Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
The Washington Post: Want More People To Have Kids? Treat Trying To Have Children As A Right Worth Protecting.
California lawmakers are belatedly moving to provide $25,000 in reparations to women who were sterilized by the state. Texas is pursuing a nasty-minded law that would allow citizens to sue anyone involved in helping a woman obtain an abortion. A new wave of panic about population collapse is making headlines. These unnerving stories all illustrate just how important our society thinks it is for families to have more children — and just how little we back up that belief. We’re litigating who should have kids and trying to force those parents to reproduce for the greater good, rather than treating the effort to become a parent as a right broadly worth protecting. Do we value families? Or don’t we? (Alyssa Rosenberg, 7/14)
Los Angeles Times: Paying Sterilization Victims Is Least California Can Do
As California prepares to pay reparations to the people who were sterilized in public hospitals and other state institutions by force or deception, the number of the compensated won’t be very high. That’s not because the state wronged only a few people by legalizing these eugenics-inspired medical injuries, but because it waited so long to do the right thing that most of the victims are no longer alive. Ours wasn’t the only state to embark on a campaign of involuntary sterilization; such efforts swept the nation during the early and mid-20th century. But California was especially prolific and persistent at it. A third of the 60,000 forced sterilizations nationwide occurred in this state, creating a particularly heavy burden of despicable acts to discharge. And to our shame here at The Times, our publisher during a good part of this time supported eugenics. Regular columns extolled the effort. (7/14)
Stat: My Pregnancy Made Me Fear For My Career. It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way
I cried when I found out I was pregnant with my second child. While I was happy to expand my family, I knew the task of growing a human was not easy. In addition to anticipating the grueling physical demand of pregnancy, multiple people in my family were dealing with medical issues and the Covid-19 pandemic had just turned the world completely upside down. I was overwhelmed, but it was my fear for my career that brought me to tears. (Jennifer Adaeze Okwerekwu, 7/14)
Stat: Sickle Cell Disease And A Pivotal Moment To End Health Inequality
Covid-19 laid bare the long-standing vulnerability of minority and low-income communities in U.S. society and its health system even as we celebrated the power of scientific innovation to rein in the pandemic. It’s time to turn that innovation, driven by an even greater mind shift, to end inequality in treatment. In perhaps no condition is such inequality more evident than sickle cell disease — a genetic disease for which the molecular basis has been known since 1956 but for which innovative treatments have been elusive. (Ted W. Love, 7/15)
The Hill: Time For EPA To Come Clean On PFAS
PFAS are linked to cancer, high cholesterol, obesity, endocrine disruption and other serious health harms. This suppression of information and their identity and harm has led to the drinking water contamination and illness of communities near chemical plants across the country like the community depicted in “Dark Waters.” In an example reported this month, records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by Physicians for Social Responsibility reveal that in 2011 the EPA approved the use of three fracking chemicals it knew could break down into toxic and persistent PFAS. (Rebecca Fuoco and Arlene Blum, 7/14)
