Home of Bump Academy, a full-time school for pregnant women, enrolled by the people who love them and know best. Class is in session for the next nine months.
Your partner stays pregnant. You stay in charge. Everyone learns something.
Our curriculum covers every decision a pregnant woman might otherwise make by herself, with her own doctor, using her own judgment.
A guided look at what she may eat, drawn from a headline you read once.
Credit: 1 sandwichYou sit in. You nod. You take over the part where the doctor addresses her.
Credit: 1 awkward silenceWhen to stand, when to sit, and who decides. Hint: not the person whose back hurts.
Credit: 2 footstoolsStudents receive a plan, already completed. Handwriting is yours.
Credit: 1 laminated planFor students who still have some. They are filed neatly and not read.
Credit: pass/failHer instincts are fascinating. Ours are in the handbook.
Credit: 0Enrolling her is only half the program. These courses are for the men who run it, and no experience is required.
Quote one line, skip everything around it, and say "I'm only repeating what it says." Prerequisite: not having read it.
Credit: 1 half-remembered verseWhen she asks why, point upward. Whatever you want becomes God's idea, which is very convenient.
Credit: 1 higher power, uncreditedIf her mother agrees, it counts as consensus. If her mother disagrees, see "Remedial Mothers."
Credit: 1 sigh over the phoneA short unit on sounding worried about her, in front of her mother, until the worry spreads.
Credit: 2 casserolesA steady voice, slow nods, and the phrase "studies show." Studies sold separately.
Credit: 0 citationsSay "I'm just worried about you" in the same breath as an order. Pairs well with a furrowed brow.
Credit: 1 furrowed browA note from the dean, with no joke in it: faith and family are a real comfort to many people, including during pregnancy. What this page mocks is using them as a lever, to override someone's own judgment and her doctor's advice.
If someone keeps citing God, relatives or "experts" to pressure you out of your own decisions, that is not guidance. The resources below can help you sort out what's happening.
Our four departments share one lesson plan: someone decides, someone watches, and someone else is expected to comply.
Our professor of seizing things. Office hours are whenever nobody is looking.
Binocular Studies. Curtains are treated as a suggestion.
Always on, always recording, never explaining why.
Applied Puppetry. Students move when instructed, ideally before they notice.
Every enrolled student's decisions arrive here for your approval. Review each one and press a button. No training required. That's the point.
Final grade: Incomplete
Her notes are still in the right-hand column. Maybe read them. Then scroll down for class dismissal.
Know a woman who may, at some point, have been near a man? Our Vigilance Team wants to hear about it. Report her below and she will be monitored indefinitely, for her own good and your entertainment.
Nobody was reported.
Nothing you entered left this page, and there is no one on the other end. If there were, it would still be surveillance: turning neighbors, coworkers and strangers into informants on who someone sleeps with. That is control, and it has never been the same thing as care.
I haven't been to medical school, but I did watch a documentary. Bump Academy gave my confidence a place to live.
She used to say "my body, my decision." The curriculum helped her stop saying it out loud, around me.
I got a certificate. It says "Attended." I'm told that counts as expertise.
Student reviews are optional, which is why we have so few.
I was enrolled on a Tuesday and told on Thursday. Zero stars, but the Veto button was in the way.
The curriculum taught me what I already knew: I'm an adult, and my doctor and I have it handled.
Graduation requires me to agree it was for my own good. I'm taking the incomplete.
Enrollment is a family decision, which is to say it is yours. The student's signature field has been removed to save space.
By us. We are very impressed with ourselves.
Our records show the doctor's opinion is not required, and our admissions staff have not asked.
She can leave the moment she has the baby, at which point we recommend our sister program, Parenting Academy, enrolling now.
There is no Bump Academy, and "her own good" is what people say when they take a choice away from someone. This is satire, and the joke is only funny because the idea underneath it is not as far-fetched as it should be.
Pregnant or not, a person is not a student, and you are not her principal.
Decisions about someone's body, health and care belong to that person, working with the clinicians they trust. A partner, parent, politician or stranger can have feelings about those decisions. None of them gets a vote on them, a veto over them, or a button to press.
If you love someone who is pregnant, you can be useful without being in charge:
If someone is controlling your health decisions, monitoring who you see, or hurting you, you are not imagining it and you are not alone. These services are free and confidential, and the people on the other end have heard it before.
In immediate danger? Call 911 (US). The hotlines below are not emergency services.
24/7 support by phone, chat or text, in over 200 languages. They can also help with controlling behavior and coercion around pregnancy and birth control.
For ages 12 to 24 dealing with an unhealthy or abusive relationship.
Support for survivors of sexual assault and abuse, including by a partner.
If things feel unbearable, call or text any time, in the US.
The Hotline offers a video phone line staffed for Deaf callers, plus TTY.
If someone monitors your devices: they may be able to see calls, texts and browsing history. Use a phone or computer they can't access, such as one at a library, a friend's home or work. The red Quick exit button on this page sends you to a neutral site.
Hotline advocates can also help you make a safety plan around your own situation, whether or not you are ready to leave.
Rights on paper only matter if people defend them in practice. These US organizations work on health care access, legal protection and safety. Give what you can, in money, time or votes.
Legal advocacy to protect and expand reproductive health care access.
Connects people to local funds that help pay for care and travel.
Health care, education and advocacy on reproductive health.
Connects you to your state coalition and local programs you can support or volunteer with.
Grassroots organizing for women's equality and civil rights.
Closer to home: ask the women in your life what they need, show up when they say so, and speak up when someone talks about managing another person's health care as if it were their job.