Tonight: Gloria Steinem's origin story, Texas delays its maternal death count, and more.
— Meghan McCarthy
TEXAS WILL TELL YOU HOW MANY MOTHERS DIED. IN DECEMBER.
Texas’s report on maternal mortality in the state was due September 1, but state officials moved it to December 1, after the midterm elections. Why? The official line is that the committee was asked “to strengthen the report by further describing its work around preventability, better defining the sources of its recommendations, and making clearer connections between the underlying data, findings, and recommendations.” The Texas House Women's Health Caucus says they want the recommendations by October 1 so they can prepare before the state’s legislative session. Texas has had several women die due to lack of care while miscarrying under the state’s all-out abortion ban.
GESTATIONAL DIABETES MOVES THE CLOCK UP THIRTEEN YEARS
Women who had gestational diabetes were more likely to develop type 2 diabetes at a younger age, around 43 years old, than women who did not, who were around 56 years old. Among women who had gestational diabetes, 40% developed type 2 diabetes before age 40, compared with only 6% of women who had not had gestational diabetes. Researchers also noted that women with gestational diabetes “more frequently require insulin therapy at the time of diabetes diagnosis. This pattern suggests a more severe form of type 2 diabetes and an elevated risk of subsequent complications.”
YOUR CHART DOESN'T KNOW YOU'RE IN MENOPAUSE
An analysis found that menopause status is rarely captured as structured data in electronic health records and is instead inferred from things like age or a billing code. Researchers say that makes it harder to track symptoms over time, which in turn makes clinical decisions more difficult. They call for a standardized way to track menopause and its symptoms to make scalable menopause research possible.
A 1930s MAP IS STILL DECIDING WHO GETS A MAMMOGRAM
Breast cancer screening rates were more than four percentage points lower in neighborhoods that received the government’s worst redlining grade in the 1930s than in those rated the best. Researchers examined 1,152 census tracts in Kansas and Missouri and found that poverty explained nearly half of the association, while lower educational attainment explained another quarter. Overall, 84% of the areas studied fell short of the federal screening target of just over 80%.
GLORIA STEINEM TURNED A SECRET ABORTION INTO A LIFETIME OF ACTIVISM
Gloria Steinem died Wednesday at age 92. At 22, years before Roe, she traveled to London for an illegal abortion and promised the doctor who helped her that she would never reveal his name. Twelve years later, hearing women publicly share their abortion stories launched her historic path into activism for women’s rights. She went on to make reproductive freedom central to the modern women’s movement—and dedicated a memoir to the unnamed doctor who made her life as she knew it possible.