ANSIRH News

States with more punitive laws on alcohol use during pregnancy have more laws limiting reproductive rights

States with restrictive reproductive rights laws also tend to have more policies that punish women who drink alcohol while pregnant. There is also no evidence that these punitive policies reduce harm from alcohol use during pregnancy, suggesting more of a focus on restricting women’s reproductive autonomy than effectively addressing harms from alcohol. The study is based on an analysis of U.S. state policies targeting alcohol use during pregnancy from 1970 through 2013.

New Abortion Onscreen database

The Abortion Onscreen database is a project of ANSIRH’s Abortion Onscreen program and aims to include all American film and television depictions in which a character obtained an abortion or disclosed that they had had one in the past. Plotlines in which a character considers but does not have an abortion are not included in these results. You can search by title and keyword; media type, genre, and release date (going as far back as 1916); character age, race, and location; and the legality and health outcome of the abortion portrayed. 

ANSIRH Update: May 2017

Fifteen years ago, in 2002, Drs. Felicia Stewart and Tracy Weitz founded Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH). This year, we are celebrating one and a half decades of conducting innovative, rigorous, multidisciplinary research on complex issues related to people’s sexual and reproductive lives.

As part of our 15th anniversary celebration, we are launching ANSIRH Updates - a quarterly email digest to keep you better informed on our research, our communications efforts, and recognition for ANSIRH's work.

Health care system contributes to women shouldering burdens of preventing pregnancy

A study from ANSIRH’s Katrina Kimport finds that during contraceptive counseling visits, clinicians normalized and legitimized women assuming the mental and emotional burdens of contraception. In fact, they regularly expressed doubt or surprise or even dismissed women’s desire not to have children in the future. As a result, the clinicians promoted contraceptive methods that would preserve fertility—but also require women to continue to shoulder the work of maintaining these methods, rather than sterilization procedures.