Tonight: three doctors whose patients died under Texas's abortion ban are facing (minimal) consequences, proof that women who use Ozempic get judged more harshly, and some good news for ovarian cancer.
— Meghan McCarthy
TEXAS DOCTORS GOT 8 HOURS OF CONTINUING ED. TWO WOMEN DIED. // The Texas Medical Board has disciplined three doctors after ProPublica's reporting found unnecessary pregnancy deaths under the state's abortion ban. One doctor sent an 18-year-old home twice while she was actively infected and septic, then required two ultrasounds confirming fetal demise before moving her to the ICU. She died with the fetus still in her womb. Another withheld a D&C from a woman hemorrhaging during a miscarriage; she bled to death. The board's penalty for each: 8 hours of continuing education. As one of the spouses said: "What kind of justice is this for Porsha?"
MIFEPRISTONE FOUND ITS WAY TO (NON-ABORTION BAN STATE) PHARMACIES. // After FDA removed the requirement that mifepristone be dispensed in person at a clinic, pharmacy fills spiked from roughly 18 users a month to more than 2,700, driven almost entirely by mail order. But 99% of those fills came from states where abortion and telehealth are both legal. In states with restrictions, the policy change barely moved the needle. Researchers say the data shows exactly what would be lost if courts or FDA reimpose the in-person rule.
THE GLP-1 JUDGMENT IS REAL FOR WOMEN // Women who lose weight using GLP-1 medications like Ozempic or Wegovy are judged more harshly than those who lose weight through diet and exercise, according to a study of 402 women. "Shortcut" beliefs drove higher fat phobia, more blame, and greater desire for social distance from the GLP-1 user. The researchers also found that white women using GLP-1s faced more stigma than Black women in the same scenario, an unexpected finding the authors say warrants further study.
WHAT DOULAS ACTUALLY HELP WITH (AND WHAT'S STILL UNCLEAR) // A systematic review of 21 clinical trials in JAMA Network Open found the strongest evidence for doula care improving maternal anxiety and breastfeeding initiation, with emerging data on better postpartum follow-up. Evidence for C-section reduction and pain management was more mixed. The review also flagged that most studies underrepresented Black and Indigenous patients, who are among those facing the worst maternal outcomes, and that few examined doula care beyond birth.
OVARIAN CANCER JUST GOT SOME BETTER NUMBERS // At the Society of Gynecologic Oncology annual meeting, two experimental drugs helped shrink tumors in 62–67% women with ovarian cancer that had already stopped responding to standard chemotherapy — a notoriously hard stage to treat. A third drug, designed to restart a cancer-suppressing protein that mutates in some tumors, shrank tumors in 44% of patients who'd already been through multiple rounds of treatment. All three are moving into larger trials.