My sweet mother always told me about her many births. In all, four of us lived, but many did not. Several of my would-be brothers and sisters passed away from still or crib birth. Some were named and some were not. My mother has always been extremely powerful to share her birth experiences with me many years ago when many women simply did not. That ..read more

Photo by Majkl Velner on Unsplash This month Sierra Leone banned child marriage and laid out severe punishments for those engaging in marrying girls and boys off before their 18th birthday. 30 percent of girls in Sierra Leone are married before 18. More girls can focus on furthering their education instead of starting families at a young age. It has been proven that education is ..read more

Arizona’s Now-Repealed Abortion Ban Serves As a Cautionary Tale For Reproductive Health Care Across the US Abortion rights supporters gather outside the Arizona Capitol building in Phoenix. AP Photo/Matt York Swapna Reddy, Arizona State University and Mary Saxon, Arizona State University When the Arizona Supreme Court ruled on April 9, 2024, that the state’s Civil War-era law banning nearly all abortions was enforceable, it brought into stark reality ..read more

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled today that FDA-approved mifepristone can stay on the market. That is, mifepristone can still be prescribed by physicians and accessed by telehealth and mail-order. The Court stayed the lower courts’ decision to ban the use of the pill stating that the plaintiffs lack standing. We recognize that many citizens, including the plaintiffdoctors here, have sincere concerns about and objections toothers ..read more

Supreme Court decisions are expected this month about legal doctor and mail-order prescriptions of the FDA-approved abortion pill, mifepristone, as well as whether health practitioners can provide pregnant patients with stabilizing emergency services such as an abortion where appropriate and essential for stabilization or survival. FDA V. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE (Docket number 23-235; argued March 26, 2024): Medication abortion uses a mix of mifepristone ..read more

Baylor College of Medicine has performed substantive work in The Gambia to instruct frontline health workers on maternal and child health through its “Training of Trainers” and GOALL (Gambian Obstetrics Anesthesia Learning and Leadership) programs. With the ninth-highest maternal mortality rate, access to quality health care for women of reproductive age in The Gambia is deficient. Forty-five percent of women between the ages of 15-49 ..read more

In light of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Senate Democrats advanced the Right to Contraception Act today to create federal legislation to guarantee contraceptive rights nationwide for women. The bill will need 60 votes today to officially begin work on the bill.  “Today, we live in a country where not only tens of millions of women have been robbed of their reproductive freedoms ..read more

Anthony Idowu Ajayi, African Population and Health Research Center and Caroline W. Kabiru, African Population and Health Research Center Adolescent pregnancy is a global public health concern: in 2022, about 13% of girls and young women gave birth before the age of 18. Compared with women in their early 20s, adolescents are more susceptible to maternal deaths. Pregnancy-related complications are among the leading causes of ..read more

Another recent study, Trends in State-Level Maternal Mortality by Racial and Ethnic Group in the United States published in JAMA, has provided data showing that maternal health outcomes in the United States are worsening despite state and national interventions to decrease maternal mortality. The analyzed data from 1999 to 2019 showed that American Indian, Alaskan Native, and Black women have the highest maternal mortality ratios ..read more

After watching In Her Hands, a Netflix documentary executive produced by Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and about Zarifa Ghafari, Afghanistan’s youngest female mayor of Maidan Wardak, I immediately started Googling what I consider major holes in her story such as what did she do before she became a mayor in 2018? Where is she today and what is she doing? In Her Hands successfully imparts ..read more