The health crisis facing Black mothers

April 13, 2023

Hello, my lovely Meteor readers,

Have you done your taxes yet? No shame if you haven’t. Personally, I just finished mine last night…only to have it rejected. (Apparently, Form Blah-Blah needed a cross-reference to Form Such-and-Such or whatever.) I know I’m nowhere near the first or the last to say it, but why is this whole process so damn hard? Just tell me what I owe you and let me be!

We’ve got a jam-packed newsletter for you all today: a glass-half-empty mifepristone ruling; a multimillion-dollar debt-burning ceremony; Black Maternal Health week; and the hit TV show “A League of Their Own” is BACK! (Sort of.)

And don’t forget to vote for us in the 27th Annual People’s Voice Webby Awards. We’ve been nominated for News & Politics and Public Service & Activism in their social media category. Both of our entries are about abortion, and if you agree that telling these stories is crucial right now, we’d be grateful for your vote!

Double-checking my Form Such-and-Such,

Bailey Wayne Hundl

WHAT’S GOING ON

The fight for mifepristone continues: After Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled late last Friday that the FDA should revoke its approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, despite over twenty years of its safe and effective use, the (also mostly Trump-appointed) 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decided late last night to partially overrule this decision. This ruling avoids the pill’s outright suspension for now; the three-judge panel determined that, since the FDA first approved mifepristone in the year 2000, too much time had passed for the approval to be revoked and that doing so would have “significant public consequences.”

But the ruling also comes with some heavy asterisks. The court upheld Kacsmaryk’s ruling that some of the FDA’s more recent changes to make the pill more accessible should be suspended, including:

Using mifepristone for up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven
Sending mifepristone by mail
Reducing the number of required in-person visits from three to one
Allowing certain healthcare providers (in addition to doctors) to prescribe mifepristone
Using a generic version of mifepristone approved by the FDA in 2019

At times, the court’s 42-page decision even parrotted the anti-abortion rhetoric used in Kacsmaryk’s case, intentionally using the scary-but-bogus term “chemical abortion” and at one point referring to a fetus or embryo as “an unborn child.” The judges also claimed that “as a result of the FDA’s failure to regulate this potent drug,” the harm done by the pill is “sufficiently concrete.”

Sufficiently concrete? Not exactly! Thanks to a wonderful report from The Washington Post detailing all the science Kacsmaryk ignored (and all the flawed pseudoscience he relied on instead), we know that of the 5.6 million people who used mifepristone between the year 2000 and last June, only 28 mifepristone-related deaths were reported, making the drug safer than penicillin. And even in those 28 cases (some of which involved overdoses or pre-existing conditions), the evidence is too incomplete and inconclusive to demonstrate any cause of death to mifepristone.

The Justice Department announced Thursday that it would ask the Supreme Court to block the 5th Circuit’s ruling and protect access to mifepristone. Given SCOTUS’s current makeup, it’s hard to be optimistic. But some argue that the FDA could just refuse to comply, and we may find out soon how real that possibility is.

AND:

It is Black Maternal Health Week. According to the CDC, Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than their white counterparts. This disparity has only intensified in the post-Roe landscape—since “obstetricians and gynecologists are choosing not to work in red states, fearing the inability to provide needed care to their patients amidst an ever growing slate of anti-abortion restrictions,” Ms. reports. As a result, Black, poor, rural, and Indigenous women face “care deserts” which dismantle the maternal care these groups have access to. More on this gross inequity here.

On Wednesday, NPR became the first major news organization to suspend all Twitter activity after the Elon Musk-owned platform added a label reading “US state-affiliated media” to the media company’s main account—the same label Twitter uses for propaganda outlets in countries like Russia or China. (The label was changed to “Government-funded Media” but was not removed.) In a statement yesterday, NPR said, “We are not putting our journalism on platforms that have demonstrated an interest in undermining our credibility and the public’s understanding of our editorial independence.” Shortly after, PBS followed suit.

Academy Award-winning filmmaker and Meteor founding member Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy will be the first woman and the first person of color to direct a Star Wars movie. Only took ‘em 46 years, but what an excellent choice.

In response to the so-called “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act,” which seeks to make trans women competing in women’s sports teams a Title IX violation, 40 professional athletes—including reigning power couple Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe—signed an open letter to Congress calling eloquent bullshit on the bill’s claim of protecting women. As the letter points out, “Every single child should have access to the lifesaving power of sports.”

I’m not crying, you’re crying: A North Carolina church purchased over $3 million of medical debt from its local community (for only $15,048!) and ceremoniously burned it all away.

Juul Labs reached a $462 million settlement Wednesday after multiple lawsuits over the company’s aggressive marketing to young people. As New York attorney general Letitia James put it, “Juul’s lies led to a nationwide public health crisis and put addictive products in the hands of minors who thought they were doing something harmless.”

While defending a bill blocking trans children from gender-affirming care, Missouri Sen. Mike Moon (the same guy who once beheaded a chicken on Facebook Live) was asked about his vote to keep the legal marrying age at 12 years old. His response? “Do you know how many kids have been married at age 12? I do. And guess what? They’re still married.” So umm…that’s called child marriage. There’s literally a global movement to stop it. Also: Why does he know so many child brides??? 😨

Everyone’s favorite sapphic TV show, “A League of Their Own,” has officially been renewed…for four more episodes. That’s it? Somehow, this feels like a win for lesbians everywhere and a homophobic attack all at the same time.