I'm currently writing a book about the history, science, and politics of the IUD, exploring how a tiny device revolutionized healthcare and became the focal point of society’s fiercest debates around reproduction, choice, and power. 

The story of the IUD is a story about who can and cannot make decisions about their sexual and reproductive lives, about whose needs health research prioritizes, about the mounting threats to birth control and the tireless, decades-long effort to move toward reproductive justice.

The book was born from the realization that many of us who use birth control understand little about the complex influences that shape its role in our lives. Through the stories of those who use, research, and provide access to the IUD, the book will provide a window into those influences. It will cover the dark history of the contraceptive development and population control, and how that history traces to modern examples of reproductive coercion. It will examine the moving needle on pain management and gynecology, and the tireless advocacy of those who demanded their pain be accounted for. It will look at new contraceptives in development and explain the barriers to innovation. It will spend time with contraceptive users who have experienced side effects, and it will ask why their concerns are too often dismissed. It will document the unrelenting threats to contraceptive access, of which the IUD is a principal target. It will explore how contraceptives can be a life-saving form of healthcare, and it will profile the people committed to protecting it.  

The book will be published in 2028 by PublicAffairs of Hachette Book Group. I'm represented by Jade Wong-Baxter of Frances Goldin Literary Agency. 

You can read and listen to my past work on the IUD below. 

Slate Magazine •

Getting an IUD Inserted Is Tricky. Getting an IUD Out Can Be a Different Story.

When Carli removed her own intrauterine device while sitting in a warm bath, she was elated. IUD in hand, “I threw on a towel and ran to my partner,” she told me. “I was just like, ‘Holy crap, I did it. I did it by myself!’ ” When Madeline removed her IUD, in a deep-squat position she replicated from a home-birth video someone had sent her on Reddit, she found it to be remarkably easy, even compared to having the device removed by a doctor, as she had done previously. “I think the predictability of knowing the exact timing and having it all in my own hands—literally—was a lot better," she told me.
Slate •

Millions of Women Have Them. They’ve Radically Improved. Why Do Many of Us Understand So Shockingly Little About How They Work?

The nurse practitioner who inserted my IUD worked with the precision and speed of someone on a pit crew. Or, really—just someone working in the gynecology department of a student clinic at one of the largest universities in the U.S. “You probably do a lot of these, huh?” I asked. She smiled. For weeks, I had been dreading the appointment. A steady stream of friends who had endured the procedure before me had warned me it hurt. Still, they said, reliable, long-lasting birth control was worth it.