Haley, this is an AMAZING article that belongs in an academic journal. Incredibly well-done, richly sourced, and beautifully written. And you have me reading Wendell Berry! This is such an amazing resource and something I also care deeply about. If you wrote a book I would be first in line to buy it!
This was so very impressive and informative from start to finish. I second Kelly's comment as well! You could easily publish this in an academic journal (and I would be second in line to buy the book).
Great job pulling together so many threads of information! You've done a wonderful job tracing the line of why these things matter from conception to death. I think when Christians, especially Protestants, object to these things it can be difficult to discern *why* because there's so little teaching around it. It just used to be the accepted norm, but the advent of medical technology sped ahead of the thinking and no one stopped to ask enough questions. People get stuck in the compassion you describe, and then concede to things that I think they intrinsically know are disordered, but because they can't articulate "why" they just acquiesce because shouldn't you just want families to have children?
Haley, this is excellent. I’m so glad you shared it with us. Thank you! I had tears in my eyes at multiple points. You addressed so many deeply personal issues, from my experiences as a woman and a patient, to my experience as a nurse. I’ve been missing that work lately, and this reminds me of why I so treasured it when I was in it. Opportunities for humanizing within the medicine machine abound, if we have eyes to see them.
I don’t know what delights me more: the fact that someone wrote this, or that the writer’s credentials are (in your own words) wife, mother, autodidact. It’s amazing what you’ve learned and tied together here. Well done.
Joining the chorus just to gush that this was brilliant… it’s the first article I’ve read of yours, and I feel like God led me to it, as so many of the ideas you share here are what I’m currently thinking and writing about, though through a somewhat more personal lens as a former infertility “patient.” Some sentences felt like they came from my own head! I’m delighted to see someone as obviously bright and spiritually intelligent as you tuning into issues of such critical importance and bringing so many different other intelligent voices together… I’ve compiled a summer reading list through your hyperlinks alone… “Technopoly” up first! What a gift!
I also shared with my physician parents and brother, all of whom do their best to proceed from a divine anthropology as opposed to a mechanistic one… I know they’re going to love this.
Haley! Oh my goodness! This compilation is my version of winning the lottery. What an absolute gift. Thank you. “The Unsettling of America” is also a central text for me, and for the same reason you were drawn to it. That’s partially what the essay I’m working on right now is about. So many synchronicities here! I honestly don’t even remember how I found your essay… but it’s bringing lots of joy to my week at home with the babies and a head cold :)
Wow, wow, wow! This is like a glimpse of what would happen if Life Considered were a book and it’s amazing! And, beautiful job writing so clearly about these issues.
Haley, I am blessed by the depth of your thinking here. You bring clarity to what can feel like disparate issues but are linked ideologically. Reading Lara Briden's Hormone Repair Manual was a revelation to me (not because I agreed with all of her conclusions but because of her integrated approach to the female body). We are what we eat, we are what we think, we are what we do. I am not deficient because my body is a complex system of organs, and my body is speaking to me about what is and isn't working. I am narrowing in on a tiny piece of this complex issue you lay out here. So well done! I haven't read Technopoly in over two decades, and it is clearly time for a reread. Thank you for this important analysis of the zeitgeist.
Haley thank you for all your effort here!! Sometimes in my likeminded bubble I forget the machine mentality is a very real problem. Ironically, after beginning your essay, I overheard some moms at the playground this morning talking about the side effects of their IUDS and other hormonal contraceptives and it hit me again that this kind of meddling with the body is normal. Ugh! I wish it was not this way, as you so robustly point out there is another way, a fuller and richer way! Our bodies are so important. Christ rose and ascended bodily, so will we.
I’ll be returning to this amazing resource you’ve created again and again. Thanks for all your work Haley. You’ve helped me think through so much. 🫶🏻
Yeah if I never heard people vocally talking about contraception and sterilization in public places again….. I would be fine with that. :’) But goes to show that suppressing and altering functioning bodies is just the air we breathe, nothing to see.
I’m hopeful Christians at the very least are open to a different way.
I agree with Leah above, tears in my eyes at multiple points. Thinking of my very elderly grandparents, of my artificially created niece and of my own beloved children and the world they are living in and how to hold onto these huge topics of life and death in a way that is morally centered. Does any of that make sense I don’t know, but terrific piece. Goes so well with Mary Harrington’s latest on the UK’s new laws concerning these topics.
Thank you for saying this! And YES I actually snuck in a link and a quote from that piece of Harrington's before publishing because I kept nodding thinking "she's saying the exact same thing." (The more the merrier)
Wow, what a read. Great work Haley! I’ve never read Postman but I have this quote of his (which I found in another book) on my fridge: “If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.”
It was fascinating to read how even the simplest machines impacted how doctors do their jobs. A guy from our church is a physician and just opened his own private practice where he aims to give more personalized care. It’s so exciting for our community, which is dominated by one large healthcare system.
What a great quote - I love his staunchly no-nonsense vibe in the things he's written.
Yeah, it was a fascinating book - and especially chapter - to read and think through. Good on this physician friend of yours. There is potential for even small change, and if people can swing making private practices like that happen... all the better.
What a great post to read as I prepare for my mother’s funeral after a pretty peaceful death at home supported by incredible hospice at home, and watch two people close to me take fiercely opposing views in covid vaccines, and wonder about assisted dying. Thank you.
Thanks so much for reading, Melisa. And for the info you sent along that info about your family clinic - Looks like they’re doing very good work, and we need more of it!
Such an incredible article. I am a lawyer who works exclusively with healthcare providers and healthcare tech companies, and I will be considering how to ask my clients some of these questions. As somewhat of an aside, studies show that recent medical school grads might have better patient outcomes. That makes a lot of sense as they are both closer to having learned the necessary information and have not had decades of relying on machines: https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1797#:~:text=Physicians%20aged%20%3C40%20had%20the,%25)%20(table%202%E2%87%91).
This was wonderful. I feel like it helped connect all my scattered thoughts on technology, healthcare and fertility in ways I couldn’t have. Perfect timing.
Haley, this is an AMAZING article that belongs in an academic journal. Incredibly well-done, richly sourced, and beautifully written. And you have me reading Wendell Berry! This is such an amazing resource and something I also care deeply about. If you wrote a book I would be first in line to buy it!
This means a lot - thanks, Kelly.
This was so very impressive and informative from start to finish. I second Kelly's comment as well! You could easily publish this in an academic journal (and I would be second in line to buy the book).
insert the "Mary Harrington WHO??" joke lol
Thanks, Griffin.
Oh no I completely forgot one second
I will be third! So good, Haley. Thanks for taking the time to write this.
Can only manage like one or two of these per year as long as I have no childcare help (haha) so thank you!
Great job pulling together so many threads of information! You've done a wonderful job tracing the line of why these things matter from conception to death. I think when Christians, especially Protestants, object to these things it can be difficult to discern *why* because there's so little teaching around it. It just used to be the accepted norm, but the advent of medical technology sped ahead of the thinking and no one stopped to ask enough questions. People get stuck in the compassion you describe, and then concede to things that I think they intrinsically know are disordered, but because they can't articulate "why" they just acquiesce because shouldn't you just want families to have children?
You get it, and I'm hopeful other Christians (at the very least) will increasingly get it as well.
Thanks for reading, Annelise.
Haley, this is excellent. I’m so glad you shared it with us. Thank you! I had tears in my eyes at multiple points. You addressed so many deeply personal issues, from my experiences as a woman and a patient, to my experience as a nurse. I’ve been missing that work lately, and this reminds me of why I so treasured it when I was in it. Opportunities for humanizing within the medicine machine abound, if we have eyes to see them.
I don’t know what delights me more: the fact that someone wrote this, or that the writer’s credentials are (in your own words) wife, mother, autodidact. It’s amazing what you’ve learned and tied together here. Well done.
Thanks for reading and saying this, Leah.
And I appreciate your peppered encouragement to share it over the past few months :')
Joining the chorus just to gush that this was brilliant… it’s the first article I’ve read of yours, and I feel like God led me to it, as so many of the ideas you share here are what I’m currently thinking and writing about, though through a somewhat more personal lens as a former infertility “patient.” Some sentences felt like they came from my own head! I’m delighted to see someone as obviously bright and spiritually intelligent as you tuning into issues of such critical importance and bringing so many different other intelligent voices together… I’ve compiled a summer reading list through your hyperlinks alone… “Technopoly” up first! What a gift!
I also shared with my physician parents and brother, all of whom do their best to proceed from a divine anthropology as opposed to a mechanistic one… I know they’re going to love this.
Also adding that a lot of my "footnotes" (explicitly or implicitly) came from this compilation. There's just.... so much to all of this: https://lifeconsidered.substack.com/p/the-female-body-a-compilation
Haley! Oh my goodness! This compilation is my version of winning the lottery. What an absolute gift. Thank you. “The Unsettling of America” is also a central text for me, and for the same reason you were drawn to it. That’s partially what the essay I’m working on right now is about. So many synchronicities here! I honestly don’t even remember how I found your essay… but it’s bringing lots of joy to my week at home with the babies and a head cold :)
Wow - this is high praise. Thank you! I’m so honored you read and found some value in it.
(This is actually only the second essay of my own I’ve written on here. Just had to marinate for a few years before writing. haha)
Wow, wow, wow! This is like a glimpse of what would happen if Life Considered were a book and it’s amazing! And, beautiful job writing so clearly about these issues.
haha, Thank you for saying so. I feel like I've just been marinating and soaking up so much and it all needed to come out in some connected fashion.
Appreciate you reading, Anna.
Haley, I am blessed by the depth of your thinking here. You bring clarity to what can feel like disparate issues but are linked ideologically. Reading Lara Briden's Hormone Repair Manual was a revelation to me (not because I agreed with all of her conclusions but because of her integrated approach to the female body). We are what we eat, we are what we think, we are what we do. I am not deficient because my body is a complex system of organs, and my body is speaking to me about what is and isn't working. I am narrowing in on a tiny piece of this complex issue you lay out here. So well done! I haven't read Technopoly in over two decades, and it is clearly time for a reread. Thank you for this important analysis of the zeitgeist.
Making a bit of sense of these seemingly disparate issues was my goal, so this comment means so much.
Thanks for reading, Abigail.
Haley thank you for all your effort here!! Sometimes in my likeminded bubble I forget the machine mentality is a very real problem. Ironically, after beginning your essay, I overheard some moms at the playground this morning talking about the side effects of their IUDS and other hormonal contraceptives and it hit me again that this kind of meddling with the body is normal. Ugh! I wish it was not this way, as you so robustly point out there is another way, a fuller and richer way! Our bodies are so important. Christ rose and ascended bodily, so will we.
I’ll be returning to this amazing resource you’ve created again and again. Thanks for all your work Haley. You’ve helped me think through so much. 🫶🏻
Yeah if I never heard people vocally talking about contraception and sterilization in public places again….. I would be fine with that. :’) But goes to show that suppressing and altering functioning bodies is just the air we breathe, nothing to see.
I’m hopeful Christians at the very least are open to a different way.
Thanks so much for reading, Shelby.
Truly!! And I hope so too, more people seem to finally be waking up to these issues, praise God!
I agree with Leah above, tears in my eyes at multiple points. Thinking of my very elderly grandparents, of my artificially created niece and of my own beloved children and the world they are living in and how to hold onto these huge topics of life and death in a way that is morally centered. Does any of that make sense I don’t know, but terrific piece. Goes so well with Mary Harrington’s latest on the UK’s new laws concerning these topics.
And "does any of that make sense" is how I felt sharing this essay.... so I absolutely get it.
Thank you for saying this! And YES I actually snuck in a link and a quote from that piece of Harrington's before publishing because I kept nodding thinking "she's saying the exact same thing." (The more the merrier)
Wow, what a read. Great work Haley! I’ve never read Postman but I have this quote of his (which I found in another book) on my fridge: “If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture.”
It was fascinating to read how even the simplest machines impacted how doctors do their jobs. A guy from our church is a physician and just opened his own private practice where he aims to give more personalized care. It’s so exciting for our community, which is dominated by one large healthcare system.
What a great quote - I love his staunchly no-nonsense vibe in the things he's written.
Yeah, it was a fascinating book - and especially chapter - to read and think through. Good on this physician friend of yours. There is potential for even small change, and if people can swing making private practices like that happen... all the better.
Thanks so much for reading, Amber.
What a great post to read as I prepare for my mother’s funeral after a pretty peaceful death at home supported by incredible hospice at home, and watch two people close to me take fiercely opposing views in covid vaccines, and wonder about assisted dying. Thank you.
I am sorry for the loss of your mother, and God bless you as you prepare for her funeral.
Thank you for reading, Victoria.
Wow Haley! This is top-notch; thank you for writing and sharing this.
Thanks so much for reading, Melisa. And for the info you sent along that info about your family clinic - Looks like they’re doing very good work, and we need more of it!
Mary Harrington WHO??????!
Such an incredible article. I am a lawyer who works exclusively with healthcare providers and healthcare tech companies, and I will be considering how to ask my clients some of these questions. As somewhat of an aside, studies show that recent medical school grads might have better patient outcomes. That makes a lot of sense as they are both closer to having learned the necessary information and have not had decades of relying on machines: https://www.bmj.com/content/357/bmj.j1797#:~:text=Physicians%20aged%20%3C40%20had%20the,%25)%20(table%202%E2%87%91).
Wow... what an intriguing statistic. Thank you so much for reading and for the kind words, Timothy.
This was wonderful. I feel like it helped connect all my scattered thoughts on technology, healthcare and fertility in ways I couldn’t have. Perfect timing.
Thanks for reading and saying so, Emily. (It helped connect all my *own* scattered thoughts, too haha)
Wow Haley!