Women's Health by

Misdiagnosis

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-02 19:12:47 UTC

Misdiagnosis is very common within the medical field especially when it comes to women, not only do they experience different symptoms than men for some conditions but gender bias is also a big contributor to this issue. The Katz Institute for Women states, "Whether its heart disease labeled as anxiety, an autoimmune disorder attributed to depression, or ovarian cysts chalked up to normal period pain, many women's health issues are likely to be misdiagnosed or dismissed by doctors as something less critical." Women experience many different symptoms than men for many things, one of them being a heart attack. For men their symptoms usually consist of chest pain, shortness of breath, indigestion, heart burn, and pain in arms and shoulders while women typically experience whole body pain, shortness of breath, and feeling of nausea, lightheadedness, dizziness, and anxiety. These different symptoms often lead to women being misdiagnosed while having a heart attack. Although this misdiagnosis is not intentional it is still extremely dangerous. The Katz Institute for Women also states, “We should also keep in mind that while some gaslighting is done consciously, a lot of it happens unconsciously, too. A triage nurse may not deliberately tell a woman who comes to the ER complaining of chest pain that it’s all in her head, but she may notice that she’s very anxious and subconsciously make that assumption. That’s what makes this so hard to address.”

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-03 19:03:33 UTC

Gender Bias Now

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-03 19:05:31 UTC

Although this recommendation was made it didn't stop women from being left out of medical research. More recently, in 2019, women only made up 40% of patients in clinical trials for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and psychiatric disorders despite making up 51% of the United States population. Due to women still being left out in medical research it can and has led to limited biological understanding of the female body, health inequalities for women, social injustice, and drugs that have increased side effects or have different effects on women.

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-03 19:06:40 UTC

Current Abortion Laws in Missouri

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-03 19:38:23 UTC

In the state of Missouri abortion was illegal before Roe V Wade, the 1973 supreme court case that established a constitutional right to abortion, was overturned in 2022. In the recent election on November 5, 2024 Missourians voted to legalize abortion up until fetal viability and override the states current ban on nearly all abortions. Because of this abortion will be legal again under certain circumstances 30 days after the November 5th election.

Abortion Controversy

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-09 14:22:48 UTC

Abortion is the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. The topic of abortion is fairly controversial and complex, it centers around the moral idea if extracting the fetus is a women's right to chose or should be left up to government regulation. According to the World Health Organization, abortion is included in the list of essential health care services. It has also been proven that restricting abortion does not prevent abortion it only prevent safe abortion, putting women in more danger. Also the medical procedure for getting rid of an ectopic pregnancy is abortion. An ectopic pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube, but it can also occur in the ovary, abdomen, or cervix. If an ectopic pregnancy is left untreated it can be life threatening. The World Health Organization also states, “Global estimates from 2010–2014 demonstrate that 45% of all induced abortions are unsafe. Of all unsafe abortions, one third were performed under the least safe conditions, i.e. by untrained persons using dangerous and invasive methods.”

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-09 19:07:11 UTC

History of Gender Bias

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-09 19:27:43 UTC

Gender bias is not something new, it was introduced in Ancient Greece when Hippocrates where the first to use the word "hysteria" as a formal diagnosis. Hysteria, a word derived from the Greek word hustera, means "womb" and hysteria was thought as "a uterus moving through a woman's body, eventually strangling her and introducing disease". Ancient Greece is also where the idea that the female body is just an underdeveloped male body originated from and it has also contributed to the exclusion of women from medical research. According to the National Institutes of Health Office of Research on Women's Health, a specific instance in which women were deliberately left out of medical research was in 1977 when the Food and Drug Administration created a policy to "exclude women of reproductive potential from phase one and two clinical trials unless they had a life threatening condition" and it wasn't until 1986 that women were recommended to be included in medical research studies.

meghanreinwald — 2024-12-09 19:29:53 UTC