The Pregnancy Project Book Review
Mireille Kreines
I remain deeply honoured to have been trusted by participants to share and analyse their stories. The questions planned by our project team touched on deeply intimate and sometimes traumatic experiences, as well as joyful accounts of kinship and bringing new life into the world. These were by design long, deep discussions, covering a great range of issues that have been rarely discussed in academic literature to date.
Queering Community Development in DIY punk spaces
Also published in the book: Arts, Culture and Community Development (Policy Press)
Written with my long-running collaborator Kirsty Lohman, this essay looks at grassroots community organising within queer, feminist, and anti-racist punk spaces. We argue that this organising is often prefigurative: that is, it actively models and enacts the changes that punks want to see in the world. Looking at events such as First Timers and Decolonise Fest, plus bands such as Big Joanie, we explore what happens when marginalised people create their own cultural spaces, and seek to facilitate access to these spaces for others who are often denied artistic and political expression.
Men transmasculine and non-binary people and midwifery care
Also published in the book: Midwifery Essentials (Elsevier)
I contributed to this essay as part of the Trans Pregnancy research project team. Our project spoke with over 50 men, transmasculine, and non-binary people who experienced pregnancy and childbirth in Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, the UK, and the USA, plus a handful of midwives who have supported people from this group. In this short essay, we briefly outline the positive and negative experiences that trans birth parents reported having with midwives, plus challenges reported by midwives themselves. On this basis we make 8 recommendations for developing best practice with trans people in midwifery services.
Depathologising Gender: Vulnerability in Trans Health Law
Also published in the book: A Jurisprudence of the Body (Palgrave Macmillan)
I co-wrote this essay with Chris Dietz, a scholar of Law at the University of Leeds. Drawing on feminist and trans critiques of human rights models, plus an analysis of gender recognition laws in countries including Argentina, Denmark, and the UK, we argue for a new approach to understanding the fight for depathologisation in law and medicine.
These three essays are just some of the many peer-reviewed academic publications I make freely accessible on this website. For more work on a range of topics relating to trans studies, feminism, and/or community development, see my publications page.
I was very impressed with the measures taken by TPATH organisers to ensure the conference was accessible to as many people as possible from around the world. They organised live translation to and from English, French, and Spanish, provided live captioning, encouraged presenters to speak slowly and clearly to enable lipreading, and ensured that generous scholarships were available for those who would not otherwise afford to attend. Most of the event was recorded, and videos are gradually being uploaded to the TPATH Youtube channel.
At the conference I joined Tash Oakes-Monger from NHS England to present initial findings from the ITEMS project (Improving Trans Experiences of Maternity Services). The ITEMS team, led by Michael Petch from the LGBT Foundation, ran a survey in early 2021 to explore the experiences of trans people (including non-binary people) who give birth in England. I supported the design and dissemination of the survey through my former role with the Trans Learning Partnership.
There is some really exciting information emerging from the ITEMS data. For example, it appears that more trans people are giving birth than ever before (see above). However, it was also apparent that trans people face substantial inequalities.
We are delighted to announce that the first two peer-reviewed articles on findings from our research interviews are now available. Both draw on an analysis of 51 interviews with people who had concieved. One looks at experiences of pregnancy loss among a subset of research participants, and the other explores routes to conception.
This article explores how men, trans/masculine and non-binary people navigated different social norms and/or practical obstacles to conception. It shows that individuals engage in diverse practices that normalise their experiences of conception, while also highlighting the unique needs and challenges they can face.
The article will also form part of a special issue of the International Journal of Transgender Health that we are editing which will be published in full in early 2021. This special issue will more broadly explore issues of fertility, reproduction, and sexual autonomy among trans and non-binary people. Two other great articles from the special issue have also already seen advance publication:
I am very excited to announce that I will soon begin work on a new project. From the beginning of April I will be working full-time with Spectra as Research Coordinator for the Trans Learning Partnership.
The Trans Learning Partnership is a groundbreaking collaboration between trans and non-binary community representatives, academics, and four organisations who work to directly provide community services: Spectra, Gendered Intelligence, Mermaids, and the LGBT Foundation. The aim of the Partnership is to drive the development of a robust service and advocacy-oriented evidence base, enabling trans services and their service users to have needs-based, impactful services.
This also means that I will be leaving the Trans Pregnancy Project at the University of Leeds, but rest assured that I plan to continue supporting my colleagues from that project in writing up and publishing our findings. We have a number of academic articles currently in the pipeline, along with a themed special issue of the International Journal of Transgender Health.
By Ruth Pearce, Sally Hines, Carla Pfeffer, Damien W Riggs, Elisabetta Ruspini and Francis Ray White. Cross-posted from the Trans Pregnancy blog. An article based on this piece has been published in The Conversation.
Most importantly, the verdict wrongs the human rights of the complainant and his child, through failing to provide them with consistent legal documentation and intruding on their privacy. More widely it is wrong in terms of its failure to legally recognise diverse family forms and contemporary practices of intimacy, which question traditional gendered reproductive certainties.
This is why legal cases around gender recognition are so important. Even when they seem to fail the individuals who bring them to court, they very often also radically chip away at normative understandings of gender in unforeseen and unintended ways. Such paradoxes and contradictions are subsequently brought to light, unpacked and, very often, readdressed at appeal stages.
This is particularly important for the trans and non-binary birth parents we have spoken with for this research project, who seek forms of legal recognition that are consistent with how they experience gender in their everyday life.
But, unlike some Latinas who would buck the statistics by simply doing well in school and in life, Gaby went a step further. During her senior year of high school, each student was assigned an independent, year-long project. Gaby thought about shadowing a social worker or volunteering with needy kids, but in the end, she chose something a little more challenging and controversial: she decided to fake her own pregnancy to gauge reactions and understand the stereotypes and discrimination pregnant teens are faced with.
The purpose of the P/B-24 Project, completed in 2018, was to conduct a series of systematic reviews on diet and health for women who are pregnant and for infants and toddlers from birth to 24 months of age. This project was an initiative led jointly by USDA and HHS. A broadly representative group of Federal researchers and program leaders, called a Federal Expert Group (FEG), also provided input throughout the P/B-24 Project.
Aspects of the methodology described in the publication was tailored for each of the systematic reviews conducted as part of the P/B-24 Project. Details regarding those tailored methods, including the literature selection criteria (inclusion/ exclusion criteria), literature search strategies, are available in each of the full systematic reviews.
Each TEC worked independently of one another, and their work concluded with the completion of the systematic reviews and their respective peer-reviewed publications. As noted previously, the purpose of P/B-24 Project was to review the evidence on a select number of questions, not to establish or recommendation dietary guidance.
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Neurologists managing women with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) need information about the safety of disease modifying drugs (DMDs) during pregnancy. However, this knowledge is limited. The present study aims to summarize previous studies by performing a systematic review and meta-analyses. The terms "multiple sclerosis" combined with DMDs of interest and a broad profile for pregnancy terms were used to search Embase and Medline databases to identify relevant studies published from January 2000 to July 2019.1260 studies were identified and ten studies met our inclusion criteria. Pooled risk ratios (RR) of pregnancy and birth outcomes in pregnancies exposed to DMDs compared to those not exposed were calculated using a random effects model. For spontaneous abortion RR = 1.14, 95% CI 0.99-1.32, for preterm births RR = 0.93, 95% CI 0.72-1.21 and for major congenital malformations RR = 0.86, 95% CI 0.47-1.56. The most common major congenital malformations reported in MS patients exposed to MS drugs were atrial septal defect (ASD) (N = 4), polydactyly (N = 4) and club foot (N = 3), which are among the most prevalent birth defects observed in the general population. In conclusion, interferons, glatiramer acetate or natalizumab, do not appear to increase the risk for spontaneous abortions, pre-term birth or major congenital malformations. There were very few patients included that were exposed to fingolimod, azathioprine and rituximab; therefore, these results cannot be generalized across drugs. Future studies including internal comparators are needed to enable treating physicians and their patients to decide on the best treatment options.
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