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EVERYTHING
What Republicans Might Do to Medicaid, Main Insurer of US Births
What: The New York Times looks at what the second Trump administration and Republican Congress might do to Medicaid, the national health insurance program that covers just over 40% of births in the United States and 40% of children. One big goal? Cut spending on the program to pay for tax cuts that will benefit the wealthiest Americans most.
Key line: “Some of the changes are being proposed as a way to pay for a law that would extend the tax cuts from the first Trump administration, most of which benefited corporations and wealthier Americans. The policies might slash funding for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion — which added roughly 23 million people to the program — or require that many enrollees work in order to receive benefits.”
Source: New York Times
BIRTH CONTROL
The TikTok Birth Control Trouble
What: Salon looks at the TikTok birth control content that gets clicks and finds it’s often about rare side effects or straight up misinformation. Mix that in with women’s pain routinely being ignored and underresearched, and you have a potential recipe for birth control disaster.
Key line: “TikTok has become a hotbed of birth control misinformation, with videos accumulating millions of views in which women blame their IUDs for pelvic floor dysfunction, autoimmune conditions, liver failure, and other conditions. In one video, the text reads: ‘I cannot believe my ‘for you’ page today. Every video is of a girl getting autoimmune/cancer from her IUD. Why did we pop birth control like candy because doctors told us to?’”
Source: Salon
PREGNANCY + POSTPARTUM
Pregnancy Complications Make Second Children Less Likely
What: A study in JAMA found that first-time mothers who suffered serious complications during their pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum period were 12 percent less likely to have a second baby. The study looked at over one million women in Sweden from 1999 to 2021.
Key line: “’The reasons are hard to speculate on and may result from multiple factors, such as decreased desire for more children, trauma, infertility related to psychiatric medications, or lack of health counselling,’ says [first author Eleni] Tsamantioti. ‘Proper support and monitoring by antenatal care staff is therefore essential for women who have suffered serious health problems during pregnancy or delivery.’”
Source: JAMA
ABORTION ACCESS
Another Texas Mother Dead from Abortion Bans
What: ProPublica found a third woman in Texas who died for lack of abortion care. Porsha Ngumezi had a miscarriage at 11 weeks, and bled so much in emergency department she had needed two blood transfusions. But the OBGYN on duty did not give her a routine procedure known as dilation and curettage or D+C, instead giving her slower acting, less effective medication. Prosha was 35 years old, and the mother of two young boys.
Key line: “Texas doctors told ProPublica the law has changed the way their colleagues see the procedure; some no longer consider it a first-line treatment, fearing legal repercussions or dissuaded by the extra legwork required to document the miscarriage and get hospital approval to carry out a D&C. This has occurred, ProPublica found, even in cases like Porsha’s where there isn’t a fetal heartbeat or the circumstances should fall under an exception in the law. Some doctors are transferring those patients to other hospitals, which delays their care, or they’re defaulting to treatments that aren’t the medical standard.”
Source: ProPublica
How Many Tragic Stories Does It Take to Change Abortion Bans?
What: In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, a dentist in Ireland, died after doctors failed to give her an abortion when her amniotic sac ruptured at 17 weeks pregnant. Her death eventually helped lead to Ireland overturning the country’s abortion ban. Rewire’s Garnet Hednerson points out that it was a longer process than it seems from the outside – and has important lessons for the United States.
Key line: “A series of high-profile legal cases from the 1990s onward, in both Irish and international courts, led to small reforms. For example, a 1992 referendum established Irish citizens’ right to travel for abortion care. And in 2013—nearly a year after Halappanavar’s death—the Oireachtas, or Irish parliament, passed a law clarifying the circumstances in which emergency abortions were permissible. However, these changes did very little to meaningfully improve access, said de Londras. ‘Even in the years after that, if you talked to a politician, or if you heard some of the rhetoric, things felt slow to change,’ said Anna Carnegie, an Irish abortion rights activist and writer living in London. From her perspective, repealing the Eighth Amendment didn’t become a realistic possibility until 2014 or 2015.”
Source: Rewire News Group
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