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Pregnancy + Postpartum
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PREGNANCY + POSTPARTUM

The Data on “Crisis” Pregnancy Centers

What: A JAMA Internal Medicine study had researchers examine over 470,000 webpages from 1,825 “crisis pregnancy center” (CPC) websites between September 2023 and March 2024. CPCs actively encourage women to not get abortions and get millions in funding from state and federal government. They found that while CPCs claim to offer services like parenting classes and adoption support, 30% of the centers also promote “abortion pill reversal,” a procedure that has no scientific evidence backing it and can be dangerous.

Key line: “’CPCs are offering an unproven and potentially dangerous intervention in the form of abortion pill reversal treatments,’ added Davey Smith, M.D., professor at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, director of the Altman Clinical and Translational Research Institute at UC San Diego and study co-author. ‘This treatment lacks FDA approval, but, more worryingly, could increase the risk of serious complications like sepsis, especially in cases where it interferes with the completion of a medication abortion.’”

Source: UCSD

Tough Reviews for Luxury Postpartum Retreat

What: The Cut gets the scoop on Boram, a high-end postpartum retreat in New York City including lactation consultations and infant care within a hotel setting. While marketed as a spa-like haven, some guests go on the record about inadequate amenities, inattentive staff, and safety concerns.

Key line: “The business’s singularity may be at the core of its mixed reviews. Boram is a radical newcomer to the American market, and because of that, it sits in a lightly regulated, competitor-free space. While its landlord must adhere to city regulations, Boram itself sets its own safety, hiring, and care standards and processes, with seemingly no one but the guests to report if anything goes awry. In my correspondence with about a dozen Boram clients and another dozen maternal-health experts in New York, some raved about their stays and interactions with Boram.… But others told me they feared for their babies’ health and safety while racking up extra bills for Seamless orders and Duane Reade runs.”

Source: The Cut

BIRTH CONTROL

A Complicated State of Affairs for American Contraception

What: The New Yorker takes on the state of contraception in the United States, which ranges from the victory of the pill finally being available over the counter, to anti-abortion groups conflating it with abortion medications and advocating for bans. Add in the spread of misinformation about the risks of hormonal contraceptives and you get a very complicated situation.

Key line: “Much of the birth-control skepticism on social media is ideological, the culture-warification of medical side effects. It’s easy to see an overlap with the trad-wife movement and its valorization of the “natural” and the labor-intensive (cycle tracking is not that easy), not to mention large families.”

Source: New Yorker

ABORTION ACCESS

Practical (Abortion) Support

What: The Atlantic has a deep dive on “practical-support groups” that provide logistical and financial assistance for women traveling to obtain abortions. The groups are confronting rising costs, heightened demand, and legal challenges that aim to limit or criminalize support for interstate abortion travel.

Key line: “Support groups also told me that costs are rising because, as the number of clinics dwindles, appointment waiting lists are getting longer, so people wind up having abortions further into pregnancy. The longer a person waits to end their pregnancy, the more complicated and expensive abortion becomes; patients also take longer to recover. ‘What used to be a one-day activity is now a four-day activity where people need to leave their kids behind,’ [Apiary leader Marisa] Falcon said. ‘Not only are the logistics more complicated, but it costs significantly more.’”

Source: The Atlantic

CARDIOVASCULAR

Depression Linked With Heart Disease–But Just in Women

What: Researchers looked at over 300,000 individuals and found women with a high genetic risk of depression are more likely to develop heart disease, even without a clinical depression diagnosis. This association was not observed in men, and traditional risk factors like BMI, smoking, high blood pressure, or high cholesterol did not account for the difference.

Key line: “Dr Shah said while the risk of heart disease increases for women after menopause, this study highlighted that women who have depression should be assessed for heart disease risk regardless of their menopausal stage. ‘Our research found that the higher risk of developing coronary artery disease, where blood vessels narrow because of the build-up of plaque, was present regardless of whether the women were pre-menopausal or post-menopausal at recruitment…Frequent heart health checks are especially important for women who have a history of depression.’”

Source: Circulation