Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Perspectives: Contrary To Inflammatory Rhetoric, Anti-Abortion Activists Can Care About Women's Health Too
One of the most troubling arguments I routinely hear is that the pro-life movement only pays lip service to caring for women, but they really just care about the unborn. Pro-choicers claim to be the ones caring for all life, and the term 鈥渃hoice鈥 is painted as the compassionate option. Those engaging in the abortion debate聽have tried to make this into a binary choice 鈥 either you care for the woman or you care for the unborn child in her womb. Apparently you can鈥檛 do both.聽But we can and must care for the woman holistically, which聽includes protecting the little life inside of her. (Chelsea Patterson Sobolik, 5/22)
A few weekends ago, like many Americans, we thought about the mothers in our lives. We reflected on the milestones and the sacrifices. And with some measure of guilt, we thought about how it can be so easy to take our mothers for granted. Perhaps this is why experts are just beginning to notice that motherhood in the United States has become riskier and costlier today than it was a generation ago. American women today are 50 percent more likely to die in childbirth than their mothers 鈥 risks that are three to four times higher for black women than white women. (Drs. Leana Wen and Neel Shah, 5/22)
I鈥檝e always known that expressing myself could hurt my career. I鈥檝e tried not to show emotion, to anticipate what people expect from me and to do it. I don鈥檛 like to let people down. But you can鈥檛 change anything with silence. Last week, two of my former Nike teammates, the Olympian runners Alysia Monta帽o and Kara Goucher, heroically broke their nondisclosure agreements with the company to share their pregnancy stories in a New York Times investigation. (Allyson Felix, 5/22)
HB 182 is primarily focused on eliminating insurance coverage for abortion and any treatment or device that might remotely cause an abortion, including treatment for an ectopic pregnancy. An ectopic pregnancy is one that implants outside of the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tube. Ectopic pregnancies can be life-threatening because, as they grow, they may cause the tube to rupture, which can lead to catastrophic internal bleeding. (Dr. Daniel Grossman, 5/21)
I find it disconcerting that HB 7070 advocates are really stating that women are incapable of scrolling to the bottom of a homepage on a PRC website (where the location information is, might I add) and reading a disclaimer. In fact, I鈥檝e visited a shoreline Connecticut PRC website, and it takes one scroll of my computer mouse to find out that I cannot get an abortion or an abortion referral at this center. (Katie Geeze, 5/23)