Ultimately, Hamad believes the attacks on Prams will lead to higher maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. “We don’t have ways to track the risk factors and we can’t study the policies to fix the problems,” she said. “It’s really gonna be a catastrophe moving forward.” Read more at The Guardian
The report also reups Kennedy’s battle against fluoride, which he believes shouldn’t be added to drinking water, by directing the CDC to update its recommendations and appears to nod at a years-long campaign by abortion opponents to cut off access to pills used in pregnancy terminations because of their alleged impact on water pollution. Read … Read more
Already, the Trump administration has moved to eliminate research on abortion. In January, Trump issued an executive order blocking data collection measuring the effect of access to reproductive care, including abortion care. The administration scrubbed several references to abortion on the Department of Health and Human Services’ website. and “There’s a proven connection between slashed … Read more
“We cannot understand factors associated with poor pregnancy outcomes without surveillance like PRAMs,” Taylor says. The U.S. has the highest maternal mortality rate of all high-income countries, and experts fear that reducing research on prevention will make things even worse. “If we don’t understand those factors, U.S. maternal morbidity and mortality will continue to worsen. … Read more
Based on my sources, I can now report that the issue does not appear to be the various ways that comprehensive research on pregnancy might be perceived as bumping up against controversies over abortion and other politicized issues of reproductive health care. The issue is what the administration calls “DEI.” The questionnaires include questions about … Read more
The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) is a federal data collection system, run out of CDC, “designed to identify groups of women and infants at high risk for health problems, to monitor changes in health status, and to measure progress towards goals in improving the health of mothers and infants,” in the words of … Read more
Between Friday and Tuesday, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) resources for tracking, preventing and treating HIV; handling sexually transmitted infections (STIs); and prescribing contraception have flickered in and out of existence. A guide to gender-affirming care and young people, once hosted on the website for the office of the assistant secretary for health, … Read more
Among the CDC pages missing on Friday was one with information on contraception and emergency contraception. Information on contraception and the abortion pill, or mifepristone tablets, can still be found on CDC webpages through more detailed searches, but those main landing pages have been made to appear blank and might halt users seeking more background … Read more
Many providers who were interviewed also expressed concern that abortion restrictions will soon expand to contraception care. In Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion on the Dobbs decision, he opined that the Supreme Court should revisit precedents that codified same-sex marriage, same-sex relationships, and the right to contraception. Earlier this year, U.S. lawmakers had a chance … Read more
“It really speaks to a bifurcation of access,” said Isaac Maddow-Zimet, a Guttmacher Institute data scientist. “On one hand, you have many states where abortion has gotten incredibly difficult to access – states with total bans, states with six-week bans. Access has gotten much more difficult for people living in those states. And then, on … Read more
