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This week, the Supreme Court announced, without explanation, that it would not hear a challenge to Kentucky’s so-called Ultrasound Informed Consent Act, which requires women to submit to a narrated ultrasound before receiving an abortion.The court’s inaction leaves a dangerous law on the books, one that endangers not only women’s rights but also medical ethics. The Kentucky statute compels any doctor performing an abortion to first do an ultrasound on the patient and describe aloud the physical features of the fetus on the screen. The doctor must also play the sound of the fetal heartbeat. (Ruth Faden, 12/11)

The Supreme Court this week declined to review the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s decision in EMW Women’s Surgical Center v. Meier; this had the practical effect of upholding a Kentucky law requiring abortion service providers to, among other things, perform an ultrasound and play a fetal heartbeat recording to a woman seeking an abortion. (Ronald J. Krotoszynsk, 12/11)

In a move that played out at the United Nations General Assembly in September, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced that the United States and 18 other states, including Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Iraq, Mali, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Yemen jointly condemned policies that promoted sexual and reproductive rights of women in the UN’s newly adopted Universal Health Coverage Political Declaration.A joint statement read, in part, “We do not support references to ambiguous terms and expressions, such as sexual and reproductive health and rights in U.N. documents, because they can undermine the critical role of the family and promote practices, like abortion, in circumstances that do not enjoy international consensus and which can be misinterpreted by U.N. agencies.” (Shola Lawal, 12/10)

Climate change has been linked to changes in Atlantic hurricane behavior, making storms more destructive to the built environment and vital infrastructure, more harmful to the physical and mental health of island-based and coastal populations, and more deadly in their aftermath. These escalating effects on population health represent a double environmental injustice: socioeconomically disadvantaged and marginalized populations sustain disproportionate harm and loss, with more hazardous storms exacerbating the inequity; and while the populations most vulnerable to Atlantic hurricanes, especially those in small-island states, contribute virtually nothing to climate change, they are among those most exposed to risks that are worsened by the carbon emissions from higher-income countries. (James M. Shultz, Duane E. Sands, James P. Kossin, and Sandro Galea, 12/11)

Republicans and Democrats are trying to cobble together an end-of-year spending bill. But even if Members can’t agree on extending most special-interest subsidies—and we hope they don’t—they should stop a return of the destructive ObamaCare medical device tax in January. Large bipartisan majorities have suspended the 2.3% excise tax on medical devices such as imaging machines and stents since 2015. The tax was intended to raise spare change to pay for ObamaCare—an estimated $25 billion over 10 years—but even Democrats don’t believe the economic damage is worth the revenue. (12/11)

How Americans die has fundamentally changed with advances in medical technology and the ways diseases are treated. For centuries, death commonly occurred in one’s home with care provided by relatives and community members. Yet since the 1960s, the hospital and intensive care unit have become places of passage as people approach the end.In this week’s New England Journal of Medicine, we report that home has become the most common place of death among Americans dying of natural causes for the first time since the early 20th century, while deaths in hospitals and nursing facilities have declined. (Sarah H. Cross and Haider J. Warraich, 12/11)

Inefficiencies in our health care system have let down patients and families across the nation. Unfortunately, the American system of organ donation has been especially susceptible to waste when it comes to taxpayer resources. While 95% of Americans support organ donation, the number of people on organ waiting lists continues to outpace the number of organs available for transplant. (Andy Slavitt and Adam Brandon, 12/11)

Anti-vaccination activists gave up on their misguided effort to repeal an important new state law — Senate Bill 276 — that will make it harder for parents to get their children bogus medical exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for measles and other dangerous infectious diseases. The proponents failed to gather the 623,212 signatures required to place the repeal measure on the November 2020 ballot, and that’s a good thing. (12/12)

At the beginning of each month, I check off the bills my husband and I are expecting: mortgage, water, electricity. Automobile and health insurance. Our cellphones. All normal, somewhat boring expenses. Then I get to the medical debt from my miscarriage, and I need to take deep breaths to center myself. I have survived this. (Ayana Lage, 12/11)

When considering the most pressing matter that is threatening the great state of Tennessee, I would be willing to bet that more apparent matters come to your mind such as our education system, the statewide job market, or maybe even the depressing but improving University of Tennessee football program. The opioid crisis, which was declared a national public health crisis by President Trump, should be at least near the top of your list. (Joe Butler, 12/11)