As a labor and delivery nurse, I see patients at their most vulnerable and am there for them during an incredibly intimate time. After thirteen years, I am still awed and amazed at each birth I am lucky enough to be present for.
But in March of 2020, everything I knew as a nurse changed when COVID-19 reached my small community hospital.
Our struggles were two-fold — making our patients feel safe and making our staff feel safe.
By Eloho E. Akpovi
“They told me my baby was going to die.” Those words have sat with me since my acting internship in OB/GYN last summer. They were spoken by a young, Black, pregnant patient presenting to the emergency room to rule out preeclampsia.
As a Black woman and a medical student, those words were chilling. They reflect a health care system that is not built to provide the best care for Black patients and trains health care professionals in a way that is tone-deaf to racism and its manifestations in patient care.
By Elyssa Spitzer
Pregnant and postpartum people in the custody of the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and U.S. Marshals Service receive care directed by policies that fail to meet national standards, according to a report recently issued by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
This, despite the fact that, incarcerated women are among the most vulnerable people, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. In the GAO report’s terms, incarcerated women: “often have medical and mental health conditions that make their pregnancies a high risk for adverse outcomes, which is compounded by inconsistent access to adequate, quality pregnancy care and nutrition while in custody.”
Notably, the report found that the BOP and U.S. Marshals’ policies failed to satisfy the national standards — to say nothing of the gaps that may exist between written policy and the care that is, in fact, provided. Read More
By Laura Dean, Valerie Dobiesz, and Peter Chai
During the COVID-19 pandemic, women health care providers have not only put their health at risk, but also suffered disproportionate professional consequences.
Women comprise 70% of the global and 76% of the US health care workforce, and data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) suggest that nearly three-quarters of the COVID-19 cases among health care workers are women. Additionally, pregnant health care workers suffer greater morbidity and mortality from COVID-19, face uncertain risk from medications and vaccines due to exclusion from clinical trials, and experience significant psychological and medical risk managing pregnancy amidst an uncertain pandemic. Returning to work in an era where limited and ill-fitting personal protective equipment (PPE) is available and risk of infection is uncertain is especially challenging to new and lactating mothers seeking to advance their careers in academic medicine.
By Katherine Drabiak
Recently, media reported that Zheng Shuang, a popular Chinese actress, commissioned two surrogates with boyfriend Zhang Hang, and then allegedly decided, seven months into the pregnancies, that she did not want to become a parent and questioned the possibility of abortion or adoption.
Zhang asserts that he has been caring for the infants in the U.S. for more than a year after Zheng abandoned the infants. Zheng has not addressed the allegations directly, and multiple facts remain unclear.
This case, and other rare similar cases, raise the question: If intended parents initiate an agreement with a gestational surrogate to create a child, can they also terminate the agreement – and pregnancy – if they no longer want the resulting child?
By John Tingle
As the year 2020 closes and another year starts, it is important to reflect on significant patient safety events and trends in the National Health Service (NHS) in England.
To anticipate what might happen in 2021, we need to recognize what may be continuing patient safety issues.
By Mary Ziegler
Once again, we’re talking about whether abortion counts as health care. The COVID-19 pandemic has sparked new efforts to limit access, from the government’s unwillingness to lift in-person requirements for medication abortion to the introduction of stay-at-home orders blocking access altogether. The campaign to frame abortion as a moral, not medical, issue began decades ago. The pandemic has revealed the broader stakes of this campaign — and what it might mean for access to care well after the worst of the pandemic is behind us.
For antiabortion leaders, there are obvious strategic reasons to insist that abortion is not health care. The stigma surrounding abortion is real and durable. Notwithstanding recent increases, many obstetric programs do not provide comprehensive abortion training (if they provide any training at all). A 2020 study in Plos One found that a majority of patients believed that they would be looked down upon “at least a little” for having had an abortion. This perceived stigma affects those refused abortions — and causes longer-term adverse mental health outcomes. Stigma has long been an effective tool for the antiabortion movement. The pandemic has done nothing to change that.
But, put in historical context, today’s effort to treat reproductive services as unessential means much more. That campaign is part of a broader agenda to undermine the idea of an autonomy-rooted abortion rights — and lay the groundwork for overturning Roe v. Wade.
The Health Law Policy, Bioethics, and Biotechnology Workshop provides a forum for discussion of new scholarship in these fields from the world’s leading experts.
The workshop is led by Professor I. Glenn Cohen, and presenters come from a wide range of disciplines and departments.
In this video, Mary Ziegler gives a preview of her book, “Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v. Wade to the Present,” which she will present at the Health Law Policy workshop on October 19, 2020. Watch the full video below:
By Jasmine E. Harris
In 1927, Buck v. Bell upheld Virginia’s Eugenical Sterilization Act, authorizing the state of Virginia to forcibly sterilize Carrie Buck, a young, poor white woman the state determined to be unfit to procreate.
In less than 1,000 words, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing for all but one of the Justices of the Court, breathed new life into an otherwise fading public eugenics movement.
More than 70,000 people (predominantly women of color) were forcibly sterilized in the twentieth century.
Buck is most often cited for its shock value and repeatedly, for what is, perhaps, its most famous six words: “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” While this may be the most provocative language in the opinion, it is not the most noteworthy.
By Cydney Murray
The ongoing, worsening environmental crisis is exacerbating negative pregnancy outcomes associated with climate change.
Exposure to air pollutants, such as smog (ozone) and PM2.5 (another type of air pollution), is linked to impaired fetal growth, increased likelihood of cancer, autism spectrum disorder, stillbirth, and low birth weight. These health consequences have the potential to impact children’s overall quality of life by affecting their brain development, and their susceptibility to disease.
Climate change is worsening this established association, particularly for those living in urban environments with high air pollutant exposure. This disproportionately affects women of color, since they are more likely to live in more highly polluted areas, and already suffer a higher risk of negative pregnancy outcomes.