elections have what?

November 5, 2026

Tonight: what the midterms mean for women’s health, what your hormone history may say about your brain at 70, and more.

— Meghan McCarthy

The midterm elections delivered a generational rebuke to Republicans and the Trump administration, and with it came several successful efforts to maintain abortion access on the state level. In Missouri, voters rejected an amendment that would have revived the abortion ban they already overturned in 2024 and added a constitutional ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Nevada and Virginia voters added abortion rights to their state constitutions, with about 63% and 62% support. Idaho was the exception: voters rejected a measure to restore abortion access, 56% to 44%. Organizers blamed a disinformation campaign fueled by more than $1.3 million from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Catholic Diocese of Boise. In Texas, where Democrats swept statewide offices, Attorney General-elect Nathan Johnson told The Texas Tribune he won’t sue out-of-state doctors who mail abortion pills to Texans. The state’s ban remains.

Democrats won both chambers of Congress on Tuesday. A working group under Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the likely next speaker, proposed repealing the Medicaid coverage and funding cuts in 2025’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act among its “First 100 Hours” goals, Fierce Healthcare reports. The September agenda also calls for restoring withheld NIH funding and protecting no-cost vaccine coverage despite changes in federal recommendations. One TD Cowen analyst warned that even “medium-sized policies,” like rolling back some Medicaid cuts or restoring ACA subsidies, “are an uphill battle.” But with large majorities, more is possible despite Trump’s veto pen.

Women with more years between their first period and menopause showed less damage to the brain’s tiny blood vessels at 70, according to a study of 352 cognitively healthy Swedish women in Neurology, The Washington Post reports. That damage is associated with stroke, cognitive impairment, and dementia. Women who had used menopausal hormone therapy also showed less damage. Those who had used both the pill and hormone therapy showed the most favorable signs of vascular brain health. The study shows associations, not cause and effect. Neither ACOG nor the American College of Physicians recommends hormone therapy to protect the brain.

Severe childbirth complications rose about 40% between 2015 and 2022, from 175 to 246 per 10,000 deliveries, according to a JAMA Network Open study representing about 27.3 million U.S. delivery hospitalizations. Sixteen of the 21 complications researchers tracked increased significantly. Within every racial and ethnic group, patients with Medicaid had higher odds of complications than those with private insurance. Among Native American patients, the gap reached 44%. The study can’t show that insurance caused those differences. The authors point to structural inequities and call for policy reform.

New obstetric billing codes taking effect January 1 will split clinicians’ maternity care into prenatal, labor, delivery, and postpartum services. CMS included the American Medical Association’s codes in its final 2027 Medicare fee schedule, ACOG said Thursday. The agency dropped alternative codes it proposed over the summer after pushback from ob-gyns. ACOG says the change will give patients “a clear view of which prenatal and postpartum visits are exempt from copays” and give researchers better data on care quality. The transition also affects pregnancies that began in 2026, with rules varying by insurer.