Tonight: a Supreme Court ruling on telemedicine abortion access is (once again) days away, a Mother’s Day website that’s actually a government data pipeline, and more.
— Meghan McCarthy
THE MIFEPRISTONE RULING IS DAYS AWAY
Justice Alito on Monday extended his stay to continue telemedicine access to mifepristone, pushing the deadline three more days while the full court deliberates. Around one in four US abortions now happen via telemedicine. The Trump administration’s FDA declined the court’s request for a brief; former FDA leaders filed one anyway, arguing the appeals court decision “would upend FDA’s gold-standard, science-based drug approval system.”
GOVERNORS CROSS AISLE ON MATERNAL MORTALITY
Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) launched “Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies America”, an effort founded by Olivia Walton that has a five-year goal of cutting U.S. maternal mortality in half. They say they are targeting state-led policy reform by gathering employers, health systems, and policymakers around a single measurable target. Maternal deaths cost the U.S. economy an estimated $165 billion a year; more than 80% are preventable.
MOMS.GOV IS A DATA PIPELINE
The Trump administration launched moms.gov on Mother’s Day, along with a goal of eventually letting employers offer stand-alone IVF and fertility insurance plans. But the government site funnels users to an antiabortion organization’s “Option Line”, a data-collection tool that has gathered names, addresses, marital status, and menstruation dates from millions of women under terms allowing the data to be used “for any and all purposes.” Republican Sen. Katie Britt, who twice introduced bills to build a federal “crisis” pregnancy center site under different names, stood behind Trump at the launch.
OSTEOPENIA IS HAVING A MOMENT
Vogue reports that bone-density loss is sliding from AARP territory to wellness-influencer world, partly driven by GLP-1s (rapid weight loss can accelerate bone loss). Reporter Alice Gregory became osteopenic at age 37 and learned that a USPSTF still doesn’t recommend a baseline DEXA scan until 65—a cutoff her endocrinologist calls “terrible.” Twenty-one percent of older women who fracture a hip die within a year.
POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION PEAKS BEFORE WE SCREEN FOR IT
A Lancet Psychiatry meta-analysis of 780 studies covering around 2 million women across 90 countries found the most women (around 8%) with major depressive disorder peaks around two weeks after childbirth. They also noted that standard symptom scales overestimate prevalence by up to 122% versus diagnostic interview, but the timing finding still holds. Prevalence stays elevated through the rest of the first postpartum year.