-fold greater mRNA delivery to the placenta in pregnant mice than an FDA-approved LNP formulation.

The drug worked.

“Our LNP was able to deliver an mRNA therapeutic that reduced maternal blood pressure through the end of gestation and improved fetal health and blood circulation in the placenta,” says Swingle.

“Additionally, at birth we saw an increase in litter weight of the pups, which indicates a healthy mom and healthy babies. I am very excited about this work and its current stage because it could offer a real treatment for pre-eclampsia in human patients in the very near future.”

While further developing this cure for pre-eclampsia and getting it to the market for human use is on the horizon for the research team, Swingle had to start from scratch to make this work possible. She first had to lay the groundwork to run experiments using pregnant mice and determine how to induce pre-eclampsia in this animal model, processes that are not as well studied.

But, by laying this groundwork, Swingle’s work has not only identified an avenue for curing pre-eclampsia, it also opens doors for research on LNP-mRNA therapeutics addressing other reproductive health challenges...

As Swingle thinks ahead for next steps in her research, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, she will also collaborate to further optimize the LNP to deliver the mRNA even more efficiently, as well as understanding the mechanisms of how it gets to the placenta, a question still not fully answered.

They are already in talks about creating a spin-off company and want to work on bringing this LNP-mRNA therapeutic to clinical trials and the market.

Swingle, who is currently finishing up her Ph.D. research, has not only successfully led this new series of studies advancing pre-eclampsia treatment at Penn, she has also inspired other early career researchers in the field as she continues to thrive while bringing women’s health into the spotlight."

-via Good News Network, December 15, 2024

[geezerwench]

Trump's America.

 In Trump’s Own Words: “There Has to Be Some Form of Punishment” For Women Who Have an Abortion – And For Their Doctors, Too

April 11, 2024

#Project2025 #trump #donaldtrump

[fertilytyisbeautiful]

Pictures of women giving birth and also contracting and post birth bellies

[asthedeathoflight]

The longer I sit with it the less convinced I am that Wake actually hated Gideon. Like, let's just look at the evidence here. We hear that Wake resented Gideon and only stuck around her to ensure that the tomb could be opened from Mercymorn, Pyrrha, and Wake herself. And no, I don't believe Wake sacrificed herself for Gideon out of any sentimentality. She wanted to kill John so bad she'd die for it. But then she was essentially alone with Gideon for twenty years. I don't believe anything Mercy says about Wake, and Pyrrha may have known Wake but like ghost Wake had plenty of time to develop more nuanced feelings after she and Pyrrha's epic breakup.

Which leaves the most compelling piece of evidence of Wake hating Gideon being that she says she does. To John of all fucking people. And I think if we really step back, it's more likely that she was lying there than that she was telling the truth. She's trying to goad him into killing her so he can't get any information out of her. Of course she's gonna taunt them with their spite baby she was gonna kill. John may have complicated feelings about baby death (mr infant finger crown) but it's reasonable to try and push that button.

Which is all well and good but negating the evidence that Wake hated Gideon doesn't equate to evidence she didn't hate Gideon. Except that we kind of do have that. Wake and Gideon only interact once in all of Harrow the Ninth, and it's when Wake saves Gideon's life by shooting Mercy with a herald bullet. Her extremely valuable, irreplaceable herald bullets she needs to kill John with. And you can't even argue that she's doing it to further her cause of using Gideon to kill John because she's just saving Gideon's ghost. There is no evidence based on how necromancy works that Gideon's ghost is at all a necessary moving part in the killing John plan. Her ghost being there in Nona distinctly does not help. Wake has a much better shot at killing John right there and then with the herald bullets. Letting Mercy tidy up her loose ends here looks like a pretty good deal from where I'm standing. But she can't stand by and let Gideon die. She was willing to sacrifice Gideon, yes, but she can't let her be murdered.

I'm not arguing that Wakes feelings towards Gideon are at all maternal. I don't think she's in the running for mother of the year. She's not even mother of the hour of the minute of the second. But it does mean something that Wake gave up residency in her bones to hop into the sword. She had no way of knowing that sword would one day end up within spitting distance of John. I think that Wake simply, in her own fucked up and angry kind of way, cared about Gideon and wanted to be close to her.

[profeminist]

This page is organized into different security-related threats. You can jump to the ones that most concern you. Along with each scenario is a list of digital security tips to neutralize the threat!

These are possible concerns you might have:

Seeing advertisements related to pregnancy/abortion

Tech companies like Facebook and Google storing information about your pregnancy/abortion

That the person who pays your phone bill can see your texts

That someone who can access, steal, or demand your phone will see your messages or your browsing history

Your phone company keeps copies of your browsing history or texts about your abortion

Protestors outside the clinic may violate your privacy

* New *: Abortion Mobile Privacy Settings Quick Guide

Read the full piece here and PLEASE SHARE THANKS!

https://digitaldefensefund.org/ddf-guides/abortion-privacy

[rapeculturerealities]

Hospitals Gave Women Medications During Childbirth—Then Reported Them for Using Illicit Drugs – Mother Jones

Across the country, hospitals are dispensing medications to patients in labor, only to report them to child welfare authorities when they or their newborns test positive for those same substances on subsequent drug tests, an investigation by The Marshall Project and Reveal has found. 

The positive tests are triggered by medications routinely prescribed to millions of birthing patients in the United States every year. The drugs include morphine or fentanyl for epidurals or other pain relief; anxiety medications; and two different blood pressure meds prescribed for C-sections.

In a time of increasing surveillance and criminalization of pregnant women since the end of Roe v. Wade, the hospital reports have prompted calls to the police, child welfare investigations, and even the removal of children from their parents