Looking for a tweak to your syllabus on reproductive health? Try maryfissell.substack.com for stories you can use!

A is For Abortion: Snapshots From the Past | Mary Fissell | Substack

This Substack is about the very long history of abortion, each post is an individual story of a person, plant, or idea. Click to read A is For Abortion: Snapshots From the Past, by Mary Fissell, a Sub...

maryfissell.substack.com

“A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it would replace, according to a new preprint study led by researchers at the Yale School of Public Health.” ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

Universal Health Coverage Could Save $1 Trillion and 114,000 Lives Every Year, Yale Study Projects

A single-payer universal health care system could cover every American, save more than 100,000 lives a year, and still cost $1 trillion less than the system it

ysph.yale.edu

New post for A is for Abortion: M is for James Gibbons Mills, a randy 19th century dentist who ended up in the middle of a pivotal abortion case. maryfissell.substack.com/p/m-is-for-j...

M is for James Gibbons Mills

M is for James Gibbons Mills, a Pennsylvania dentist at the center of a significant legal case, Mills v.

maryfissell.substack.com

New post on A is for Abortion: L is for Lakshmi Shastri ,https://maryfissell.substack.com/p/l-is-for-lakshmi-shastri a character in the novel The Henna Artist.

L is for Lakshmi Shastri

L is for Lakshmi Shastri, a character in Alka Joshi’s novel The Henna Artist. Shastri is the rags-to-riches artist of the title, decorating the elite women of Jaipur with elaborate henna designs. But ...

maryfissell.substack.com

New post on A is for Abortion: K is for Ernestine Katz and Katie Kennedy. open.substack.com/pub/maryfiss...

K is for Ernestine Katz and Katie Kennedy

K is for Ernestine Katz and Katie Kennedy.

open.substack.com

Many pregnant Texas residents now fear losing their lives during pregnancy, after four young women died in the state when they were unable to access medically necessary abortions.

‘I Don’t Want To Die’: Texas Patients Are Afraid To Get Pregnant

The fear of losing their lives is precisely what many pregnant Texas residents say they’ve experienced after four young women died in the state when they were unable to access medically necessary abor...

msmagazine.com

maryfissell.substack.com/p/j-is-for-s... New post on A is for Abortion: Sarah Orne Jewett's novel The Country of the Pointed Firs has an chapter titled "Where Pennyroyal Grew".

J is for Sarah Orne Jewett

J is for Sarah Orne Jewett, an American writer whose work captured the conversations and landscapes of her beloved rural Maine.

maryfissell.substack.com

“Abortion bans don’t stop abortions, but they do kill people. They kill women, in higher numbers, but in many of the same, preventable ways, that these women were dying before. All of which was completely and utterly predictable.” - @amylittlefield.bsky.social www.thenation.com/article/soci...

4 Years After “Dobbs,” How Do We Count the Dead?

In the post-Roe world, we know that abortion bans don’t stop safe abortions, but they do kill people.

thenation.com

Article about one of my favoritre research libraries & its wonderful collection of books about sex! www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/a...

Rare Books on Sex Have Spiced Things Up at a Library Franklin Founded

nytimes.com

Anti-Prime Day starts…NOW! 🥳 Today through 6/26, enjoy free standard shipping site-wide, all while supporting local, independent bookstores.

OTD in 1618, a 64-year-old woman was executed in Eichstatt, Germany, for witchcraft. She wasn't a witch; she provided reproductive care, including abortion, to local women. Rest in peace, Anna Harding. I'll be lighting a candle to your memory this evening.

“Ireland’s parliament has voted to remove a mandatory three-day wait for abortion during early pregnancy after campaigners said the rule was an unnecessary restriction.” 👍👏 www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Irish parliament votes to remove three-day abortion wait

Waiting period before receiving medication was included in draft law to gain support for abortion ban in 2018 referendum

theguardian.com

New post on A is for Abortion -- I is for Iowa, where a small town doctor provided abortions for decades, from the 1920s on. Everyone knew. Everyone looked the other way. Maybe Iowa was more tolerant then than now... maryfissell.substack.com/p/i-is-for-i...

Good morning from #AAHM2026! This morning, @maryfissell.bsky.social delivers the Presidential Address on the history of bandaging. #histmed

New post on A is for Abortion! H is for Josephine Herbst maryfissell.substack.com/p/h-is-for-j..., a tale of 2 abortions in the 1920s. Herbst was good friends with Genevieve Taggard, subject of the previous post. Both were writers in Greenwich Village.

H is for Josephine Herbst

H is for Josephine Herbst, whose experiences of abortion in the 1920s are emblematic of so many women’s struggles.

maryfissell.substack.com

New post on A is for Abortion: G is for Genevieve Taggard, an American poet and novelist. maryfissell.substack.com/p/g-is-for-g... Her 1922 story about an abortion draws on women's experiences before reliable contraception was available.

G is for Genevieve Taggard

G is for Genevieve Taggard, an American poet and novelist who wrote a moving account of abortion in her 1922 story “Engagement”.

maryfissell.substack.com

Reading 18th century lecture notes -- Alexander Munro primus -- and can't make out this word in juicy quote. Any help much appreciated! have circled/magnified the word. ?Scots? "if there happens to be any ??? quality att one side..."

New post on A is for Abortion, about foundling hospitals and a character named Francisca in a seventeenth-century English play. maryfissell.substack.com/p/f-is-for-f...

F is for Francisca and Foundling

Francisca is a character in Thomas Middleton’s 1613 play The Witch, set in Ravenna. Aged sixteen, she gets pregnant from her first relationship.

maryfissell.substack.com

New Post, A is for Abortion, maryfissell.substack.com/p/e-is-for-r.... Part II of the abortion-as-a-plot-device in vintage detective novels!

E is for Rosie Evans, or Detective Novels II

E is for Rosie Evans, a character in Christianna Brand’s 1952 detective novel London Particular. The title refers to a pea-souper of a fog, which London experienced when homes were heated with coal.

maryfissell.substack.com

More AI piracy; take note, fellow scholars. 🗃️ "This is word-laundering on a truly industrial scale, aided and abetted by one of the world’s largest corporations. Using AI tools and a pseudonym, unknown culprits are now profiting from my work...." theamericanscholar.org/who-is-blake...

Who Is Blake Whiting? - The American Scholar

The most astonishingly productive historian in recent times is someone you’ll never meet

theamericanscholar.org

New post on A is for Abortion! maryfissell.substack.com/p/d-is-for-d.... Yes, abortion is a plot device in more detective novels than you might expect.

D is for Detective Novels

D is for detective novels.

maryfissell.substack.com

This is what they are doing in the U.K. We should do it in New Mexico. Decriminalize women's reproductive medical care. @debhaalandnm.bsky.social @nmpope.bsky.social @govmlg.bsky.social www.thetimes.com/article/5b80...

Pardons for women convicted of illegal abortions since Victorian era

Those who have been prosecuted after 1861 will be exonerated and those investigated but not charged will have their police record wiped under a new law

thetimes.com

New post on A is for Abortion today -- maryfissell.substack.com/p/c-is-for-l.... Landon Carter was a cranky 18th century Virginian plantation owner and enslaver who revealed reproductive knowledge in his diary.

C is for Landon Carter

C is for Landon Carter, an eighteenth-century Virginia planter whose extensive diary includes details about reproductive knowledge.

maryfissell.substack.com

New post of A is for Abortion: Leon Belous, a courageous physician activist whose prosecution (when overturned) paved the way for Roe v. Wade. maryfissell.substack.com/p/b-is-for-l...

B is for Leon Belous

B is for Leon Belous, an unsung hero of the reproductive rights movement.

maryfissell.substack.com

ICYMI I spoke with the filmmakers behind the brilliant Oscar nominated doc CUTTING THROUGH ROCKS for my first Reverse Shot piece reverseshot.org/interviews/e...

Cutting Through Rocks

Both of us always mention in our master classes or panels with cinema students to choose a subject that you really like for your projects because you are not sure how long you are going to spend on th...

reverseshot.org

It's been a year since Pushback bit.ly/4iwTsoL came out, and yesterday @literatibookstore.bsky.social in Ann Arbor did an event for it - thx so much, Literati! Thx to all for such great convos over the past year, books open doors for sure.

"The Price of Safety: Stories of Abortions Denied, Careers Disrupted, and States Left Behind" details the human and economic toll of abortion bans. The anthology uses stories from patients, doctors, business leaders, and others to show the real-world consequences of abortion bans.

New Research Details 'Human and Economic Toll' of US Abortion Bans | Common Dreams

A Monday report from the Center for Reproductive Rights features various profiles demonstrating "the human and economic toll" of US abortion bans.

commondreams.org

So wonderful to have the opportunity to host @maryfissell.bsky.social of @jhu.edu at @umichlaw.bsky.social to teach us actual U.S. common law history and about her new book PUSHBACK: www.amazon.com/Pushback-500... Can't wait to bring her to the med school tomorrow! @umich.edu

New series of A is For Abortion: Snapshots From the Past starts today! Now with audio. A is for al-Razi, a tenth century doctor who both compiled and created abortion medicines. maryfissell.substack.com/p/a-is-for-a...

A is for al-Razi

A is for al-Razi, the tenth-century Persian doctor, philosopher, and astronomer.

maryfissell.substack.com

Delighted to have written a brief comment for this collection! Thx ‬‪@leilaeasa.bsky.social‬ and Jennifer Stager for putting it together and much else.

Leila Easa (she/her)@leilaeasa.bsky.social · 6mo ago

“In light of these...attacks on abortion access concomitant w greater restrictions on women’s rights to make choices about their bodies, this cluster takes up the politics surrounding abortion as it threads through art & activism." asapjournal.com/node/from-th... @asapjournal.bsky.social