Longer Looks: Interesting Reads You Might Have Missed

The New York Times: A Vanishing Word in Abortion Debate: ‘Women’
The American Civil Liberties Union, whose advocacy on reproductive rights is of more than a half-century vintage, recently tweeted its alarm about the precarious state of legal abortion: “Abortion bans disproportionately harm: Black Indigenous and other people of color. The L.G.B.T.Q. community. Immigrants. Young people. Those working to make ends meet. People with disabilities. Protecting abortion access is an urgent matter of racial and economic justice.” This tweet encompassed so much and so many and yet neglected to mention a relevant demographic: women. (Powerll, 6/8)

Politico: Six Predictions About The End Of Roe, Based On Research 
When I was in high school, I learned a secret my grandmother had kept for decades: She’d had an abortion. The story came out after she passed away and my grandfather announced that, at her request, in lieu of flowers donations should be made to Planned Parenthood. For me, as a naïve teenager, it was a surprise that someone so maternal and loving would have had an abortion. I had been taught – through TV shows, movies and books – that abortion was something that irresponsible people do to avoid childbearing. I am sure this is how many people still see abortion. The story my grandfather told was that my grandmother became pregnant early in their marriage, during the Great Depression when she and my grandfather didn’t have the jobs, money and security to provide for a child. So she traveled from New York to Puerto Rico to get an illegal abortion. Later she went on to have three children: my dad, my aunt and my uncle. (Foster, 6/8)

The New York Times: He Helped Cure The ‘London Patient’ Of H.I.V. Then He Turned To Covid
Ravindra Gupta had studied drug-resistant H.I.V. for more than a decade when he first encountered Adam Castillejo, who would become known as the “London patient,” the second person in the world to be cured of H.I.V. Dr. Gupta, who goes by Ravi, was a professor at University College London straddling the clinical and academic worlds when Mr. Castillejo presented as both H.I.V.-positive and with relapsed lymphoma, after a previous transplant using healthy stem cells from Mr. Castillejo’s own body had failed. (Nagesh, 6/6)

Stateline: What If Hospice Services Weren't Just For The Dying? 
Gloria Foster wasn’t ready for hospice, even though, with a prognosis of less than six months to live, she qualified for it. She was debilitated by diabetes and congestive heart failure, and was living with both a pacemaker and a device to help pump blood from her heart to the rest of her body. She also was tethered to an oxygen tank. But Foster didn’t want to enter hospice, if, as is normally required by Medicare, she would have had to forgo treatments that might, against all odds, reverse the course of her disease. “Why did I need hospice?” Foster, 73, asked in a phone interview recently from the home she shares with a grandson in Asbury Park, New Jersey. “Hospice is more or less when you’re ready to die. I just wanted to work my way back to doing as much as I could.” (Ollove, 6/9)

The Wall Street Journal: Startup Cerebral Soared On Easy Adderall Prescriptions. That Was Its Undoing
Online mental-health startup Cerebral Inc. was just getting off the ground in early 2020 when it detected a potential problem in its business model. The company was focused on treating people experiencing depression and anxiety, charging a monthly fee to see a nurse practitioner online for prescription antidepressants. But patients tended to cancel their subscriptions after only a few months, making it more difficult for the company to recoup advertising and other costs, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and people familiar with the matter. (Winkler, Safdar and Fuller, 6/8)

The Washington Post: The Flip Side Of Toxic Positivity: Emotional Perfectionism
The term toxic positivity has gained popularity in recent years, referring to moments when people responded to others’ struggles with surface-deep assurances and cliched phrases such as “Everything happens for a reason” or “Have you tried yoga?” But there is a similar, if lesser-known, concept that is more inner-directed: emotional perfectionism. ... Rather than encouraging others to look on the bright side (toxic positivity), they expect themselves to be unfailingly upbeat. (Mecking, 6/9)

Colorado Sun: As More People Turn To Extreme Sports, Colorado Doctors Are Rethinking How They Treat Athletes
Doctors took a look at Ian Mitchard’s body four years ago and assumed his career was over. That’s why Steph Davis brought him along to a talk she gave to doctors: She wanted them to see what was possible. To be fair, it’s probably the conclusion many would reach after Mitchard crashed while paragliding alone. He broke his back, ankles and a couple other bones. The worst damage was to his feet, which were crushed so badly that those doctors thought amputation was the only solution. The injuries were, of course, horrific, but the worst part of the ordeal was the doctors’ bleak outlook, Davis, Mitchard’s wife, said in a phone interview. (England, 6/8)

The New York Times: The Parental Burnout Test 
The past two-plus years have been relentless for working parents, who have frequently been placed in the impossible position of doing their jobs and parenting simultaneously. And a recent survey, by researchers with Ohio State University, suggests they have paid a steep emotional price. In 2021, 66 percent of working parents met the criteria for parental burnout — a nonclinical term that basically means they were so physically and mentally depleted that they may feel like bad parents or emotionally pull away from their children. (Pearson, 6/6)