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Why Abortion Bans Discourage Women From Having Babies

Why Abortion Bans Discourage Women From Having Babies

Suppose you're a woman who's suffered miscarriages or has cancer and very much wants a baby. But your state's near ban on abortion lets government bureaucrats or even total strangers go after doctors who might perform one to save your life or ability to have another child.

The abortion law in Texas has added so many layers of anxiety to pregnancy that some women have decided to not get pregnant at all, according to Dr. Patrick Ramsey, head of maternal medicine at University of Texas Health, San Antonio. He says women, especially those over 35 and at risk of complications, worry that it's no longer safe to get pregnant in the state of Texas.

Sarah Morris found 10 weeks into her pregnancy that she had cervical cancer. "This is a baby we want," she told the Houston Chronicle, "but I don't want to die."

At higher risk of bleeding and other life-threatening complications, Morris had few safe treatment options for the cancer that wouldn't hurt the baby. Keeping the baby would mean letting the cancer to grow unchecked until delivery.

Texas bans abortions six weeks after conception, a period in which most women don't know they're pregnant. The law's exception for medical emergencies ignores the realities of complicated cases. Many problems that seem manageable at first take sudden turns for the worst. Thus, an honest medical judgment might be to end the pregnancy before the woman is at death's door.

About eight percent of pregnancies involve complications that, if ignored, would hurt the mother or the baby, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

The Texas law opens doctors to second-guessing by total strangers, who could collect $10,000 or more if they can show that the law was violated. In addition to facing lawsuits and minimum fines of $100,000, the providers could lose their medical licenses. They could even be sentenced to life in prison.

Morris' doctor wouldn't take the risk. She told the pregnant woman that she would have to be on the cusp of death before she'd do the abortion.

If you're a pregnant woman faced with this traumatic set of facts, what do you do? Do you go out and hunt for a new set of doctors in another state where an abortion could be performed?

Elizabeth Sepper, a law professor at the University of Texas in Austin, said the law "chills medical providers who are afraid their particular patient's case won't perfectly fit within the exception or they'll have to prove a case fits within the exception."

A recent study at Dallas hospitals found that pregnant patients faced nearly double the risk of serious health consequences after the six-week abortion ban law took effect. Curiously, Texas is delaying publication of updated maternal death data until after the midterms.

Fifteen weeks into her pregnancy, Kristina Cruickshank arrived at Houston Methodist Sugar Land vomiting, in pain and knowing she had lost her unborn baby. Another Texas hospital able to provide proper treatment at first declined her transfer and then put her case before an ethics committee before it would do anything. This took three days.

The Texas Medical Association and Baylor College of Medicine have asked the state to clarify its abortion law to protect providers who act in good faith.

Consider that under Roe v. Wade, Morris and her husband could have easily ended the 10-week pregnancy, obtained cancer treatment and then tried again to have more children. The Cruickshanks could have shortened their torment and attend to Kristina's recovery.

Threats. Hounding by creeps seeking $10,000 bounties. Physical and mental agony because doctors are afraid to act. Such are the risks of getting pregnant in the state of Texas. Small wonder if fewer women even try.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.

California Governor Signs Tough New Vaccination Law

California Governor Signs Tough New Vaccination Law

By Phil Willon and Melanie Mason, Los Angeles Times, (TNS)

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Adopting one of the most far-reaching vaccination laws in the nation Tuesday, California barred religious and other personal-belief exemptions for schoolchildren, a move that could affect tens of thousands of students and sets up a potential court battle with opponents of immunization.

California’s weakened public health defenses against measles and other preventable diseases led to the adoption of the measure, signed Tuesday by Gov. Jerry Brown, intended to stem the rising number of parents opting not to inoculate their children.

Public health officials said a proliferation of waivers, many sought because of unfounded health concerns, helped fuel a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland in December and quickly spread across the West, infecting 150 people.

“I think it’s a great day for California’s children. You’re living in a state that just got a little safer,” said Dr. Paul Offit, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an advocate of immunization.

California joins Mississippi and West Virginia as the only states to ban vaccination waivers based on religion. All 50 states require immunization of children starting school, although about 20 allow exemptions based on personal beliefs.

Beginning with the 2016 school year, the new law could affect more than 80,000 California students.

Only medical exceptions will be allowed for those entering day care and kindergarten. Children with physician-certified allergies and immune-system deficiencies, for example, will be exempted.

Parents can still decline to vaccinate children who attend private home-based schools or public independent studies off campus.
“The science is clear that vaccines dramatically protect children against a number of infectious and dangerous diseases,” Brown said in a prepared statement Tuesday. “While it’s true that no medical intervention is without risk, the evidence shows that immunization powerfully benefits and protects the community.”

Brown had supported a religious exemption as recently as 2012, and faced criticism because of it.

This year, hundreds of people opposed to vaccination descended on the Capitol to protest the new legislation. They argued that it would violate parents’ right to make decisions about their children’s health and interfere with their children’s right to a public education.

“I’m heartbroken,” said Rebecca Estepp of Poway, who belongs to the advocacy group California Coalition for Health Choice, which opposed the legislation. “It’s so coercive. It’s so punitive.”

Estepp, who said her 17-year-old son was injured by a vaccine, said opponents would be likely to challenge the law in court.
Dotty Hagmier, a mother of three from Orange County who also criticized the measure, said many families may choose home schools or move out of the state.

“These moms are strong,” she said. “And they’re not going to just give up. They’re not going to give up their rights.”

Health officials say declining immunization rates have led to a loss of “herd immunity” in some schools and communities, a situation in which high local vaccination rates against a contagious disease suppress it from spreading.

“When you get really close to immunizing everybody … the less you’ll see of those diseases,” said Dr. Jeffrey Gunzenhauser, interim health officer for Los Angeles County.

Gunzenhauser said the Los Angeles public health department would work with schools to make sure children who register without being up to date on vaccinations become caught up as soon as possible.

Until recently, many preventable diseases, including whooping cough and mumps, were thought to be largely eradicated due to widespread inoculation. The United States declared measles to be eliminated from the country in 2000.

Fueled by persistent assertions that vaccines were linked to autism, a growing number of parents began declining immunizations for their children. Vaccination rates in California’s kindergarten classes steadily declined between 2001 and 2013, particularly in affluent and coastal areas of the state.

As immunization rates dipped, there were flare-ups of measles. A 2012 bill required parents who sought personal-belief exemptions to first be informed by a health care professional about the benefits and risks of vaccines. Brown signed that bill but carved out an exception for those who declined vaccines for religious reasons.

The Disneyland outbreak — the worst in California in 15 years — was a catalyst for further legislative action.

Public health officials warn that California remains at high risk of another outbreak because immunization levels in some communities remain so low. Dr. Gil Chavez, the state epidemiologist, said in April that immunization rates in some schools are at 50 percent or lower, creating an ideal environment for the virus to spread.

Last fall, 13,592 kindergarten students — 2.54 percent of California’s kindergarteners — had personal-belief exemptions on file. That is a sharp increase from 1998, when 4,032 kindergarteners, or 0.77 percent, had them.

The new vaccination law goes into effect a year from now. On July 1, 2016, newly enrolled children in day care and school will need to be immunized absent medical waivers.

Children who have a personal-belief exemption on file before Jan. 1, 2016 will have more time to comply with the law.

Such children who are in nursery school or preschool must comply to enroll in kindergarten; those in elementary school must do so by 7th grade. Those already in junior high and high school will remain exempt.

Leah Russin, a Palo Alto mother who worked with Vaccinate California, an advocacy group in favor of the legislation, said the new law helps assuage fears that many communicable diseases could afflict her 22-month-old son, Leo.

“There are a lot of things to worry about when you have a little kid,” Russin said, “but I no longer have to worry that he’s going to get measles at school.”
___
(Times staff writers Rong-Gong Lin, Eryn Brown and Emily Foxhall contributed to this report.)

Photo: Not the most magical place on earth when children are sick. The measles outbreak at Disneyland earlier this year triggered California to enact one of the strictest laws for vaccination in the country. This is Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland. Tom Bricker via Flickr

U.S. Birth Rate Finally Rises, Thanks To Moms In Their 30s And Early 40s

U.S. Birth Rate Finally Rises, Thanks To Moms In Their 30s And Early 40s

By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The nation’s birth rate rose 1 percent last year as parents in the U.S. welcomed nearly 4 million babies into the world, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That increase may not sound like much, but it’s the first time the birth rate has gone up in seven years.

The bump in births was courtesy of women in their 30s and 40s, the CDC data show. The birth rate jumped 3 percent for women between the ages of 30 and 39 and 2 percent for women ages 40 to 44.

Women between the ages of 25 and 29 and ages 45 and older had babies at the same rate in 2014 as they did in 2013.

The birth rate fell 2 percent for younger women in their 20s, and it plunged 9 percent for teenagers. In fact, the teen pregnancy rate hit another all-time low of 24.2 births per 1,000 young women between the ages of 15 and 19. That represents a 61 percent decline since 1991, the most recent peak for teen births, according to the report.

Overall, the birth rate — also known as the general fertility rate — was 62.9 births per 1,000 women, according to data compiled by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. That added up to 3,985,924 live births in 2014.

But that wasn’t enough babies to keep the U.S. population steady, the report authors noted. Their calculations showed that a hypothetical group of 1,000 women would give birth to 1,861.5 babies over their entire lives. But in order for a generation to replace itself, those 1,000 women would need to have 2,100 babies. That hasn’t been the case since 2007, the researchers wrote.

Women in nearly all racial and ethnic groups gave birth to more babies in 2014, the CDC noted. The birth rates for whites, African-Americans and Latinas all rose by 1 percent in 2014, and it rose 6 percent for Asian-Americans. The only exceptions were Native American and Alaska Native women, whose birth rate declined 2 percent.

The birth rate for new mothers was slightly lower in 2014 than in 2013, declining by less than 1 percent. However, the rate of second births rose 1 perccent, third births increased 2 percent and the birth rate for additional children grew by 3 percent.

The total number of babies born to unmarried women rose by nearly 9,000 in 2014, up 1 percent compared with the previous year. However, the birth rate for these women actually declined by 1 percent.

The rate of preterm births — those that occurred before 37 weeks of pregnancy — also fell slightly from 9.62 percent in 2013 to 9.57 percent in 2014. In addition, 8 percent of babies born in 2014 weighed less than 5 pounds, 8 ounces and were considered to have a low birth weight, the same as in 2013.

The data in the study came from birth records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Ten states contributed incomplete data, and the study authors estimate that their nationwide figures account for 99.7 percent of the births that actually occurred last year.

Photo: Cuties. Aimee Ray via Flickr