Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: The Future Of Roe Is Uncertain; HIV Still Devastating Lives
Los Angeles Times: Supreme Court Abortion Case May End Right To Reproductive Freedom
Whatever the Supreme Court decides about abortion rights in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization is sure to intensify the political fight over abortion. The issue in Dobbs, which will be argued on Wednesday, is the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that prohibits abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. This is the most important abortion case to come before the court in almost three decades, since it decided Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992. In that case, to the surprise of many, the court, in 5-4 decision, said that it was reaffirming the “essential holding” of Roe: “a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State.” (Erwin Chemerinsky, 11/30)
The Atlantic: The Judge Who Told The Truth About The Mississippi Abortion Ban
Of all the arguments that animate the anti-abortion cause, two stand out as particularly far-fetched: that banning abortion protects women’s health and shields African Americans from genocide. Yet for years, these arguments have driven debates over state laws, served as justifications for court decisions upholding those laws, and even appeared on billboards warning women in predominantly Black communities not to kill their babies. Three years ago, Mississippi lawmakers prohibited almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy to save women, they said, from serious “medical, emotional, and psychological” damage. (Reynolds Holding, 11/30)
CNN: I Almost Died Trying To Get An Abortion. I'm Terrified My Students Could Face A Similar Fate
On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court will hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, a case involving a 2018 law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. If the justices side with the state of Mississippi, they effectively will be nullifying the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision -- significantly limiting women's reproductive rights. Though no one can predict how the justices will rule, the fact that they have agreed to hear this case is alarming. It is rare for the high court to reconsider the constitutionality of previously decided law. Even when the Supreme Court has heard challenges to Roe in the past, it has always left the basic constitutionality of abortion rights alone. And yet, despite their record of affirmation, I am scared. I am of an age where I can remember what life was like for women in the years before Roe. (Claudia Dreifus, 11/30)
The Washington Post: The Court Cannot Fool Itself: Eviscerating 'Roe’ Would Upend Lives
The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a case testing the constitutionality of a Mississippi law banning abortions 15 weeks after a woman’s last menstrual period, in flagrant violation of both the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling and the court’s 1992 affirmation of Roe, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The court should strike Mississippi’s law, first, because a person should have a right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term. This is perhaps the most private and individual decision anyone can make, and the constitutional principles of dignity and autonomy demand that people be given space in which to make it. Mississippi would eviscerate this right, and upholding the state’s ban would call into question many other bedrock constitutional liberties Americans enjoy. (11/30)
Stat: Losing Faith: Reflecting On 40 Years Of The HIV Pandemic
Faith was the first child I lost to HIV. I can still see her, sitting next to her mother on a rusting metal bed in the ward of the hospital in Kenya where I was working as a pediatrician in 2004. Her mother, Rose, is pleased that they were able to reach the referral hospital where I worked. She thinks that if there is anywhere to have hope, it is here. Faith, who was 4 years old, weighed just 11 pounds. Most babies weigh 11 pounds before they are 4 months old. (Rachel Vreeman, 12/1)
The Boston Globe: HIV Isn’t Over And Neither Is COVID
As we observe World AIDS Day Wednesday during the 40th anniversary year of the AIDS epidemic, we would be wise to reflect on another anniversary: It’s been 25 years since The New York Times Magazine published Andrew Sullivan’s triumphalist essay “When Plagues End,” which essentially declared that the AIDS epidemic was over. Sullivan was clairvoyant in anticipating more potent and simpler drug regimens, which would greatly improve clinical outcomes. Today, medications have become better tolerated and co-formulations enable people to take one pill once a day to maintain their health. HIV-positive people who adhere to these regimens are not infectious to their partners. The use of these medications for pre-exposure prophylaxis, when taken as prescribed, can prevent people who are highly vulnerable to HIV infection from ever becoming infected. A recent report of a second case of someone whose natural immunity has rid their body of HIV without other treatment raises additional reasons for optimism. (Kenneth H. Mayer, 12/1)
Houston Chronicle: Learn From AIDS. Compassion Defeats Pandemics
As a 24-year-old medical student in 1981, I could not have known that a global pandemic would define my identity and life’s work. It has been 40 years since a medical publication described five previously healthy gay men with unusual infections indicating severe immune system dysfunction. By the end of that first year, 337 cases of severe immune deficiency had been described in the U.S., including 16 children, and 130 individuals already had died. The following year, the condition became known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome , shown subsequently to be caused by a novel retrovirus, the human immunodeficiency virus. (Mark W. Kline, 12/1)
Stat: Stigma, Not Science, Is The Key Barrier To Ending The HIV Epidemic
“I am really sorry to reach out like this, David, but I’m worried about my brother. I think he has AIDS.” I froze when I heard those words a few weeks ago. One reason was because Cheryl was 11 years old the last time I heard her voice; she’s 40 now. The other was because I know from my training as a physician in New York City in the 1990s that, while HIV has become a manageable disease for some people, many others still die from complications of AIDS. (David Malebranche, 12/1)
