Health

(NEW YORK) — A proposed amendment in Florida that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution is currently at the center of a battle that could be taken up by the state’s Supreme Court.

State Attorney General Ashley Moody and other groups have asked Florida’s highest court to prevent the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion from being put on the ballot for a vote in the 2024 election.

The proposed amendment reads, in part, “No law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.”

Floridians Protecting Freedom, the initiative’s main sponsor, and the ACLU of Florida filed response briefs to the attorney general’s challenge, arguing that the ballot initiative’s language is clear and does not mislead voters, as opponents have claimed.

The effort to include the initiative on the Florida ballot comes on the heels of Ohio voters approving a constitutional amendment during last week’s election that guarantees access to abortion and other aspects of reproductive health care.

Currently, abortion is banned at 15 weeks or later in Florida, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that studies sexual and reproductive rights.

Patients seeking abortion are required to make two trips: the first for an in-person appointment, and the second 24 hours later for the abortion itself.

Additionally, only physicians are allowed to perform abortions and not other qualified health care professionals, the Guttmacher Institute says.

As of Monday, Floridians Protecting Freedom has collected more than 491,000 signatures of the 891,523 required to place the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion on the ballot. However, the number of signatures collected is already enough to qualify it for ballot summary review by the Florida Supreme Court.

If the amendment makes it onto the ballot and is subsequently passed by a majority of voters, it would protect abortion up until the fetus can survive outside the womb, which is generally considered to be between 24 and 26 weeks’ gestation. It would also make Florida the eighth state to protect abortion rights or prevent further restricting those rights, via a ballot imitative, since the Supreme Court voted to overturn Roe v. Wade in June 2022

There is no language in the proposed Florida amendment addressing what type of health care professional is or is not allowed to perform an abortion, or whether there is a mandatory 24-hour wait period between requesting an abortion and receiving one, as the law currently requires.

If the amendment doesn’t make it on the ballot, or if it does but isn’t passed by a majority of voters, that failure could help clear the way for a six-week abortion ban to be enacted.

In April 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban into law, replacing the previous 15-week ban. The legislation makes exceptions for when a woman’s life or health is at risk and for cases of rape or incest, under certain conditions.

Two physicians currently must certify in writing that an abortion is necessary to save the woman’s life or to avert a serious risk of substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman. If two physicians are not available, one physician must certify in writing the above, as well as that a second physician is not available to consult.

For abortions in the case of rape or incest, the exceptions allow the procedure to be performed up to 15 weeks into the pregnancy, and if the woman provides a copy of a restraining order, police report, medical record or other court order or documentation proving that she’s a victim of rape or incest.

Currently, the 15-week ban is on hold while the Florida Supreme Court decides whether it’s constitutional, following challenges by the Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups. If the 15-week ban is upheld, then the six week-ban will be allowed to go into effect.

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(NEW YORK) — Annual heat-related deaths worldwide for people over 65 are projected to increase by 370% through the middle of the century if global temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius, a new report says.

The projection comes as heat-related deaths of adults over 65 have increased by 85% since the 1990s, according to the annual Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change report.

The hottest global temperatures in over 100,000 years were recorded in 2023 with the planet currently at 1.14°C of global heating, the report says.

Increasing global temperatures are linked to environmental changes like melting Arctic ice caps, drought and heat waves, and more intense hurricanes and wildfires. These stark changes are more than just ecological concerns; they also significantly impact human health, the report stressed.

This new Lancet report comes the same day as the new White House climate report, which flagged that climate-related hazards such as extreme heat, drought and wildfires will continue to grow and directly impact human health.

There were on average 86 days of health-threatening high temperatures in 2018-2022, according to the Lancet report. Human-caused climate change made more than 60% of those days more likely to have happened, the analysis showed.

“We’re already seeing climate change claiming lives or livelihoods in every part of the world. The impacts are happening here and now,” said Marina Romanello, the executive director of the Lancet Countdown and a climate change and health researcher at University College London, during a press briefing.

Droughts and heatwaves are increasing globally, leading to food insecurity and water scarcity, according to the researchers. There has been a 29% increase in areas of extreme drought since the 1950s. Around 127 million more people said that they experienced significant food insecurity in 2021 than annually between 1981 and 2010.

The report also warned that warming ocean temperatures are enabling the spread of the Vibrio bacteria, which can cause serious illness and death if people swim in water with open wounds or eat raw or contaminated seafood.

The coastline area suitable for Vibrio bacteria around the world has increased every year by 329 square kilometers since 1982, putting around 1.4 billion more people at risk of diarrheal disease, severe wound infections and sepsis by 2022.

“Climate breakdown has begun, and humanity is staring down the barrel of an intolerable future. We are already seeing a human catastrophe unfolding with the health and livelihoods of billions across the world endangered by record-breaking heat, crop-failing droughts, rising levels of hunger, growing infectious disease outbreaks, and deadly storms and floods,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in response to the Lancet report.

The Paris Agreement, the international treaty on climate change, calls for the world to keep global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, with the aim of limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The new report found that under the 2-degree warming scenario, there would be 525 million additional people experiencing significant food insecurity by 2031-2060. There would be 23–39% more cases of infection with Vibrio bacteria under the 2-degree warming scenario. There would also be a 37% increase in the spread of dengue, a mosquito-borne illness that can be life threatening, the report says.

“Continued warming could lead to those patterns spiraling out of control,” Romanello said to the projections outlined in the report.

The researchers behind the report say that there needs to be urgent action on climate change to mitigate the health impacts.

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(NEW YORK) — An estimated 36 million adults in the United States have received the updated COVID-19 vaccine as of Monday, according to new data from the federal government.

Additionally, about 3.5 million children have also gotten the updated shot, according to the survey, which is a sample size of the U.S. population, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This is roughly equal to the number of Americans who had received the bivalent booster — which was targeted against different COVID variants — by this time last year.

While this means that uptake has not lagged compared to previous seasons, it also means just 13.9% of the adult population has gotten vaccinated.

This is lower than the nearly half of adults who said they planned to get the vaccine in a poll conducted by the KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor in September.

Poll results showed that 23% of U.S. adults said they would “definitely” get the updated booster and 23% said they will “probably” get it.

The updated vaccine is targeted against variants that are currently circulating, which are related to XBB, an offshoot of the omicron variant.

There are formulations made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for those aged 6 months and older, and a formulation made by Novavax for those aged 12 and older.

The same CDC survey showed that 91 million U.S. adults, or 34.8% of the adult population, have received the flu vaccine and nearly 11 million over the age of 60, 13.5% of this age group, have received the RSV vaccine.

Meanwhile, 23 million children, or 4.9% of the pediatric population, have received the flu shot, data survey showed.

Public health experts usually advise that people receive respiratory virus vaccines by the end of October, but stress that it’s never too late to receive shots from pharmacies or doctors’ offices.

It comes as respiratory illness activity causing people to seek care remains low in most areas of the U.S., according to data updated this week by the CDC.

For the week ending Nov. 4, 2.9% of outpatient visits have been for respiratory illnesses. This is about half of where it was at the same time last year, but higher than the four preceding seasons, CDC data shows.

Last year’s respiratory virus season was unusually early, and activity increased sharply. Experts have said it’s possible that this year’s trending activity is a sign that we are getting back to the usual timing of ‘cold and flu’ season following disruptions after the emergence of COVID.

“Last year’s early spike was an anomaly, likely influenced by the pandemic’s impact on social behaviors and immunity,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.

“This year’s numbers, aligning more closely with pre-COVID patterns, indicate a reestablishment of typical ‘cold and flu’ season dynamics,” he continued. “However, we still have to see how the rest of the respiratory virus season plays out to know for sure.”

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(NEW YORK) — Taking semaglutide, the active ingredient in drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic used for weight loss, can help boost heart health in people without diabetes, according to new research.

In a study of over 17,000 people, semaglutide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist medication, was found to lower the risk of cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes by 20% in people who have pre-existing cardiovascular disease and who are overweight, but do not have Type 2 diabetes.

The research, published Saturday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is significant because semaglutide was initially prescribed for adults with Type 2 diabetes, a condition in which cells don’t respond normally to insulin, the hormone made by the pancreas. It is a condition that affects tens of millions of people in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Interest in semaglutide has surged over the past year for its role in helping people lose weight.

Novo Nordisk, the company that funded the most recent study, makes both Wegovy and Ozempic, the two most popular drugs that have semaglutide as the active ingredient.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved Ozempic as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes alongside diet and exercise if other medications cannot control blood sugar levels well enough.

Although Ozempic is not explicitly approved for chronic weight management, it can be prescribed off-label and used safely for people who are obese.

Wegovy is essentially the same injectable drug as Ozempic prescribed at a higher dosage. The FDA has specifically approved Wegovy for patients with severe obesity, or who are overweight and have one or more weight-associated conditions like high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

Both drugs work by slowing down movement of food through the stomach and curbing appetite, thereby causing weight loss.

ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, a board-certified OB-GYN, who was not involved in the study, said there are different theories on why semaglutide can help lower the risk of cardiovascular events.

“What’s really interesting about this drug is the more it’s studied, the more we’re finding possible other theories,” Ashton said Monday on “Good Morning America.” “Data has shown in lab animals that semaglutide can reduce inflammation, so … it can promote what’s called plaque stability in those arteries, making the plaque less likely to break off and close off that artery, and then it almost works like a blood thinner in lab animals in terms of reducing platelet clumping.”

She added, “When you combine that with weight loss, [there are] significant cardio protective effects.”

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(NEW YORK) — Kelsey Hatcher, a 32-year-old mom of three, and her husband Caleb said they were very surprised to learn earlier this year that Kelsey was pregnant.

The couple was even more surprised to learn at Kelsey Hatcher’s eight-week ultrasound appointment that she was expecting two babies.

Hatcher and her husband described themselves as completely shocked to learn that the babies are each in their own uterus, a result of Hatcher being born with a rare condition known as uterine didelphys, or double uterus, meaning she was born with two uteruses and two cervixes.

While uterine didelphys is rare on its own, the odds of being pregnant at the same time in each uterus are about “1 in a million,” according to Dr. Richard Davis, a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Women & Infants Center, where Hatcher is being treated.

“When I first found out, I was like, ‘I wonder if there’s anybody I can reach out to just to, you know, see what their experiences were,'” Hatcher told “Good Morning America.” “But I think I’ve only read of two other cases [in which] they’ve had [pregnancies] in completely separate uteruses, and no one that I’ve been able to reach out to.”

Hatcher said she learned she had a double uterus at age 17, but with each of her three previous pregnancies, she had a single baby carried in one uterus. She said each of her pregnancies with her kids — now ages 7, 4, and 23 months — also went full-term, with no complications.

Knowing there was still a chance she could be carrying twins with this fourth pregnancy, Hatcher said that was one of the first questions she asked at her eight-week ultrasound appointment.

“I said, ‘There’s only one right?,’ and the [nurse] said, ‘Yeah, there’s only one,'” she recalled. “So, I just kind of laid back and was relaxing. Everything looked good. There was only one.”

Hatcher said that as she was telling the nurse to not be alarmed if she saw a second uterus on the ultrasound, both she and the nurse saw a second baby on the scan.

“Before she could say anything, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there’s another one,'” Hatcher said, adding of her reaction, “Probably all I did was laugh for 30 minutes or so because it was just like, this is not happening.”

Caleb, Hatcher’s husband, said when his wife called to tell him they were expecting two more babies, his reaction was, “I don’t know what happened differently this time, but it’s wild.”

According to both Davis and Dr. Shweta Petal, the OB-GYN caring for Hatcher, the two babies are considered fraternal twins.

“There are lots of different types of twin pregnancies out there,” Petal told “GMA,” adding of Hatcher’s specific case, “Most likely what happened is that she ovulated separately and had one egg come down each fallopian tube, meaning coming down on each side of the uterus, and then sperm traveled up on each separate uterus and fertilization occurred separately.”

Petal and Davis are both part of a team at UAB that has spent the last several months planning for Hatcher’s delivery. Neither of the doctors, nor anyone else at the university’s medical center, has ever cared for a patient carrying two pregnancies in two uteruses.

“There’s no true expert out there who knows how to manage a patient with two uteruses and two babies, with one in each uterus,” Petal said. “So we really are relying on our baseline teaching and our baseline knowledge and the normal physiology of pregnancy that we understand, and applying it in her scenario.”

Hatcher is currently around 34 weeks pregnant and her due date is Dec. 25 — Christmas Day.

Davis said the plan is to allow Hatcher to carry her pregnancy as long as both she and the babies are healthy.

She could deliver each baby individually in two vaginal births, which could happen over the span of a few minutes or a few days, or if there are complications, Davis said they could deliver the babies via cesarean section.

“Each uterus can contract on its own at different times,” Davis said. “It could be that one side contracts, and the other side is not doing anything.

Petal noted there are a “lot of different scenarios” for which the medical team is working with Hatcher to prepare ahead of her delivery.

“They could be born minutes apart, or they can be born days apart,” Petal said. “It’s so unpredictable, and that’s why we’ve had a lot of conversations with Kelsey kind of talking about the different scenarios that could happen, where she could have a vaginal delivery with both babies, she could have a vaginal delivery with one and a C-section with the other, or maybe end up having a C-section for both of them as well.”

Hatcher said that despite the rarity of her pregnancy, it has been a smooth one so far, with just more fatigue in the first trimester than she had experienced in her previous pregnancies.

“Past the first trimester, a lot of things have been very similar, other than just feeling the movement of two,” she said, adding that in the last two weeks she has been able to see the two pregnancies separate when she lays down. “There’s like a divet in between my stomach so that you can see that each uterus has one on each side. It is pretty wild.”

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(BOSTON) — A sickle cell disease center is leading the way in treatment with a new, innovative approach to caring for those with the illness.

Dr. Sharl Azar, Medical Director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Treatment Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), hired a medical exercise specialist to work with their patients on fitness programs that will help improve their lives.

“One of the parts of the lore of this disease has been patients living with sickle cell disease can’t exercise or they shouldn’t, because exercising can exacerbate symptoms of their disease,” Azar told ABC News. “It can put them into the painful crises that are the hallmark of the illness.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), sickle cell disease is a red blood cell disorder, in which the affected individual has abnormally shaped red blood cells (sickle cells) rather than round ones because of abnormal hemoglobin, a protein that carries oxygen. Sickle cells perish early resulting in a shortage of red blood cells. They also block blood flow when they get clogged in vessels. The constricted blood flow can cause a crisis of agonizing pain for the patient.

That painful crisis is all too familiar to Amy Diawara, 27, who has had sickle cell disease her entire life. She said that a crisis feels like excruciating throbbing pains embedded deeply in the muscles of her body.

Diawara is a patient at MGH and worked with its medical exercise specialist Jen Miramontes on a personalized training program to run the Boston Athletic Association Half Marathon on Nov. 12.

“You need people that are going to want to ride with you to the finish line and I’m so grateful for Jen and Dr. Azar,” Diawara told ABC News. “They’ve encouraged me and this is how I’ve gotten to this point, and super excited to run the Boston half this Sunday.”

Miramontes, 59, isn’t only training Diawara, she agreed to run the race with her. She has competed in a total of 80 marathons throughout her life and created a training program specifically tailored to Diawara’s needs.

“We’re going to keep it at one mile, three times a week for the first two weeks,” Miramontes, who said she had to err on the side of caution when training Diawara, told ABC News. “Whereas, if I was training a person that did not have sickle cell disease, the process would have been probably two to three times faster to get to where we are [today].”

Other factors that Diawara had to be careful of were extreme heat and cold climates during her runs because dehydration and exceedingly cold temperatures could initiate a crisis, according to Miramontes. To avoid that, she instructed Diawara to run on treadmills during much of her training.

Miramontes was hired by the hospital through a grant, according to Azar. She was selected to offer medically approved fitness programs tailored to each patient she sees. Jen, who lives in California, flies to Massachusetts monthly to assess patients and create an exercise plan to meet each individual’s needs and goals. Afterward, she stays in constant communication and coaches the patients through virtual care, Azar said.

According to Azar, even though scientists have known about the genetic cause of sickle cell disease for over 100 years, population studies on the illness are far behind other chronic congenital diseases like cystic fibrosis or hemophilia. Azar says that is because sickle cell mostly affects people of color, resulting in the lack of adequate resources toward research for the illness.

According to the CDC, 100,000 people are living with sickle cell in the United States, but Azar says the data hasn’t been properly updated in decades. One out of every 365 African Americans are born with the disease and one in 13 African Americans are born with the trait inheriting a single copy of the sickle cell gene. If those numbers are expanded to today’s population of African Americans it should far exceed 100,000, according to Azar.

“It’s shameful to say that here we are in 2023, putting together the first program where we’re exploring the role of exercise in patients living with sickle cell disease.”

Most suffering from the disease have always been told not to overexert themselves with exercise because of a crisis risk, but Diawara and Miramontes are bucking the trend.

“I was shocked and just extremely disappointed to discover that there was very, very, very little research on exercise and sickle cell disease,” Miramontes said. “If you look up cancer, or MS [multiple sclerosis], or Parkinson’s and try to find research on how fitness can affect the disease, how it can impact positively the disease, you can find 1000s and 1000s of studies. I found two [for sickle cell]. And, so it’s certainly groundbreaking at a minimum.”

According to Azar, the Food and Drug Administration is set to make its first approval of a gene therapy product in December that will help to improve the lives of those with sickle cell disease. As for Diawara, she doesn’t think she’ll take the gene therapy treatment since she rarely has crises anymore. She’s more focused on her training and accomplishing her goal of running her first half marathon.

“I’m super excited because, again, this is something that I didn’t even think I could do,” Diawara said. “it’s always just been a dream. But now it’s like manifesting into an actual goal that’s about to be accomplished.”

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(NEW YORK) — In the more than two weeks since a mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine, occurred at a bowling alley and local bar and restaurant, questions have swirled about mental health care in the state.

The alleged gunman displayed glaring signals that his mental health was declining, which his family was aware of and had warned law enforcement about, according to documents obtained by ABC News.

It’s unknown why he was not taken into protective custody and then evaluated by a medical professional, but mental health experts and advocates told ABC News that, separately from the shooting, the state has been struggling to address the needs of residents for years.

Long waitlists for programs and a reduced workforce have led to a small-scale version of the larger mental health crisis sweeping across the United States.

Greg Marley, clinical director of suicide prevention at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Maine, has been working in mental health in the state since the 1980s and said there is currently a “perfect storm” of people needing help and not enough resources to address it.

“During the pandemic, people’s levels of anxiety, levels of depression, reliance on substances in an unhealthy way, rose sharply as did people’s sense of isolation,” he told ABC News. “At the same time, the pandemic did more than anything I’ve ever seen to break down the stigma about asking for help around mental health issues.”

He continued, “And so, as a result, there was a wave of people saying, ‘I need help.’ At the same time, we were seeing people getting burned out in mental health, clinical work or support work and so we had a reduction in our mental health workforce.”

Mental health care workers have left the state

Experts told ABC News there has been a lack of in-person services in the state because many health care professionals are leaving for a variety of reasons.

Stress and burnout from the COVID pandemic have caused health care workers to leave the field across the U.S., including Maine. Some people have reduced their hours or are now exclusively focusing on telehealth services, experts told ABC News.

“We’ve had an increase in people doing what’s called telehealth and telehealth is a wonderful way of accessing care, particularly if you’re in a remote area of the state, but working with someone on a screen doesn’t serve everybody,” Marley said.

In January 2023, Gov. Janet Mills proposed $94 million to support mental health and substance use disorder services, including funds to reimburse MaineCare, Maine’s version of Medicaid, according to local ABC News affiliate WMTW.

Additionally, in March 2023, Mills proposed an additional $19.7 million in state funding to address immediate needs in Maine’s behavioral health system.

Experts said these are great first steps, but more is needed to draw more workers into the state to meet the demand for services.

Jayne Van Bramer, president and CEO of Sweetser, a nonprofit community mental health provider statewide in Maine, said she would like to see more state and federal solutions to incentivize people to become behavioral health care workers in Maine.

“I think more student loan forgiveness, tuition assistance, paid internships, sign-on bonuses,” she told ABC News. “I think there’s a lot we could do to encourage folks and we are working collaboratively with the governor, the legislature in the state, but we really do need these things to happen.”

Malory Shaughnessy, executive director of the Alliance for Addiction and Mental Health Services, Maine — a statewide membership association for community behavioral health organizations — said she would like to see more resources invested in emergency responses, so that people who are having crises are met by a crisis worker, as well as the creation of more crisis receiving centers throughout the state such as the first one that opened in Portland.

“We should have crisis receiving centers everywhere, where somebody can just walk in and say, ‘I’m in the middle of this and I need some help,'” she told ABC News. “There should be one in every major community and a couple in every county that people could walk into and get the help for themselves and their child.”

“Maine has somewhere around 100 crisis response workers for the entire state, which just is not anywhere near meeting the needs,” Shaughnessy added.

Patients left on waitlists for months

Due to the reduction of the workforce, patients are often left on waitlists for months as they try to access mental health services.

Kennebec Behavioral Health told WMTW last month that it has 1,200 people on its waitlist, almost double compared to three years ago.

“By the time people call, by the time they pick the phone up and call, they already need service,” CEO Thomas McAdam said. “So, to be on the waitlist longer just makes things worse.”

Sweetser has a waitlist that it says it tries to manage aggressively via its coordination team but is still quite extensive.

“It is approximately 2,000 people [on the waitlist],” Van Bramer said. “We are one organization. You can be on a waitlist anywhere from a couple of months to up to a year. We do call you every month, check in, see if you still need services, see what we can do to help you, see if you’ve found services elsewhere. But it is difficult and it’s not acceptable.”

Van Bramer said these needs are only going to increase as people cope with the trauma experienced from the Lewiston shooting,

“I was at a program [recently], and I was hearing things like some of their clients, every time they hear a hunter’s rifle, they’re terrified,” she said. “So yeah, I think we are definitely seeing an increase in fear and anxiety, that the trauma from this event is reverberating through our community.”

Julie Redding, a licensed therapist and clinical director at the Community Caring Collaborative in Maine, said it is going to be hardest for people who were already dealing with trauma they experienced in the past.

“If we’re thinking about who might be at risk for having felt something like the mass shooting in Lewiston the hardest, one of the best predictors of who will struggle with that is actually people who have a past trauma experience,’ she told ABC News. “For people who have experienced any form of trauma in the past, but particularly if they have experienced traumas that include a violent nature…could disproportionately be more affected and have a recurrence of symptoms.”

Leaving people on a waitlist can sometimes result in people slipping through the cracks, experts said. The majority of people with mental illness may never become violent, but experts say, sometimes, help comes later than they would like it to.

“What we see far too often is an intersection of somebody who is in a mental health crisis and unable to get help, family is unable to get them help, and they can sometimes either do damage to themselves or others because of the lack of that support that they need in that moment,” Shaughnessy said.

“It appears that is a situation that happened in Lewiston, unfortunately, and we see it in small ways every day where somebody who is in a mental health crisis or a psychotic break or something and interacts with the police. Law enforcement shows up because they’re called, and, oftentimes, it’s not a good outcome,” she continued.

To try to address some of these needs, the city of Lewiston has approved funding for a long-term community center to provide resources for victims and Gov. Mills announced last month a new website dedicated to providing resources for Maine residents affected by the Lewiston shooting and to connect them with behavioral health support.

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(LANSING, Mich.) — Michigan lawmakers have passed a series of 9 bills repealing certain abortion restrictions, which are now headed to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s desk.

The package, called the Reproductive Health Act, aims to help increase access to abortion that may have remained unavailable or inaccessible in some parts of the state.

It comes a year after Michiganders voted overwhelmingly in favor of Proposal 3 (Prop 3), which enshrined abortion rights in the state’s constitution.

The new bills, which passed the state House last week and the state Senate Tuesday, repealed a law requiring the patient to receive information on abortion provided by the state, such as depiction of a fetus, and allowing residents to sue if their right to an abortion is infringed under Prop 3.

The legislation also requires private insurance companies to provide coverage for all pregnancy-related health care, including abortion, through an optional rider and removed some regulations for clinics that provide abortion that could cause them to close if they are not met.

However, due to pushback from some lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, two provisions of the RHA did not pass. The first was overturning the requirement that patients wait 24 hours between seeking an abortion and receiving the procedure and the second was removing a ban on Medicaid coverage for abortion care.

The ACLU of Michigan said in a press release that not eliminating these barriers would make it difficult for marginalized groups including Black and brown people, working class residents and rural residents to access abortion.

In a statement to WPBN-TV, Whitmer praised the passage of the RHA as progress and in line with what residents voted for last November.

“Michiganders spoke loud and clear in the last election when they voted overwhelmingly to protect the constitutional freedom for people to make their own decisions about their bodies,” Whitmer said in a statement. “For years, Michigan has had politically motivated and medically unnecessary restrictions on abortion on the books.”

“These laws criminalized doctors for providing medical care, jacked up out of pocket health care costs, and imposed needless regulations on health centers. This legislation makes important steps toward expanding access and protecting our personal freedoms. We will continue to take action to ensure that Michiganders can access the reproductive health care they deserve,” the statement continued.

Last year, Michigan voters said yes to an amendment, Prop 3, that would add protections for reproductive rights and enshrine them in the state’s constitution.

The amendment defines reproductive freedom as “the right to make and carry out pregnancy-related decisions uch as those concerning prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion, miscarriage management, and infertility care.”

On Wednesday, Right to Life Michigan and 15 other plaintiffs announced they filed a lawsuit in federal court to overturn several elements of Prop 3. They are asking for a permanent injunction, claiming the proposal is unconstitutional.

“Earlier this morning, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed challenging the constitutionality of central elements of Proposal 3,” the group said in a statement. “The provisions asserted to be unconstitutional under federal law threaten legal protections for pregnant women seeking healthcare, the rights of physicians to care for patients, and the rights of parents already under attack on many fronts.”

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(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the diabetes drug Zepbound to also treat obesity on Wednesday.

The drug’s active ingredient is called tirzepatide. As a diabetes drug, it is sold under the brand name Mounjaro, which is manufactured by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co.

It has now been approved under the brand name Zepbound as a weight loss management treatment for people with obesity, or those who are overweight with at least one related underlying condition, such as high blood pressure.

The drug is similar to semaglutide, the active ingredient in the medications Ozempic and Wegovy — both made by Novo Nordisk — but works slightly differently because it targets two hormones involved in blood sugar control rather than just one.

Studies suggest it could lead to more dramatic weight loss than semaglutide.

Last month, a study found that tirzepatide helped some people with obesity or overweight lose about a quarter of their body weight — when paired with an extensive diet and exercise program.

Earlier this year, Eli Lilly released clinical trial results showing participants who were overweight or obese and had type 2 diabetes — who took Zepbound compared to a placebo — lost up to 15.7% of their body weight over 72 weeks of treatment.

In general, medications like Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda, the latter of which is also made by Novo Nordisk, and several others were originally approved to treat diabetes.

However, researchers have learned over the past several years that the drugs can also lead to weight loss.

Wegovy was approved by the FDA for long-term weight management in people who are overweight or obese in 2021 while Saxenda was approved for adults in 2014 and in those aged 12 and older in 2020.

Ozempic is still only approved for diabetes, although some physicians have prescribed it as a weight loss drug.

Increasingly, obesity specialists have recognized that obesity is a metabolic condition that cannot be adequately managed with diet and exercise alone for most people.

For some people, surgery or lifelong medication management may be an appropriate way to help manage obesity.

Currently, 41.9% of the U.S. adult population is living with obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer — all of which are leading causes of preventable, premature death, the CDC said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

 

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the diabetes drug Zepbound to also treat obesity on Wednesday.

The drug’s active ingredient is called tirzepatide. As a diabetes drug, it is sold under the brand name Mounjaro, which is manufactured by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Co.

It has now been approved under the brand name Zepbound as a weight loss management treatment for people with obesity, or those who are overweight with at least one related underlying condition, such as high blood pressure.

The drug is similar to semaglutide, the active ingredient in the medications Ozempic and Wegovy — both made by Novo Nordisk — but works slightly differently because it targets two hormones involved in blood sugar control rather than just one.

Studies suggest it could lead to more dramatic weight loss than semaglutide.

Last month, a study found that tirzepatide helped some people with obesity or overweight lose about a quarter of their body weight — when paired with an extensive diet and exercise program.

Earlier this year, Eli Lilly released clinical trial results showing participants who were overweight or obese and had type 2 diabetes — who took Zepbound compared to a placebo — lost up to 15.7% of their body weight over 72 weeks of treatment.

In general, medications like Mounjaro, Ozempic, Wegovy and Saxenda, the latter of which is also made by Novo Nordisk, and several others were originally approved to treat diabetes.

However, researchers have learned over the past several years that the drugs can also lead to weight loss.

Wegovy was approved by the FDA for long-term weight management in people who are overweight or obese in 2021 while Saxenda was approved for adults in 2014 and in those aged 12 and older in 2020.

Ozempic is still only approved for diabetes, although some physicians have prescribed it as a weight loss drug.

Increasingly, obesity specialists have recognized that obesity is a metabolic condition that cannot be adequately managed with diet and exercise alone for most people.

For some people, surgery or lifelong medication management may be an appropriate way to help manage obesity.

Currently, 41.9% of the U.S. adult population is living with obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Obesity raises the risk of heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer — all of which are leading causes of preventable, premature death, the CDC said.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

 

Copyright © 2023, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.