Tonight: more death-penalty bills, a postpartum breakthrough, and an AI that sees what we can’t.
Plus infections, preterm risk, and why “access” still isn’t access.
DEATH PENALTY FOR ABORTIONS (AGAIN) // Two Tennessee Republican legislators are pushing a bill to label abortion “homicide of an unborn child,” which would open the door to the death penalty for people who get abortions—and anyone who helps them. We’ve seen this in other states and it’s failed each time. Attention helps.
WISCONSIN POSTPARTUM, FINALLY // ProPublica reports that the Wisconsin Assembly voted 95–1 to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to a full year. This happened after Speaker Robin Vos finally let the bipartisan bill move forward; and Gov. Tony Evers is expected to sign. Wisconsin will be one of the last states to extend this care, which gives low-income moms coverage during the stretch when serious postpartum complications often surface.
BLACK BOX BREASTS // The Boston Globe reports that Boston startup Clairity built an AI tool that flags high breast-cancer risk from a standard mammogram, and it is outperforming family-history questionnaires to identify women at high risk. That could help target prevention meds and earlier screening. But exactly how it identifies risk is still unknown (i.e. what patterns is it seeing that the human eye can’t?), which can make clinicians wary.
UTIs → PRETERM? // A large study over nearly 700,000 pregnant women found UTIs during pregnancy were linked to a significantly higher risk of preterm birth. The risk was highest in the first six days after diagnosis and when the infection occurred before 28 weeks. It’s a signal to take pregnancy UTIs seriously, even though observational data can’t prove causation.
ACCESS ≠ AVAILABLE // KFF has all the details on IUDs in the US, and they explain how access depends on cost, insurance fine print, and whether a clinic offers same-day insertion (and real pain control). They also note that a new copper IUD, Miudella, is approved and expected in 2026…but uninsured patients are far more likely to stop (or never start) long-acting birth control because of cost.