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• Maternal mortality. Maternal mortality is decreasing for most of the world, but not for the US. What the Washington Post article doesn’t highlight are the terrible racial and socio-economic disparities in the mortality rate.
• Adoption through a Reproductive Justice lens. Is there a disconnect between the Reproductive Justice movement and the adoption advocacy community? One member of that community charges, “The feminist movement that let us down before? Well, it’s called reproductive justice now. And I want in.”
• Single Payer. Now that so much of the ACA has been implemented, perhaps we can mourn and renew our advocacy for the solution that should have been. Physicians for a National Health Program reflects on “Getting serious about single payer.”
• Death of Marsden Wagner. Marsden Wagner, M.D., supporter of mothers and midwives, passed away on May 1. Wagner was a perinatologist and perinatal epidemiologist, Director of Women and Children’s Health for the World Health Organization, expert witness, author, advocate, and critical thinker. His 2008 book, Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First, made sense of the deluge of lawsuits in the 1990s for bad outcomes following VBACs (vaginal birth after cesarean). Wagner showed clearly that the outcomes and resulting lawsuits were not a consequence of VBACs, but rather of poor management of VBACs – more specifically, due to the use of Cytotec as an induction agent in women with previous cesareans. He also wrote at length on the persecution of midwives. Wagner lived a long, productive, and generous life. May his memory be a blessing.