Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: Right Answers Mostly
Episode: The Mothers of Modern Gynecology
Description: For most of human history, childbirth belonged to women. Midwives guided mothers through labor, cared for newborns, and held generations of medical knowledge within their communities. But over time, birth moved from homes to hospitals, and from the hands of women to the authority of male physicians.
In this episode, we explore the hidden history of childbirth, the rise of modern gynecology, and the women whose bodies shaped the field but whose names were nearly erased from it.
At the center of this story are three enslaved women in the 1840s American South: Anarcha, Betsey, a...