Reading Time: 5 minutes In September of last year, my worst nightmare came true: Texas passed a severe ban on abortions and instituted a bounty on anyone attempting to aid or receive abortion health care. It was something right out of a dystopian novel. This had already been a reality for millions of people of color—now it had simply […]
Healthcare
Posted inReproductive rights
How to discuss the overturning of Roe v. Wade with our kids
Reading Time: 4 minutes We’ve heard about the SCOTUS decision. Changes to abortion laws are coming. Now it’s time to discuss it with our kids. Here’s how.
Posted inHealthcare
Is Spain’s new menstrual leave policy a good idea?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Chances are good that you know someone who suffers from intense menstrual distress: cramping, headaches, nausea, and diarrhea, just to name a few. You might even be that person. I’ve been lucky in that, despite having a uterus, it rarely acts up too badly. But I see it all around me: in family members, in […]
Posted inHealthcare
Slowing to listen at the end of life
Reading Time: 12 minutes Marcia sat up on the side of the bed, a hand on each knee, and braced herself as she leaned forward to open the space in her chest for more air. At 52, she was dying of ovarian cancer that had spread to her liver. The critical organ had failed, causing excess fluid to gather […]
Posted inHealthcare
Alternative medicine in the dressing room: Does self-employment drive some to quackery?
Reading Time: 3 minutes As the daughter of a self-made businessman and a full-time musician, I felt almost destined to be self-employed. Although when I was writing an elementary school “What do you want to be when you grow up” essay assignment, I didn’t write about wanting to be a stripper. I’m pretty sure it was more along the […]
Posted inHealthcare
White supremacy is killing us in many ways, including COVID
Reading Time: 2 minutes If you’ve been paying any attention, you know that white supremacy and related hate groups pose a large problem in the U.S. The Southern Poverty Law Center finds in their 2021 report on extremism that extremism has become embedded in mainstream U.S. politics. And USA Today notes an all-time high in white supremacist propaganda in […]
Posted inHealth
The ethical problem with denying diabetics no-prick glucose monitors
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the past few years, science has produced a few truly wonderful devices capable of monitoring diabetics’ blood-sugar levels 24/7 in real-time, with the power to help the afflicted self-manage very protective eating strategies. Unfortunately, even though I’m diabetic, I simply can’t afford all but one of these devices even if my doctor were willing […]
Posted inVideo
Why is US healthcare so expensive?
Reading Time: < 1 minute It’s common knowledge that the US healthcare system is deeply broken. But this explainer video by Vox drills down on the details in one painful area: the outrageous difference in cost compared not only to other countries, but to other regions of the US—and even different providers in the same hospital.
Posted inHealthcare, Nonreligious News
Survey shows that US atheists are overwhelmingly pro-vax
Reading Time: 3 minutes Shortly before Darwin Day 2021 (February 12) the Freedom From Religion Foundation and its Chicago chapter unveiled the striking billboard above in Chicago. At the time FFRF Co-President Dan Barker said that that science works and must be trusted during pandemics such as Covid. He added: It was a natural selection given the continuing pushback […]
Posted inHealthcare
Atheists, agnostics and humanists much more likely than Christians to get COVID-19 vaccine
Reading Time: 2 minutes Although on the one hand we nonreligious types don’t like to do what we’re told by a skydaddy god that we’ve made up ourselves in our gullible past, on the other hand, we do like to believe what we’re told by experts in the know who have used evidence and rationality to substantiate their conclusions. […]