Sex ed with politics attached.
Reproductive Left treats reproductive health as both everyday care and political terrain. Aspen Rulon moves from contraception, condoms, and endometriosis to diet culture, body hair, and online fetish content with a mix of plain explanation and pointed analysis.
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Reproductive Left sits at the intersection of sexual health education and feminist political analysis. It treats reproductive care as ordinary, consequential, and never isolated from the world around it. Aspen Rulon is the recurring voice in the excerpts, introducing themself with they/them pronouns and speaking from a client and community advocate role. The show’s range is concrete: condoms, LARCs, hormonal contraception, IUDs, endometriosis, pelvic floor physical therapy, STI prevention, and gender-affirming hormone therapy as it relates to contraception. It also takes on cultural subjects that shape how people live in their bodies. Body hair becomes a way to talk about advertising, gender pressure, capitalism, and patriarchal expectations. Diet culture becomes a way to talk about fatphobia, racism, medical bias, clothing, food, and the politics of taking up space. Online fetish content becomes a frame for consent, trad wife imagery, public performance, and misogyny. The show’s educational mode is unusually plain-spoken. It defines terms carefully, assumes that people arrive with different levels of sex education, and keeps returning to body autonomy rather than shame. That accessibility does not make it neutral. Reproductive Left is comfortable naming medical racism, medical sexism, eugenics, colonization, and the ways health systems have harmed people. The episode on birth control pills is especially clear about that dual stance: hormonal contraception can matter deeply while the history behind it includes cruelty and exploitation. The practical material is not an afterthought. Episodes discuss IUD strings, Nexplanon, latex-free condom options, regular STI testing, pain management concerns, surgical diagnosis of endometriosis, and movement patterns in pelvic floor therapy. Interview episodes widen the room, with Mary Alice speaking about endometriosis and Dr. Megan Staples discussing pelvic floor health. Aspen’s solo episodes carry more heat, but the core remains care-centered. The show can be funny, blunt, and sharply critical without losing sight of consent, safety, and patient support. It is best understood as reproductive health education that refuses to separate bodies from politics. Reproductive Left offers information, context, and a strong point of view in the same breath.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants reproductive health explained plainly, with room for history, culture, consent, and power. It especially fits someone comfortable with feminist framing and frank discussion of bodies and sex.
What sets it apart: Reproductive Left pairs practical care-adjacent education with explicit analysis of racism, sexism, capitalism, medical harm, and bodily autonomy. Similar shows may teach the health topic; this one keeps asking who benefits, who is harmed, and what compassionate care should look like.
Reproductive Left is a podcast by Mabel Wadsworth Center, a feminist, nonprofit, sexual and reproductive healthcare provider in Bangor, ME. After a three year hiatus, we are back with a new host: Aspen Ruhlin (they, them). Join us as we explore topics that impact our sexual and reproductive health and lives. New episodes the last Friday of the month!
Condom sizing meets trad-wife hot takes, if your curiosity has room for both.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A clear-eyed look at hormonal contraception, its benefits, and the harms bound up in its development.
Reproductive Left looks at the history of hormonal contraception with a steady eye, holding the pill's real benefits alongside the medical racism, medical sexism, eugenics, and colonial power tied to its development.
A humane, practical guide to LARCs, pain, side effects, removal, and access.
Long-acting reversible contraception gets a practical, unusually humane walkthrough, with Aspen Rulon clarifying what makes a LARC reversible and why sterilization should be treated as permanent.
A plainspoken condom guide that keeps latex allergies, internal options, anal-sex safety, and STI testing in one practical conversation.
"Condoms" turns a familiar safer-sex tool into a clear entry point for filling sex-education gaps. Aspen Rulon starts with the basics: condoms as barriers, usually but not always latex, used during sex to reduce STI transmission and/or pregnancy.
A candid body-hair conversation connecting biology, razor advertising, and pressure placed on women's appearance.
Body hair gets a social and biological reckoning as Aspen Rulon moves from humans as mammals to the protective role of pubic hair and the sebum produced by follicles.
Aspen Rulon connects trad-wife performance and online humiliation kinks to consent, dependence, and misogyny.
Reproductive Left treats online fetish content as a serious question of power, autonomy, safety, and consent. Aspen Rulon's discussion connects trad-wife influencers with men using humiliation kinks in comment sections, and the episode is strongest when it keeps kink inside a…
Fertility medicine translated with warmth and clarity.
Fertility care, viewed from inside the industry.
This episode explores the troubling history of hormonal contraception, highlighting the roles of medical racism, sexism, and eugenics in its development.
This episode explains what long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) are, what falls under this category, and key considerations for users.
An educational episode about condoms covering their importance, history, types, and sizing.
Aspen rants about the biological and cultural significance of body hair, questioning why we have it and why razor commercials often show hairless legs.
Aspen discusses hot takes on online fetish content, focusing on trad wives and men with humiliation kinks, while emphasizing the importance of safe, sane, and consensual kink practices.
Mary Alice, a nurse practitioner at Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor, Maine, tells host Aspen Rulon that endometriosis affects about "one in 10" people born with a uterus, including trans and nonbinary people.
Dr. Meg's three-phase pelvic floor therapy process runs from a restore phase to strength work to a return phase.
Aspen Rulon interviews family medicine physician Dr.
An interview with Casey Faulkingham from Partners for Peace discussing the intersections of autonomy and domestic violence.
Aspen interviews co-worker Abbie about their legislative testimony on abortion and other bills during the current session.
Host Aspen Rulin interviews Viva Ruiz about creating sacred pro-abortion spaces and overcoming feelings of powerlessness in the face of anti-abortion legislation.
An interview discussing reproductive justice, substance use during pregnancy, and the systemic issues in Maine regarding child removal.
An interview with Cait Vaughan discussing myths and realities of substance use during pregnancy and parenting.