(NEW YORK) — A new analysis from Consumer Reports found that some heavy metals in baby food have been on the decline but the report argues more can be done to make baby food safer overall.
Through random testing of baby food products, Consumer Reports found levels of some heavy metals such as arsenic, cadmium and lead in baby food have fallen since 2018.
Low exposure to heavy metals is not considered harmful but advocates have pushed for more regulation in baby food. A 2021 report from a House oversight committee warned of “dangerous levels of toxic heavy metals in even more baby foods” and the Food and Drug Administration launched a “Closer to Zero” initiative that aimed to reduce contaminants like heavy metals in baby food.
Consumer Reports noted that some foods still contain higher levels of heavy metals, including rice, sweet potatoes and snack foods like rice-based puffs and teething wafers.
Toxicologist Stephanie Widmer told ABC News the presence of heavy metals in baby food shouldn’t be a surprise since they are present in the soil used to grow crops.
“We have to remember that heavy metals are in the soil where crops grow; they are part of the Earth,” Widmer said. “Heavy metals are and always have been present in tons of different foods we consume and feed to our children.”
Widmer added, “Variety in our diets is key in limiting exposure to harmful heavy metals. It doesn’t mean we have to eliminate certain baby foods entirely — long-term effects from heavy metals come from repetitive exposure over very long periods of time. Parents should not be alarmed and should simply continue to ensure variety in the diet.”
(NEW YORK) — For Emma Goidel and Ilana Caplan, building a family using assisted reproductive technology was never going to be easy, but the couple says they never imagined the financial costs they’d face simply because of who they are.
“We looked really closely at our insurance and we saw, oh my God, Aetna covers fertility procedures. But then when we read the fine print, we saw – wait a minute, this coverage is only for people having heterosexual sex,” said Goidel, who lives in New York City.
As a growing number of same-sex couples turn to intrauterine insemination (IUI) and in vitro fertilization (IVF) to have children, many say they’re encountering entrenched inequality in how benefits are provided by health insurers and employers.
While insurance companies in more than a dozen states offer no-cost fertility treatments for straight couples who struggle to get pregnant, they often refuse to cover those same services for lesbian or gay couples until they’ve paid out of pocket for up to a year.
Goidel and Caplan spent nearly $50,000 of savings to have their son Avi, who is a year old. None of the expenses for IUI or IVF were reimbursed by the insurer, Aetna, they say.
“How is it OK to say if you’re straight and your partner can’t get you pregnant, you come into the doctor and we’ll cover your treatment, but if you’re a queer and your partner can’t get you pregnant, too bad you’re going to pay?” said Goidel.
One-in-three American adults say they’ve used fertility treatments, like IUI or IVF, to grow their families or know someone who has, according to Pew Research Center, and many have spent thousands of dollars out of pocket in the process.
In places where fertility benefits are offered or required, LGBTQ people can be disadvantaged.
“Only 14 states provide coverage on private insurance plans for fertility health care, [but] only three states have fertility insurance laws that inclusively cover LGBTQ people,” said Polly Crozier, director of family advocacy, GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).
“When there’s not access to fertility health care in your state, it particularly hits LGBTQ people hard, and then even in the states that do have access to fertility health care, LGBTQ people there face different standards. There are different rules for those families. It’s just not equal,” Crozier said.
Advocates say the fight for “fertility equality” is emerging as a key legal battleground. More than 100,000 same-sex couples are raising children in this country, according to government data, and increasing numbers are looking to grow their families, advocates say.
“We’ve always wanted to have kids. We knew when we got married that we wanted to have a family,” said Goidel, 33, who wed Caplan, 33, in 2017.
After having their first child through self-funded intrauterine insemination using donor sperm, in 2020 the couple consulted with their newly acquired Aetna health plan about fertility coverage for a second pregnancy.
The plan stipulated a diagnosis of infertility in order to qualify, they said. For Goidel and Caplan, that meant having to first attempt at least 12 months of IUI treatment — paid out of pocket — before any insurance coverage would kick in.
They got pregnant using IUI after five prior attempts, one of which resulted in a miscarriage, and one cycle of IVF, which also resulted in a miscarriage.
“My partner can’t get me pregnant. Whether that’s because she doesn’t have the gametes or something’s going on internally with me. No one makes that distinction when you’re a straight couple,” Goidel said.
Goidel brought a federal class-action lawsuit against Aetna in 2021, accusing the insurance company of sex discrimination for denying equal access to fertility treatment.
In court documents, the company denies the claims, saying Goidel did not meet requirements for fertility coverage under her health plan.
“Aetna is committed to equal access to reproductive health coverage for all members,” the company told ABC News in a statement on the Goidel case. “We offer infertility coverage for our plan sponsors, which aligns with our publicly available guidelines, individual benefit plans, and regulations. We have a history of strong support for the LGBTQ+ community, which we continue to build on. We continually evolve our benefit coverage guidelines based on evidence-based clinical information and member safety as a top priority.”
The case is currently pending in federal district court.
For gay men who want their own kids through surrogacy, it can be even more complicated and costly.
Corey Briskin, 34, and Nicholas Maggipinto, 37, of Brooklyn, New York, say neither their health insurance nor Briskin’s employer, the City of New York, would cover any costs of fertility treatment needed to get a surrogate pregnant.
“There’s just no way that that’s not some form of discrimination,” Maggipinto said in an interview.
Both men are attorneys.
“The No. 1 hurdle that every same-sex couple faces is that they can never meet the definition of infertility, which is the threshold qualifier for covered IVF,” he said.
Briskin and Maggipinto filed a class-action discrimination complaint in April 2022 with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), seeking a nationwide order that employers must extend fertility benefits to LGBTQ employees.
The City of New York provides IVF benefits for heterosexual employees who have faced difficulty getting pregnant and are deemed infertile but does not cover LGBTQ employees because they cannot meet the infertility criteria.
The City, which declined an interview with ABC, argues the charge should be dismissed, telling the EEOC in a legal filing that “practically all” employer-provided health insurance nationwide does not cover IVF for surrogate pregnancies, “consistent with the law” and is “not discriminatory.”
The complaint remains pending at EEOC.
“I think there’s a fair argument that that’s sex discrimination, sexual orientation discrimination, and frankly, just bad business,” Crozier said.
A small growing number of companies are providing benefits for family building outside of insurance plans, some chipping in for IVF and others offering to help cover the cost of adoption.
Both couples — Briskin and Maggipinto, and Goidel and Caplan — said they respect adoption as an option for same-sex couples to build families but not one that should be imposed on them.
“There’s nothing wrong with adoption, and for many people, that is a really wonderful option and maybe even their preference,” said Briskin. “But at the same token, no one should tell us that we should build our family that way.”
As the legal cases play out, both families hope change is on the horizon.
“We are hopeful that whatever becomes of this, there will be a change for the better for people who are similarly situated to us,” Briskin said.
(NEW YORK) — Drugs used for diabetes and weight loss like Ozempic and Wegovy were found to be effective for weight loss when taken as a pill, according to research published over the weekend.
Rybelsus is the pill version of semaglutide — the active ingredient that helps patients lose weight — and is already approved for those with Type 2 diabetes.
A new study published in The Lancet highlighted that a higher dose of the pill also worked for weight loss in those without diabetes. Researchers looked at nearly 700 patients with overweight or obesity for over a year and found that the drug lowered body weight by an average of 15%.
Nearly 70% of those who took the pill achieved a 10% reduction in body weight. Additionally, over three times the number of people taking the drug achieved a 5% reduction, a generally accepted baseline for clinically meaningful weight loss.
Ozempic and Wegovy are typically injected once a week. Researchers noted that a once-daily pill would increase the options for those struggling with obesity.
Although studies were not designed to directly compare, the injectable form of the drug appears more effective than the pills. Both versions of the drug have similar safety profiles but come with a relatively high proportion of patients reporting side effects like nausea and constipation.
“This is not just for cosmetic or vanity’s sake. This is to change health risks and outcomes,” Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent and a board-certified obesity medicine specialist, said on Good Morning America.
Those with obesity may struggle to manage long-term weight loss with changes in diet and exercise alone. While doctors can prescribe the pills off-label, additional research may help open doors to getting semaglutide pills used more widely for weight loss, rather than just for those with diabetes.
The results come on the heels of new research estimating that the number of people living with diabetes will double by 2050, exceeding 1.3 billion worldwide.
Around half of this increase may be attributable to obesity fueled by the widespread availability of ultra-processed and relatively cheap food options.
“Remember, when you talk about the bad news of these increasing Type 2 diabetes rates, the good news is that Type 2 diabetes is largely reversible and preventable, but that does not mean it’s easy to do that,” Ashton said.
Those who are overweight or obese are often at a higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Over 70% of American adults are considered to be overweight or obese, and more than 37 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(SARASOTA, Fla.) — Five people caught malaria locally in the U.S. for the first time since 2003, according to health officials.
Four people in Sarasota County, Florida, and one person in Cameron County, Texas, reported cases of the mosquito-borne illness, state officials said. Cameron County is the southernmost county in Texas, about 1,300 miles away from Sarasota, Florida.
All four Florida patients “have been treated and have recovered,” according to a statewide mosquito-borne illness advisory from the Florida Department of Health released Monday. Residents have been advised to “take precautions by applying bug spray, avoiding areas with high mosquito populations, and wearing long pants and shirts when possible — especially during sunrise and sunset when mosquitos are most active,” the health department said.
The last locally acquired Texas cases occurred in 1994 and 2003 in Palm Beach, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The illness is caused when a person is bitten by a mosquito carrying malaria parasites, the CDC said. Malaria isn’t contagious and can’t be spread person-to-person.
Symptoms include fever, chills, muscle aches, nausea headache and anemia, and can sometimes be fatal if not treated, according to the CDC.
Malaria used to be common in the U.S., but a 1947 campaign by southeastern states to spray insecticides and drain breeding grounds eliminated transmission, according to the CDC.
There are around 2,000 malaria cases a year, the CDC said, but they’re most often diagnosed in people who caught the disease while abroad.
The risk to most people of locally acquired malaria is currently extremely low, the CDC said in a statement regarding one of the Florida cases.
Climate change could reverse progress made in fighting the illness, with warmer temperatures possibly expanding the range for mosquitoes that carry diseases like malaria, research published in the Lancet Planetary Health indicates.
“The presence of competent mosquitoes and warmer temperatures in the Southeast will likely lead to additional cases in the coming months and years,” Dr. John Brownstein, an infectious disease epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, told ABC News. “Future invasion of new mosquitoes, coupled with potential climate change effects, could significantly expand the malaria risk.”
“While the permanent return of malaria is still unlikely, these cases represent a broader warning of mosquito-borne diseases in the region,” he said.
People can protect against mosquito bites by draining standing water in gutters and flowerpots, wearing long sleeves and long pants, wearing insect repellent and using screens on windows, according to the CDC.
(SARASOTA, Fla.) — Five people caught malaria locally in the U.S. for the first time since 2003, according to health officials.
Four people in Sarasota County, Florida, and one person in Cameron County, Texas, reported cases of the mosquito-borne illness, state officials said. Cameron County is the southernmost county in Texas, about 1,300 miles away from Sarasota, Florida.
All four Florida patients “have been treated and have recovered,” according to a statewide mosquito-borne illness advisory from the Florida Department of Health released Monday. Residents have been advised to “take precautions by applying bug spray, avoiding areas with high mosquito populations, and wearing long pants and shirts when possible — especially during sunrise and sunset when mosquitos are most active,” the health department said.
The last locally acquired Texas cases occurred in 1994 and 2003 in Palm Beach, Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — As a pediatrician, Dr. Kristina Lehman knows the ins and outs of the evidence around breastfeeding better than most.
But as a mother, she also knows that breastfeeding is hard and that following evidence-based guidelines isn’t possible or the choice for everyone.
“I’m more proud of my breastfeeding relationship than even my [medical degree],” Lehman, who is also a breastfeeding medicine specialist, internal medicine physician and associate professor at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, told ABC News.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that infants be exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of life and continue breastfeeding along with other food until two years of age.
Research shows breastfeeding has many benefits, including decreased infant infections and childhood cancers as well as a decreased risk of diabetes, high blood pressure, breast, ovarian and endometrial cancer in the mother.
But only about a quarter of women meet those recommendations, according to data shared by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts said that’s partly because health care and social systems aren’t set up to support breastfeeding.
The gap may mean groups like the AAP should consider adjusting their recommendations to remove the emphasis on exclusivity regarding breastfeeding and amend the two-year time frame due to the unattainable standard for so many, argued Seattle physician Dr. Amy Kennedy in a recent editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“I encourage the AAP and other national health organizations to consider how their statements on exclusive breast-feeding are perceived by the public,” Kennedy wrote. “Everyone’s journey is different.”
But other experts said increasing support is the best way to close the gap — not changing the guidelines. Last week, Lehman and Dr. April Castillo, a preventive medicine physician and breastfeeding specialist, published an article in response on the physician-facing website KevinMD.
They argued that the health care system — including doctors themselves — needs to improve the support of women in their infant feeding choices.
The lack of social support, limited education for physicians around breastfeeding, and marketing from the formula industry adds to the stress, anxiety and isolation during an already fraught time, according to Dr. Anne Eglash, a family medicine physician and president of the North American Board of Breastfeeding and Lactation Medicine.
Postpartum depression and anxiety — which affect 1 in 8 people after delivery, according to the CDC — can make the process even more challenging.
The current system makes it difficult for parents to actually make a choice either way, according to Eglash, who told ABC News that “no one is supporting” parents.
Eglash described a situation in which medical providers tell the public people should breastfeed, but then send new parents, “out to run that marathon and there’s a desert and no one’s offering any water.”
Changes that could help might include improving doctors’ education around breastfeeding, putting resources towards systems that can help parents find infant feeding experts like lactation consultants, and increasing awareness around postpartum depression, according to Eglash and Castillo.
There also need to be more resources around mixed feeding, which combines breastfeeding and formula feeding, Castillo told ABC News.
But even with improvements in support, meeting guidelines still might still not be feasible for some parents, according to Kennedy.
She said she had many resources at her disposal and a supportive partner, but breastfeeding was difficult for her. She said she wasn’t able to exclusively breastfeed for six months, much less breastfeed for two years.
Still, all the experts agreed that people feeding infants need compassion, regardless of the way they navigate the journey.
“I think a lot of women think that it is all or nothing. And so when they try all and it’s too hard, they totally quit instead of backing off a little bit. But that’s where you need that individualized support to be able to say, what are your goals?” Lehman said. “It’s a conversation and it has to be individualized.”
Eglash noted that the goals aren’t the problem — the system needs to change to help people have the best possible experience.
“I think the big thing is that we all want babies fed, right? And we want parents to meet their intentions, to have the right to feed their babies the way they intend,” Eglash said.
Danielle Craigg, MD, is a senior general preventive medicine and public health resident at Renaissance School of Medicine at Stony Brook University and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — Shortly after a Tennessee trigger ban on abortion went into effect last September, a group of maternal fetal medicine specialists, family planning physicians, bioethicists, neonatologists and a lawyer gathered to form a panel tasked with determining whether the facility could provide medically necessary abortion care in line with state law.
Physicians decided it was best to evaluate and gain a consensus in situations where patients were requesting abortion care or doctors are recommending it.
“It really came about from the fact that many of us are very concerned and nervous for our own safety, and felt that some of these would be decisions that are better made in a group setting,” Dr. Sarah Osmundson, a maternal fetal medicine specialist in Tennessee, told ABC News.
“Usually these are time-sensitive issues,” Osmundson said. “So, even though we have meetings every other month, when a case arises, it usually means that we have to either ad hoc meet or talk or communicate over email and explain the patient’s situation. And then we ask for three physicians to review the chart and to weigh in on whether they think an abortion would meet the standards set by the current laws.”
Tennessee’s law only makes exceptions for cases where it is necessary to prevent death or serious and permanent bodily injury to the mother.
“We are basically looking at these cases individually and trying to guess whether we think a reasonable group of other Tennesseans would look at these individual cases and agree that an ongoing pregnancy represents a risk of death to the patient or serious medical impairment,” Osmundson said.
Physicians in several states told ABC News that facilities are using termination boards or medical ethics boards to navigate whether they can provide patients with medically necessary abortions in line with exceptions allowed in their states.
Dr. Nicole Teal, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, told ABC News that abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy in the hospital where she works in North Carolina require two physicians to sign off in cases where the mother’s life is at risk. In most cases, both physicians are specialists. In July, North Carolina will start enforcing a ban that prohibits abortions past 12 weeks of pregnancy, with an up to 20-week exception for rape or incest and 24 weeks for fatal fetal anomalies.
If physicians feel the case is a gray area and they are unsure whether the abortion would be permitted under the ban, they get the hospital’s legal and ethics teams involved before providing care.
“Logistically speaking, what happens when someone comes in and they’re sick and it’s Saturday night? The ethics committee is not going to convene Saturday night at midnight to come up with an answer,” Teal said.
Some common pregnancy complications could be deadly if left untreated, but patients may not be showing signs of illness or an imminent threat to their life when they first show up at a hospital. This leaves doctors’ hands tied.
Teal told the story of one patient who came in who came in with “very severe preeclampsia,” a serious and sometimes fatal pregnancy complication that occurs after 20 weeks, but physicians had to wait until her health got worse before they could help her because the state’s 20-week ban was in effect.
“We knew it was happening, her blood pressure was getting higher, her labs were starting to get off. But we basically waited until her labs got bad enough that we could say, ‘It’s an imminent threat to her life.’ Basically we had to wait until her labs started crashing before we could take care of her,” Teal said.
“Preeclampsia sometimes progresses really rapidly, like in a couple days, and sometimes it takes weeks and we couldn’t say for sure it would it be one day or seven days before it was an imminent threat to her life,” Teal said.
Teal said several friends who practice medicine in southern states — like Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee and even Texas — have been reaching out about patients whose health is in danger asking if she could provide them with abortion care. That access could no longer be available when a 12-week abortion ban goes into effect in July.
One patient with pulmonary hypertension, a serious condition that has over a 50% maternal mortality rate if the mom remains pregnant, was denied an abortion in Mississippi by an ethics committee, according to Teal. She traveled to North Carolina to receive care, Teal said.
At a leading health care facility in Houston, medically necessary abortions have to be approved by at least 75% of a panel made up of about six multidisciplinary physicians and a lawyer, according to Dr. Alireza Shamshirsaz, a maternal fetal medicine specialist who moved from Texas to Massachusetts last year.
Shamshirsaz said this usually only happens when a mother is very sick. Physicians need lab work, vital signs and sometimes cultures that show her health deteriorating.
“You can act [without getting their approval] and [retroactively] submit this data to the board, but then you need to be a very brave physician, because now you put your credentials and your career on the line,” Shamshirsaz told ABC News.
Before he left the hospital where he worked in Texas, Shamshirsaz said he had a patient pregnant with twins who went into labor early. After delivering the first of the two babies, the umbilical cord was prolapsed in the vagina, a rare medical emergency, and because the fetus still had a heartbeat, the board denied abortion care.
After staying in the hospital for several days, the patient was sent home, Shamshirsaz said. She later came back in septic shock and lost one of her kidneys. Shamshirsaz said she will likely need a transplant or dialysis in the future.
At the Boston facility where he currently works, Shamshirsaz said physicians can provide abortions up to 26 weeks and six days without needing approval. In complex late-term abortions that go past that threshold, Shamshirsaz gets other physicians at the Boston facility to sign off on the care as a safety net for himself.
Dr. Kelly Mamelson, a second-year resident who has lived in Florida almost her entire life, told ABC News the facility she currently works at requires two physicians to sign off on a medically indicated abortion — the only abortions it provides — whether that be maternal or fetal indication, before it can be performed.
“There is certainly a lot of anxiety behind [the laws’ ambiguity] and it can lead to delays in care,” Mamelson said.
For patients with pre-viable rupture of membranes — a condition fatal for fetuses if they are not at a gestational age compatible with life that can also be dangerous for mothers — if there is still a fetal heartbeat, physicians at her hospital in Florida have to wait until the mother is showing signs of an infection before they provide abortion care, Mamelson said.
“By waiting until you’re in a very dire situation, or potentially fatal situation, you’re doing a lot of harm to the patient. So, waiting for a mom to become septic, to then perform a procedure is extremely problematic. And I think it really highlights the lack of medical knowledge that seems to be pretty common among the legislators making these decisions,” Mamelson said.
Even after Tennessee lawmakers added an exception allowing abortions for ectopic pregnancies, physicians fear abortion laws when it comes to providing lifesaving care, Osmundson said.
“I think we are also balancing our ethical obligations as physicians and the oath that we took, and many of us have just decided that we’re going to do what we think is right for patients to ensure that nobody dies or has serious morbidity as a result of not performing care,” Osmundson said.
“Most of us do this at great personal risk. Unfortunately, I don’t think that we feel super protected by the current laws,” Osmundson said.
Even though the hospital where she works has told physicians it would provide criminal defense coverage if it ever comes to that, Osmundson said the risk of prosecution is still a huge burden. She also said the risk is far greater for physicians who do not work in a large medical center that would be willing to support them.
“It’s a huge mental and emotional burden to experience some of these cases along with patients and to try to care for these patients. And I would love the state of Tennessee to be witness to how challenging that is. I think it would help them empathize with what our patients go through,” Osmundson said.
“I never thought I would have to entertain what the state of Tennessee thinks is right or wrong,” Osmundson said.
(NEW YORK) — For the past year, Michelle Colon, a reproductive health advocate in Jackson, Mississippi, has not been able to bring herself to drive past the Pink House.
The state’s lone abortion clinic operated by Jackson Women’s Health Organization had been forced to close its doors last July, just days after losing its legal battle before the Supreme Court and the state’s abortion ban took effect.
Now, the building is painted white, the site of an upscale consignment shop — as much a symbol of victory for anti-abortion groups as the Pink House was once a symbol of defiance.
Operating in the state instead are some 40 faith-based “crisis pregnancy centers” that state officials say are expanding operations thanks to $10 million in tax credits for businesses that donate to them.
“I still can’t bring myself to go down that street,” Colon, cofounder and executive director of SHERo Mississippi, a Black women’s reproductive justice organization, told ABC News. “It was such a beautiful building .. and was the heart of that neighborhood.”
A year after the Supreme Court’s landmark case overturning a half century of abortion rights under Roe vs. Wade, abortion is banned entirely with exceptions for rape reported to law enforcement and to protect the life of the mother. There is no exception for incest.
Performing an abortion is a felony punishable by up to 10 years.
Researchers estimate there are roughly 3,150 fewer legal abortions in the state as a result, although it’s not entirely clear if those patients are opting to give birth or traveling out of state for abortions — a trip that could take a full day’s worth of driving to Illinois or Florida.
While the Pink House is no longer, within miles of its old location are nearly half-a-dozen crisis pregnancy centers, or pregnancy resource centers, non-medical facilities that offer free ultrasounds and pregnancy tests as well as support ranging from free diapers to clothing and parenting classes to women who choose to continue on with their pregnancy.
Shelby Wilcher, press secretary for Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, said the centers are critical to the state helping women and families.
“While Mississippi is proud to have led the nation in overturning Roe v. Wade, winning a court case was never our true objective. It was building a culture of life throughout our state and country,” she said in a statement.
For abortion rights advocates like Colon, the centers stand as a symbol of what’s gone wrong in the state post-Roe.
“You can give somebody today a little gift bag with, you know, one pack of Pampers and a pack of baby wipes … that’s enough to get you through, what, a couple of days,” Colon said. “But we’re talking about long-term assistance, that long-term help they claim that they do and that’s just not true.”
Boon in tax credits for Mississippi CPCs
Crisis pregnancy centers have existed in cities and towns across the country for decades but have grown in number in recent years. As of 2021, there were around 3,000 CPCs in the U.S., according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion research and policy organization.
The centers are typically faith-based nonprofit organizations that rely mostly on private donations from churches, businesses and individuals.
In at least one dozen states, CPCs also receive state funding.
When abortion was banned in Mississippi last year, Reeves pledged to support women staying pregnant and having babies.
He’s since extended postpartum Medicaid coverage from two months to one year and is setting up a task force to improve the state’s foster care and adoption system.
But the most immediate impact has been the millions of dollars in tax credits funneled to crisis pregnancy centers in the state.
Last year, Reeves signed a law authorizing a $3.5 million tax credit for businesses and individuals that donate to crisis pregnancy centers in Mississippi, becoming one of the first states to do so. This April, Reeve expanded that tax credit to $10 million.
To qualify for the donations, the centers must meet specific requirements, including not spending more than 20% of the money on administration costs and not paying for providing abortions or financially supporting another organization that does.
Sara Smith, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Meridian, said she envisions the center being able to greatly expand its services with money it receives from the tax credit.
“In a perfect world, we’d be able to buy a building and not have a mortgage,” Smith told ABC News. “And be able to have a bigger spot for the medical services and then a bigger donation room and have a bigger diaper bank because we know that diapers are one of the most needed supplies for babies.”
What is the money doing for women?
Supporters of crisis pregnancy centers say the additional funding from the tax credit is needed to support families and offset the impact of Mississippi’s abortion ban.
But it’s not entirely clear what’s happening to those patients who would have sought an abortion previously and whether they are opting to travel out of state, ordering abortion medication online or opting to continue the pregnancy.
State data on births is out of date and Smith and other CPC leaders say they haven’t seen a dramatic increase in clients because of the ban.
Smith said the center has seen a slight increase in clients over the past year but attributed the rise to the center’s increased marketing and community outreach efforts. She said women are still coming to the center unsure of whether they want to continue with their pregnancy.
“If they say, ‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ we ask them if they have the time and if they’re willing to discuss what they mean by that and we listen and observe what they’re saying and where they’re coming from,” Smith said. “Then we take a holistic approach and we say, ‘Who’s in your corner with you? Where do your supports come from? Where do you think you need more support?’ And we start thinking in our mind … what can we do to fill these needs, to meet these needs?”
Terri Herring, president of Choose Life Mississippi, a nonprofit organization that provides grant money to CPCs through the sale of Choose Life specialty license plates, told ABC News the increase in women at CPCs over the past year has “not been overwhelming by any sense.” She said what she has noticed is increased support for CPCs since the overturning of Roe.
“I think getting abortion outside the courts has provided an incentive for people to do more,” Herring said, adding, “We can now look at this and say, we have achieved our goal, which was the overturn of Roe v Wade, and basically closing the last abortion clinic in Mississippi and ending abortion as we know it in Mississippi. So now that we have achieved that goal, how can we move forward in helping these women now that they choose life, or help them choose life, help them through their pregnancy?”
Shannon Bagley, executive director of the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Vicksburg, said the center has also not seen a dramatic increase in women seeking help with their pregnancies over the past year.
She said there has been an increase in demand for parenting classes, which the center began to offer online during the coronavirus pandemic. As is the case at most CPCs, when a person completes a class through the Center for Pregnancy Choices in Vicksburg, they earn so-called “baby bucks” which they can then redeem for diapers and donated supplies like clothes, breast pumps, cribs and mattresses.
Bagley acknowledged that most of the support the center offers goes up until a child is age 4. Beyond that, she said she focuses on building community support for families and their kids, an effort she said she’s even more focused on post-Roe.
She and other CPC leaders ABC News spoke with describe the centers as a “hub of knowledge” where people can be connected to the support they need.
“We have found that even at the four-year mark, I can now send her over to another facility that does similar things that we do but they do [ages] 4 and up,” Bagley said. “So it’s saying, “OK, we’ve got what you need, but also have somebody else that can help you too,’ or, ‘Oh look, I’ve got all these resources, how can we come together as a community to support you as a family?'”
Carra Powell, a volunteer at The Care Center, in Southaven, Mississippi, said her center has also seen an increase in demand over the past year for the free parenting and childbirth classes it offers.
“I think a lot of people think a pregnancy resource center is strictly just serving women that are expecting, but there are many different families and women in different stages of parenting that are using the center,” she said, describing the center as a “no-judgement zone.” “We also provide aftercare for women, so clothing, cribs, continuing education classes, food services.”
‘Some of these women are delivering on the side of the road’
Colon and other reproductive health care advocates say the money from the $10 million tax credit signed into law by Reeves would go farther if it helped families care for their children, create jobs, provide long-term health care and afford housing instead.
“It’s a tragedy that there’s funding that has been created and it’s funneling to these entities when that money could be situated to help the real and existing families of Mississippi,” Colon told ABC News.
Reproductive health care advocates point in particular to data showing Mississippi remains in one of the worse situations in the country when it comes to maternal and infant care.
Dr. Elizabeth Cherot, senior vice president and chief medical and health officer at the March of Dimes, told ABC News that Reeves’ extension of Medicaid for postpartum women to one year is a potential “game changer.” Still, she said, there remains serious gaps in care for women.
It’s estimated that more than half of counties in Mississippi didn’t have a single birthing center, hospital or obstetrics provider when the abortion ban took effect, according to March of Dimes’ data. Many hospitals in the state are shutting down due to financial reasons and a lack of staff and some doctors have expressed concerns about legal liability.
The lack of access to obstetrics care means pregnant women will travel on average of nearly 16 miles to see a doctor, according to Cherot. In particularly rural counties in Mississippi, it’s not uncommon for women to travel an hour each way.
“Some of these women are delivering on the side of the road, putting their baby on their lap and driving if they don’t have somebody to help them, or they’re bringing the rest of their children in the car,” Cherot said. “So this is a real problem that women are facing that gives me chills to think about this is what’s happening in the United States.”
According to the state’s own maternal mortality report released in January, the pregnancy related mortality ratio has increased to 36.0 deaths per 100,000 live births. Nearly 88% of pregnancy related deaths were deemed preventable and the maternal mortality rate for Black, non-Hispanic women is four times higher than for white women.
The infant mortality rate in Mississippi is 8.72 deaths per 1,000 live births, much higher than the U.S. rate of 5.87, according to data from the Mississippi Department of Health.
Wilcher, with Gov. Reeves, told ABC News it will take time to see results.
“The governor’s office will continue to do everything in its power to deliver the support moms and babies deserve,” Wilcher said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — The latest caffeinated beverage craze has made many young consumers eager for a drink, which has prompted a new alert for parents.
Prime, a beverage brand that offers a range of sports drinks, mixes and energy drinks, is backed by two massive internet personalities. YouTuber, rapper and boxer Olajide Olayinka Williams “JJ” Olatunji, known professionally as KSI, and WWE wrestler and social media personality Logan Paul, are the joint faces of the drink, which is manufactured by Louisville-based Congo Brands.
The drink, first released in the U.K. in 2022, has gone from just another variety beverage to a status symbol with its much-hyped marketing on TikTok.
With flavors like tropical punch and strawberry watermelon, Paul has touted on his TikTok videos that Prime is “the fastest growing sports drink in history.”
Other videos show KSI looking at a group of kids rapidly approaching a branded Prime drink bus.
The drink comes in energy and hydration forms and has become wildly popular with kids. The bottled hydration version has no caffeine and is made with coconut water and electrolytes. The canned energy version, which does contain caffeine, has raised concerns with some experts looking out for younger consumers.
A 12-ounce can of Coca Cola contains 34 milligrams of caffeine and an 8.4-ounce can of Red Bull has 80 milligrams. A 12-ounce can of Prime energy, by contrast, contains 200 milligrams of caffeine.
ABC News medical contributor Dr. Alok Patel said 200 milligrams “is a huge amount of caffeine.”
“That is too much for any growing child,” Patel told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “That much caffeine can cause some adverse effects, such as disrupted sleep, mood disorders, upset stomach, even abnormal heart rhythms.”
The warning label on Prime energy drink products note that it’s not recommended for children under the age of 18.
Patel offered additional medical insight and advice to parents whose children may be consuming or asking to drink highly caffeinated beverages.
“First thing that parents out there should do is make sure that their kids are getting enough sleep so the kids aren’t tired in the middle of the day and then running to go get a stimulant,” he said.
“If your kids get bored with just water, which is the preferred hydration source, you can try other flavored waters with fruit,” Patel added, noting other options might include things like coconut water.
(NEW YORK) — Dr. Nicole Teal, a maternal fetal medicine specialist, had just finished her training in North Carolina, when she was offered a good position in the state that would have allowed her to stay closer to family.
But there was one problem: North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban set to go into effect on July 1.
She has chosen to move to California.
“Being able to provide abortion care after 20 weeks is really fundamental to my practice and comes up for me on a weekly basis,” Teal told ABC News.
Teal said that she often diagnoses fetal anomalies sometime between 18 and 20 weeks of pregnancy because many anomalies cannot be seen earlier in pregnancy. Providing abortion care could come even later.
Patients often do not develop high-risk conditions until after 21 weeks of pregnancy, Teal said, so the state’s current 20-week ban is already changing how she’s allowed to practice medicine.
“It’s really put me in a position of moral distress on more than one occasion,” Teal said.
In interviews with ABC News, physicians in Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida said they decided to leave their states due, at least largely, to the impact abortion bans have had on their ability to practice medicine and provide the best care possible for patients.
In the year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending federal protections for abortion rights, at least 15 states have banned or severely restricted abortion.
Even with limited exceptions to abortion in states with bans in place — such as to save the life of the mother — doctors told ABC News it is difficult to determine what patients qualify for care.
Dr. Alireza Shamshirsaz had lived in Houston for close to a decade when he decided to move.
Shamshirsaz is a maternal fetal medicine physician who specializes in fetal surgeries, operating on pregnancies to fix anomalies while babies are in the womb. He worked at one of the best facilities in the country providing surgeries and intervention not available elsewhere, with patients coming from all over the South for care.
He considered many factors, but his decision to move his family from Texas to Boston ultimately hinged on one thing: Texas’ abortion bans.
Ultimately, the limitations bans would impose on his job pushed him to leave the state. Shamshirsaz said physicians in Texas have become collateral damage, with many worrying that they will be targeted. He also said the bans will disproportionately impact women in the South.
“Rich people can do it,” Shamshirsaz said of those able to travel elsewhere for abortions. “Who do we hit? We will hit the low social economy people.”
Shamshirsaz said it is a traumatizing experience to force patients who discover their pregnancies are nonviable or have fatal anomalies to have to continue carrying a pregnancy to term.
“By default, 10% to 20% of patients get postpartum depression,” Shamshirsaz said. “How do you think these people will cope after that type of pressure for months?”
Dr. Jackie Mostow, a family medicine physician who works at a county health clinic in California, told ABC News she had always planned to move back home to Ohio, but that decision now depends on the state’s abortion laws.
Ohio’s six-week abortion ban is temporarily on hold by the state’s Supreme Court while a legal challenge continues.
“The California version of Medicaid pays for abortion care and it’s just common sense that it should be that way. And I think it would be really hard for me to practice somewhere else. I think if I were to move it would be with a goal of trying to push the agenda further and right now, Ohio’s not in a place for that,” Mostow said.
Dr. Kelly Mamelson, a second-year resident who has lived in Florida almost her entire life, told ABC News she plans to leave the state next year and apply for a complex family planning fellowship.
“Those programs only really exist in the Northeast and out west, because it’s complex contraception, and then termination for either elective or medically indicated,” Mamelson said. “But of course, with the new laws, those fellowship training locations are limited now.”
Mamelson said the Florida Supreme Court’s decision on whether it will uphold a 15-week abortion ban, which will also determine whether a six-week ban goes into effect, will be a key factor in determining whether she will return to Florida after her fellowship.
“Not being able to practice the way I was trained and the way that I think is objectively the services that women need the option to have, it would definitely preclude me from working in the state,” Mamelson said.
Mamelson said a lot of her colleagues feel the same way and are disheartened by the fact that they need to travel so far to get abortion training.
Physician shortages, which have predated bans, will only get worse in states with bans, some doctors told ABC News. Knowing how to perform abortions is a skill that could be necessary to save a patient’s life, Shamshirsaz said.
“If you don’t train new people, nobody can do it themselves and therefore these people will end up with lots of disasters and unfortunately, there will be a significant increase in maternal mortality,” Shamshirsaz said.
Dr. Sarah Osmundson, a maternal fetal medicine specialist in Tennessee, told ABC News she has colleagues who have already begun to leave the state because of the bans.
She said she feels a sense of obligation to her community and patients, and will be staying in her state, at least for now.
“Who else is going to care for these patients?” Osmundson said.
“There are some of us that really feel that we need to stay and be part of the care for our very high-risk patients, and to be part of the advocacy that, hopefully, will transform some of these laws so they’re not so dangerous to patient care,” she added.
