Harris鈥 Emphasis on Maternal Health Care Is Paying Dividends With Black Women Voters
Polls are showing renewed support from Black women voters for the Democratic ticket. Vice President Kamala Harris has backed key health priorities for Black women.
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Polls are showing renewed support from Black women voters for the Democratic ticket. Vice President Kamala Harris has backed key health priorities for Black women.
More pregnant women are being diagnosed with dangerously high blood pressure, which risks the life of the parent and child. Montana is one of the states improving screening and treatment as health facilities work to match care with best practices.
Amari Marsh, now 23, was a student at South Carolina State University when she lost her pregnancy in 2023. She was charged with murder and faced at least 20 years in prison. A grand jury cleared her in August. Now she鈥檚 sharing her story.
Federal law requires states to provide pregnancy-related Medicaid coverage through 60 days after delivery. Arkansas has not expanded what鈥檚 called postpartum Medicaid coverage, an option that gives poor women uninterrupted health insurance for a year after they give birth.
UC-San Francisco is pausing its long-running master鈥檚 program in nurse-midwifery and plans to shift to a lengthier, costlier doctoral program. Midwives criticized the move and questioned the university鈥檚 motivations at a time of serious shortages of maternal care workers.
Insurance coverage for abortion care in the U.S. is a hodgepodge. Patients often don鈥檛 know when or if a procedure or abortion pills are covered, and the proliferation of abortion bans has exacerbated the confusion.
吃瓜不打烊 and California Healthline staff took to the airwaves in the last couple of weeks to discuss maternal health care challenges in rural areas. Here鈥檚 a collection of their appearances.
Former President Donald Trump has distanced himself from a Heritage Foundation document that outlines positions on abortion and a range of other social issues. But Democrats view it as a window into the far right鈥檚 to-do list and a clear opening for political attack.
Rural communities are losing access to maternity care, raising the risk of pregnancy complications, especially for Black women, who face higher rates of maternal mortality. Now, a Georgia medical school is trying to help by training doulas, practitioners who offer patients extra support before, during, and after childbirth.
Until this spring, Michigan was the only state that had a broad criminal ban on surrogacy. Many families say that left them in limbo: forcing them to leave the state to have children, finding strangers on Facebook who would carry their child, or going through the legal hassle of having to adopt their biological children.
Fewer than half of rural U.S. hospitals offer labor and delivery services. In some areas, births have dropped by three-quarters since the baby boom鈥檚 peak.
The reproductive rights organization hopes to oust GOP incumbents from key California congressional seats by highlighting the possibility of a national abortion ban. A state Republican official calls it a swing and a miss, noting that, under Democrats, hospitals have closed maternity wards and filed for bankruptcy.
In this episode of 鈥淭he Indicator From Planet Money,鈥 吃瓜不打烊鈥 chief Washington correspondent, Julie Rovner, reports on how the medical labor force is changing post-Roe v. Wade and why graduating medical students, from OB-GYNs to pediatricians, are avoiding training in states with abortion bans.
Idaho鈥檚 law criminalizing abortion drove a high-profile exodus of OB-GYNs from the state more than a year ago. Now, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court rolled back abortion protections enshrined by Roe v. Wade, patients in rural Idaho are forced to leave their community for gynecological care.
Torn between a base that wants more restrictions on reproductive health care and a moderate majority that does not, it seems many Republicans would rather take an off-ramp than a victory lap when it comes to abortion. But they can鈥檛 escape talking about it.
A recent study found that the rate of women 18 to 30 getting tubal ligations doubled in the 16 months following the Dobbs decision. The number of young men getting vasectomies also shot up, but men still get sterilized much less often than women.
A Florida law was enacted this spring making the Sunshine State the first in the nation to let cesarean sections be performed in settings other than hospitals 鈥 leading to warnings about increased risks for pregnant women and their babies.
While Republican candidates in many states downplay their opposition to abortion, the most vehement wing of the movement, which helped overturn Roe v. Wade 鈥 those who advocate prosecuting patients, outlawing contraception, and banning IVF 鈥 are increasingly outspoken. Meanwhile, some state legislatures continue to advance new restrictions, like a proposal moving in Louisiana to include abortion medications mifepristone and misoprostol on the list of the most dangerous drugs. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Rachel Roubein of The Washington Post, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins schools of public health and nursing and Politico Magazine join 吃瓜不打烊鈥 Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Shefali Luthra of The 19th about her new book on abortion in post-Roe America, 鈥淯ndue Burden.鈥
The leading causes of pregnancy-related deaths in the United States 鈥 including suicides and fatalities linked to substance use disorders 鈥 stem from mental health conditions. Now a federal task force has recommended strategies to help women who are at risk during or after pregnancy.
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