Health

The pandemic has laid bare the many risks of carceral responses to domestic abuse. We can no longer blindly accept that arrest is best.

Why are men dying from COVID-19 at higher rates than women? The pandemic raises crucial questions about how gender norms influence health.

Flu vaccination during pregnancy provides critical health benefits in utero. Yet only about half of pregnant women get the shot, with even lower rates among black women.

The perfect mother is a ubiquitous, if impossible, part of American life. We see her in spandex at the gym, working out—self-care!—a week after delivering twins. She’s at center-stage when internet experts opine about how mothers can prevent teenagers’ opioid addictions. In the shadow of this unattainable, idealized vision of a mother as a virtual guarantor of their children’s health and happiness, actual mothers berate themselves for falling short of perfection, feeling ashamed and inadequate. In the American legal system, the pervasive stereotype of the perfect mother can lead to serious consequences, dramatically distorting the judgments of police, prosecutors, judges, and jurors.

In the world’s richest country, maternal mortality rates are rising steadily. A 2016 study revealed a drastic increase in U.S. deaths during childbirth from 2000 to 2014, while worldwide rates were dropping. Advanced industrialized countries overall have an average maternal mortality rate of 12 deaths per 100,000 live births, while the U.S. has a rate of 19.9. Measuring up to 42 days after birth, the current rate for the U.K. is 8.9 deaths per 100,000 live births. There are a number of factors that play into maternal death rates, but given that the vast majority of pregnancy-related deaths are preventable, it is reasonable to conclude that greater availability of medical care could reduce this elevated death rate (and, conversely, a contraction of such care may well lead to higher mortality). This conclusion is borne out in a comparison of two states, Texas and California. Beyond their differences in the expansion of insurance to low-income residents, these states also differed in their attention to maternal medical care.