Our research shows a new Texas abortion ruling could have a negative impact. Charlotte Observer, 1.17.24
On Jan. 2, a federal appeals court ruled that Texas can ban emergency abortion services without violating the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act. This puts Texas physicians in the crosshairs of an impossible choice: provide the standard of care and risk a felony sentence, or follow state law and risk a patient’s life.
(With Erika L. Sabbath and Kavita S. Arora)
Liquid biopsy for cancer recurrence creates a new kind of patient-in-waiting. STAT First Opinion, 10.29.23
My husband’s cancer came back this summer after not being evident for almost two years. With advances in cancer surveillance, we now speak of cancer survivors being cancer-free far less frequently. If you are among the luckiest unlucky who survive treatment for metastatic cancer and receive clear scans, you simply have “no evidence of disease.”
Doctors and the Movement for Assisted Death, New York Daily News, 4.27.21
At this point in the COVID pandemic, in which we have witnessed more than 500,000 Americans die from a brutal disease, the evidence is mounting that American culture is ready to normalize assisted death. Americans are more painfully aware than ever of the need to expand options at the end of life. But is medical culture ready to embrace this option?
Reversing End-of-Life Care, Anthropology News, 6.23.21
On the morning of her death, Sally Hammond dressed herself in a pair of red and white striped knee-high socks. Hoping to make her sons laugh, she topped off her look with a fanciful blouse with yellow embroidery that she found in the back of her closet.
Lonely Death in Pandemic Times, Cultural Anthropology Editors’ Forum on Covid-19, 4.22.20
As anthropologists who research and write about death and trauma, we are troubled by accounts of pandemic-related deaths that fail to account for the intimacies of dying at home or in the hospital. By all accounts, Covid-19 compels a lonely death. The dying person is someone’s parent, or child, or friend… (With Harris Solomon)
Script, Somatosphere, 11.17.14
On January 17th 2014, Catherine Eagles, a federal judge for the Middle District of North Carolina, struck down as unconstitutional a portion of North Carolina’s 2011 Women’s Right to Know Act. The portion in question would have required abortion providers in the state to perform an ultrasound and display and describe the images presented to every woman seeking an abortion. (With Dragana Lassiter)
Credit: Getty Images
Society’s End-of-Life Problem, Scientific American, 2.10.21
As COVID-19 death tolls mount rapidly, palliative care experts have urged Americans to have difficult conversations with loved ones about our end-of-life wishes.With death all around us, they have argued, it is now more urgent than ever that we plan for our deaths.
Medical Aid In Dying In Hawaii: Appropriate Safeguards Or Unmanageable Obstacles? Health Affairs Blog, 8.13.18
On April 5, 2018, Hawaii became the eighth jurisdiction in the United States to affirmatively authorize medical aid in dying (MAID). (With Thaddeus Pope)
Credit: Getting Images
Death As Something We Make, Sapiens, 4.8.21
Renee (a pseudonym) closed her eyes, lay her head in her brother’s arms, and gently drew her last breath. Minutes before, she had chugged a bitter concoction of Seconal and juice, while the loved ones encircling her offered their final blessings and softly sang her out of this world.This carefully choreographed scene was exactly the way Renee had imagined her death after months of careful planning.
Credit: Getty Images
‘The Bitter Comes with the Sweet,’ WBUR’s Cognoscenti, 2.5.21
In the early days of the pandemic, my days were bookended by stories of death. I woke up each day hours before dawn to work on my book manuscript, happy to have a passion project to soothe my anxious energy.