There's No "Fetus Debris" In Your Vaccine
  May 1, 2025 Howdy Meteor readers, A reminder that as of next Wednesday, you will need a REAL ID for air travel within the U.S. Why am I bothering with this PSA? Because it’s a pain in the ass: I wasted several hours of my own life at the motor vehicle commission, only to be told that the stacks of paperwork I brought were not enough to confirm my identity. Apparently, that’s a pretty common problem, especially for married women, so…best of luck out there. In today’s newsletter, we parse through the most dangerous medical lies of the week. Plus, a long overdue honor is bestowed, and your weekend reading list. Standard ID girlie, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONPure malarkey: 👏🏼Stop 👏🏼spreading 👏🏼misinformation 👏🏼about 👏🏼 our 👏🏼health. This week, two major instances of misinformation made the rounds. First up is Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s claim that MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccines contain “aborted fetus debris.” To be clear: These vaccines do not, at all, contain parts of fetuses or fetal cells. What he is referring to is the widely accepted and longstanding use of fetal cells to develop vaccines, which involves introducing a virus or bacterium to human cells and then inactivating or killing the virus. The original fetal cells used to develop the vaccines we now rely on were harvested in the 1960s from two elective abortions. Like all cells, they’ve continued to multiply over the years, and scientists have been using the same line of cells for generations. But as the vaccine education center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia explains, no vaccine injected into a person contains fetal cells. After the vaccine viruses are grown, the manufacturers “purify the vaccine viruses away from the cells.”  So why peddle this falsehood at all? RFK Jr. is a notorious flip-flopper on vaccines. One week, he supports them, the next he doesn't, but no matter what, he casts baseless doubt on their efficacy at every turn—even in the middle of a measles outbreak in Texas. What better way for a vaccine skeptic to dog-whistle conservative-leaning parents than to say there are dead babies floating in the vaccine liquid? (So far, two children have died in Texas as a result of the outbreak, which is two too many.) On to the next big lie of the week. A new “study” titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women” was released by the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center, which advertises itself as “working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law.” I will not provide the link to the actual study because, as we’ve written before, we should not share links to false or misleading information for any reason. But that didn’t stop Fox News from doing this tomfoolery. Deep breath. Here are the facts: This “study” was not conducted by doctors, whereas the rigorous clinical testing for mifepristone’s FDA approval was conducted by multiple doctors over years. (We spoke to two of them last year.) Instead, it was compiled by data analysts reviewing health insurance claims. What they say they found by reviewing claims’ procedure codes is that nearly 11 percent of women who used mifepristone had at least “one serious adverse event” in the 45 days after taking the pill. But as journalist Jessica Valenti points out, the study does not provide evidence that the “serious adverse events” are directly caused by or even related to the use of mifepristone—they simply happened within 45 days of use. And these “serious adverse events” are loosely defined; for instance, according to Valenti, they include “hemorrhaging,” which could include the heavy bleeding that can be normal after a medication abortion. So why even talk about this “fart” of a study, as Valenti hilariously characterized it? Because it calls on the FDA to “further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women,” on the grounds that the pill is “considerably more dangerous to women than is represented” on the label. Politicians have already started to parrot that narrative. The new FDA head, meanwhile, is anti-abortion. For the kabillionth time: Abortion pills are safe! AND:
 MAHDAWI AT A CAMPUS PROTEST IN 2023. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
 LT. COLONEL ADAMS (FRONT LEFT), A MAJOR AT THIS TIME, WITH CAPTAIN MARY KEARNEY BEHIND HER AS THEY INSPECT THE FIRST RECRUITS TO THE 6888 IN 1945. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)  WEEKEND READING 📚On bad buys: Women are still learning about the dangers of multi-level marketing schemes the hard way. (The Cut) On childhood fame: Piper Rockelle, the kid-fluencer at the center of the Netflix documentary Bad Influence, finally breaks her silence. (Rolling Stone) On something you may have missed: This heartwarming, tear-inducing excerpt from Tina Knowles’ memoir, Matriarch. (Vogue)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
The New Binge Drinkers
  April 17, 2025 Dearest Meteor readers, I’m feeling tender this week and I’m gonna blame Dying For Sex, the new FX miniseries about actual death, the little death, and ride-or-die friendship. The final episode had me in a puddle the other day. Highly rec’d if you’re a fan of Michelle Williams and/or catharsis.  Today, we dig into a surprising new statistic about young women and drinking. Plus, affirmative action for white men and justice for Black mothers. Still sniffling, Nona Willis Aronowitz  WHAT'S GOING ONA sobering new study: If your image of a young binge-drinker is a frat boy doing keg stands, you’re out of date, according to a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association. While drinking among young people is declining overall and older women still drink less than older men, women ages 18 to 25 now binge-drink slightly more than their male counterparts. (Binge-drinking is defined as regularly having more than four drinks in one sitting for women and more than five drinks for men; the study compared data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health between 2017-2019 and 2021-2023.) Women’s drinking habits have been catching up to men’s for decades, and scholars, journalists, and public health advocates have been noting the results: Women are increasingly dying, getting sick, and going to the ER from drinking. And why are we drinking more? It’s partly because of stress. (Research indeed shows that women are more likely to drink in order to cope than men. See also: “Mommy wine culture.”) The pandemic seems to have compounded the problem; articles and studies have abounded since 2020 showing how much more women were drinking to get through their days. Women, some have concluded, “need an intervention.” (Others, as one Meteor commenter put it a few months back, are “tired of being targeted for all the things.”)  But what accounts for younger women binge-drinking more than younger men? The study was careful not to draw conclusions; the authors say that because the groups analyzed in each time period are not the same people, they don’t know whether we’re seeing an actual rise among young women or, perhaps, a decline among men. But Susan Stewart, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University who studies alcohol use among women, has an initial hypothesis: “I think it has to do with women’s independence,” she says. “Young people are dating and having sex at lower rates, and less interested in serious relationships. Women are doing their own thing, which includes partying.” Stewart also points out that young women have higher rates of college completion than men, and college students binge-drink more than their non-college peers. It’s too early to tell whether this will be a longterm trend, Stewart says, but it could just be a side effect of an otherwise encouraging phenomenon: “women exercising a greater latitude of freedom.” In any case, it doesn’t hurt to familiarize yourself with the most recent health guidelines on drinking. And yes, alcohol can be a source of great pleasure—but in case you are struggling, there’s help to be had. AND:
 THE TRANS RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN SCOTLAND HAS BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARS. VIA GETTY IMAGES
 WEEKEND READING 📚On the bigger picture: The CEO of the Society for Women’s Health Research breaks down exactly how Trump-era NIH cuts will affect women’s health. (XX Factor) On the man at the center of a crisis: Here’s what to know about Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man unjustly trapped in a notorious prison in El Salvador. (The Guardian) On playing the game: Fox Sports host Joy Taylor talks to Irin Carmon about work, beauty, and those sexual harassment lawsuits. (The Cut)  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
What's the Right Way to Miscarry?
  March 27, 2025 Greetings, Meteor readers, You may not have noticed, but today was the worst day of the year: Opening Day. If those words mean nothing to you, then congratulations on having peace in your life. But if, like me, you happen to live with or tolerate an unbearable Yankees fan, then my heart goes out to you. Be strong. In today’s newsletter, another woman’s pregnancy is being criminalized in the state of Georgia. Plus, Rebecca Carroll writes about the unspoken lessons of the new Netflix hit Adolescence, and your weekend reading list. Do NOT take me out to the ball game, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONThe “right” way to miscarry: Last week, a young woman in Georgia named Selena Chandler-Scott was arrested and charged with “concealing the death of another person” and “abandonment of a dead body.” A cold-blooded murderer? No—a woman who had suffered a miscarriage and disposed of the remains in the dumpster outside her apartment complex. Journalist Jessica Valenti, who has been tracking this story, asks the right question here “Was she supposed to call the police after her miscarriage? A funeral home? At what point in pregnancy are women supposed to start reporting their pregnancy losses to law enforcement?” Chandler-Scott is not the first woman to be punished for miscarrying outside of a hospital where fetal remains can be “properly” disposed of. Last summer, also in Georgia, a young woman was placed under investigation after miscarrying in a public bathroom and placing her fetal remains in a trash can (no formal charges were filed; however, the fetus was sent for an autopsy, which is also what’s happening in the Chandler-Scott case). Just a few months later, Brittany Watts of Ohio was charged with felony abuse of a corpse after she miscarried at home and flushed the remains. A court declined to indict her, but Watts should never have been arrested in the first place. Prosecutors in these cases are banking on the fact that when people hear “fetal remains in a trash can,” they’ll react with disgust or disdain. But let’s back up: What should you do if you miscarry? The general advice is to seek medical care. But that’s exactly what Brittany Watts did, and the hospital declined to treat her because of Ohio’s abortion laws. She was sent back home where she miscarried, and later returned to that hospital for help with persistent bleeding. A nurse called the police, who went to Watts’ house and destroyed her bathroom searching for remains. It’s not hard to imagine Chandler-Scott’s case following the same trajectory had she gone to a hospital—and it’s easy to imagine why she, or any other woman, might currently decide not to do so. So if in a post-Dobbs America, home is not safe and hospitals are not safe, what is the “right” way to miscarry? Unfortunately, women like Selena Chandler-Scott will have to learn the answer to that from a jail cell. If you need help navigating a miscarriage or abortion, you can call or text the M+A Hotline for more information. AND:
 Netflix’s Adolescence Isn’t About Race, Except Maybe it IsThe hit show provokes an empathy that Black boys seldom getBY REBECCA CARROLL  (VIA GETTY IMAGES) Everyone is talking about Adolescence, the new Netflix drama that tells the harrowing story of a 13-year-old boy who is accused of killing his classmate, a girl named Katie. As a mother, I watched it as a cautionary tale about the perils of violent incel culture on the still-developing brains of young boys. But as a Black cultural critic who is also the mother of a Black boy, it also made me think about who we feel empathy for, and who we do not. To be clear, I loved Adolescence. Each episode is shot in one remarkable take, every scene strung together like a grievous aria. The effect is gutting. At the center of the show is 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), a baby-faced schoolboy with alabaster skin, brooding eyes, and a sullen British lilt. Jamie lives with his working-class family in the small town of West Yorkshire, England, and has been accused of the stabbing murder of his classmate. There are no spoilers to be had—damning video evidence is revealed in the first episode. The rest of the series unfolds the devastating aftermath of Jamie’s crime; the unraveling of his family following his arrest and incarceration; and the painstaking path to understanding his motivations. It is a path paved with compassion. Jamie is presented as a victim of the manosphere, spending all those unsupervised hours holed up in his room, delving deep into a misogynist world online and on social media. By the end of the series, I was still somewhat rooting for this white boy who, yes, was a target of cyberbullying and the coded emoji world of Instagram, but who also committed a violent murder. This show made me worry about men, and I never worry about men. But my empathy speaks volumes about how we are all conditioned to receive and accept the way this boy is presented—and the fact that he is not demonized, a grace seldom offered to young Black boys.  WEEKEND READING 📚On being an “old soul”: Please enjoy this delightful profile of The Last of Us star (and Pedro Pascal bestie) Bella Ramsey, whose recent diagnosis of autism enables them “to walk through the world with more grace towards [themselves].” (British Vogue) On the new lavender scare: McCarthy-era purges of gay and lesbian people offer an unsettling parallel to what’s happening today in the federal government. Trans workers explain what the last couple of months have been like at work. (Slate) On health: What do we lose when the word “women” is banned from medical research? (The 19th)  FOLLOW THE METEOR     Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? |
Pissed Off About Insurance? So Are These Doctors
Physicians are publicly calling out red tape and immoral practices. Vivian Manning-Schaffel gets the story.
Dr. Elisabeth Potter was still wearing a scrub cap when she fired off a now-viral Instagram post that took direct aim at the biggest health insurance company in the country. In her post, she talked about having to scrub out of surgery to hop on an urgent authorization call with United Healthcare, which was asking for details about her patient’s diagnosis and whether her overnight hospital stay was justified.
“Do you understand that she's asleep right now? And that she has breast cancer?” Potter, a Texas-based board-certified plastic surgeon and breast cancer reconstruction specialist, says she told the rep on the phone. “Actually, I don’t. That’s a different department,” she says the rep replied. “When I get a call from an insurance company for a woman with breast cancer, I always think they're going to try to deny her surgery,” she told The Meteor. After her post went viral, she shared another post on Instagram, a strongly worded letter from the attorneys of United Healthcare demanding that she take her post down, issue a public apology, and inform Newsweek that her “claims were false."
Then, she went on CNN.
It’s rare to see a doctor putting an insurance company on blast—partly because threats of legal action can be daunting for already overworked providers. Potter has long been the exception, taking to the morning-show circuit five years ago to advocate for safer breast implants despite what she called “bullying and pressure” from insurance companies. But since Potter’s post went viral, the floodgates have opened. Doctors like Washington, D.C. critical care physician Dr. Anita Patel, who recently took on Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield for attempting to impose time limits on anesthesia, and Florida breast cancer surgeon Dr. Alicia Billington, who took Cigna to task for what she saw as failing to adequately cover reconstructive surgeries, have gotten more vocal about healthcare industry practices that they say sacrifice the well-being of their patients.
THE NIGHTMARE OF “PEER-TO-PEER” CALLS
Dr. Shikha Jain, a hematologist and oncologist at the University of Illinois Cancer Center, has often used social media to amplify unjust insurance practices, tweeting about how insurance companies have delayed her patients’ urgent scans, denied coverage of a cancer combo therapy, and kept her on hour-long peer-to-peer calls. These delays and denials—which Dr. Jain calls “insurance scams”—are “all because insurance companies are just trying to save a buck and don't care about the patients’ lives,” she said. Her online advocacy has led to op-eds, TV interviews, and an appearance in a New York Times Opinion video piece.
“When I get a call from an insurance company for a woman with breast cancer, I always think they're going to try to deny her surgery”—Dr. Elisabeth Potter
One of Dr. Jain’s pet peeves? Those so-called “peer-to-peer” calls, like the one Dr. Potter had to make during surgery, when an insurance company doctor will speak with a patient’s doctor to verify the need for coverage. She’s missed peer-to-peer calls during busy clinic hours, when she sees patients back-to-back, and because she’s missed them, the insurance company denied the claim, she says. This requires the patient to appeal the decision, which can take several months.
What’s worse, the doctors interviewed say, the calls that can make or break a patient’s coverage aren’t always with doctors who share their specialty or expertise, sometimes resulting in significant care delays and perilous health risks for their patients. “You are the person, sitting in the room with the patient...crying with them because their chemotherapy has been denied,” Dr. Jain says, while “somebody who has never seen a patient with this disease is sitting at a computer a thousand miles away, making decisions based on an algorithm that is set up to deny care.”
Dr. Anita K. Patel, a pediatric critical care physician at a large children’s hospital in Washington, D.C. says she recently called out Anthem BCBS “100% in response” to Dr. Potter’s own post about the company’s announcement that it would put time limits on anesthesia (a decision it has since reversed due to widespread backlash). “I work in an ICU for kids,” says Patel. “We would get notifications they were denying coverage.” She often finds herself on peer-to-peer calls fighting for life-or-death necessities like ventilators and wheelchairs. She once spent what she describes as a “demoralizing” hour in circles with an attending physician on the insurance side who was intent on denying an ICU stay to a vulnerable child with a life-threatening neurologic injury. “Any delay of care could cost the kid their life, and there was no way the parents could afford the bill,” she said.
“NOBODY WANTS TO BE IN THE HOT SEAT”
So what can patients do when they’re at wits’ and wallets’ end with the insurance system? Besides keeping meticulous records of each contact with an insurance company and urging one’s workplace to pick plans that prioritize women’s health, Dr. Potter hopes patients will use social media for accountability, too. “I want to see open conversations about the nitty-gritty details of healthcare and the dark stories in courtrooms being had by providers and patients,” she says. But Dr. Jain says that while patients calling out insurance companies on social media can be effective, she understands why it could be the last thing they want to do. “How horrible is it if you're being treated for cancer,” she says, “then on top of that having to go to social media and fight for your ability just to get treated? That's not right.”
It may not be right, but the discomfort of publicly pressuring insurance companies could lead to more meaningful reform. Though, it may be a long road. While editing this piece, Dr. Potter fired off another IG post saying another patient came to her with a denial from United. “Nobody wants to be in the hot seat,” Dr. Potter says, “but I want to make it more comfortable for doctors and patients to say insurance and hospitals are doing things that are not good for patients, and not good for providers.”
Vivian Manning-Schaffel is a journalist and essayist who covers entertainment, culture, psychology, and women’s health. Her Substack, MUTHR, FCKD, covers pop culture through a feminist Gen X lens.
Can you talk about abortion in therapy?
  February 18, 2025 Fair Monduesday, Meteor readers, I am still emotionally recovering from watching my two husbands reunite during the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary special. I am, of course, talking about José Pedro Balmaceda Pascal Melero and Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio Melero. Yes, they took my last name because we’re a very progressive throuple.  In today’s newsletter, we try to understand what you can and can’t talk about with your therapist in abortion-ban states. Plus, a big payday for the athletes at Unrivaled. I love all my husbands equally, Shannon Pascal Ocasio Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONHow do you feel about that?: Therapy couches are sacred spaces, where people are encouraged to say anything and everything to process, heal, and move forward. But what happens when you live in a place like Texas or Mississippi, and the thing you need to talk about is an abortion that your state has made illegal? “I have this fear of bringing this subject up to my therapist because lines can get very blurry with mandated reporting,” one young Texas woman told Public Health Watch in a story released last week. The woman, who chose to remain anonymous, said she had used abortion pills to terminate a wanted but risky pregnancy and has been grieving ever since. But she feels she can’t work through that grief with a professional because of the “climate of fear” in anti-abortion states, where conservatives promise that anyone seen to be aiding and abetting abortion will be punished. How concerned should folks in therapy be? In most states, social workers and healthcare professionals are also mandated reporters, meaning they have an obligation to report any known or suspected abuse, child neglect, or intent to commit harm—so it’s understandable to be concerned that in a state that criminalizes abortion, a therapist could be pressed to report. But patient confidentiality laws are extremely clear about what qualifies as abuse or harm, and so far, abortion has not qualified. Still, the abortion laws in Texas, with their bounty rewards, are written just vaguely enough that healthcare professionals across fields are unsure of exactly what their clients can say to them or how they can respond, according to Public Health Watch’s reporting. As usual, the chaos is the point. “The intention behind these laws is to stoke confusion and fear so that people don’t seek abortion care and that providers are afraid to provide abortion care and that functionally people stop talking about it altogether out of fear,” Lucie Arvallo of the Texas reproductive rights group Jane’s Due Process told Public Health Watch. But as much as abortion ban states may try to fearmonger, confidentiality laws still protect those in therapy. If you’re concerned your therapist may not be trustworthy, you have options and, more importantly, you have rights. A mental health professional cannot share your name, contact information, or session notes without your consent or a subpoena from law enforcement. More suggestions for addressing the issue (and finding a new therapist if you need one):
AND:
 COLLIER AND THE NATASHA CLOUD DURING A GAME EARLIER THIS MONTH. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)
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