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Tag: pregnancy and childbirth

  • ‘The best gift ever’: Baby is born after the rarest of pregnancies, defying all odds

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    Suze Lopez holds her baby boy on her lap and marvels at the remarkable way he came into the world.

    Before little Ryu was born, he developed outside his mom’s womb, hidden by a basketball-sized ovarian cyst — a dangerous situation so rare that his doctors plan to write about the case for a medical journal.

    Just 1 in 30,000 pregnancies occur in the abdomen instead of the uterus, and those that make it to full term “are essentially unheard of – far, far less than 1 in a million,” said Dr. John Ozimek, medical director of labor and delivery at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles where Ryu was born. “I mean, this is really insane.”

    Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse who lives in Bakersfield, California, didn’t know she was pregnant with her second child until days before giving birth.

    When her belly began to grow earlier this year, she thought it was her ovarian cyst getting bigger. Doctors had been monitoring the mass since her 20s, leaving it in place after removing her right ovary and another cyst.

    Lopez experienced none of the usual pregnancy symptoms, such as morning sickness, and never felt kicks. Though she didn’t have a period, her cycle is irregular and she sometimes goes years without one.

    For months, she and her husband Andrew Lopez went about their lives and traveled abroad.

    But gradually, the pain and pressure in her abdomen got worse, and Lopez figured it was finally time to get the 22-pound cyst removed. She needed a CT scan, which required a pregnancy test first because of the radiation exposure. To her great surprise, the test came back positive.

    Lopez shared the news with her husband at a Dodgers baseball game in August, handing him a package with a note and a onesie.

    “I just saw her face,” he recalled, “and she just looked like she wanted to weep and smile and cry at the same time.”

    Shortly after the game, Lopez began feeling unwell and sought help at Cedars-Sinai. It turned out she had dangerously high blood pressure, which the medical team stabilized. They also did blood work and gave her an ultrasound and an MRI. The scans found that her uterus was empty, but a nearly full-term fetus in an amniotic sac was hiding in a small space in her abdomen, near her liver.

    “It did not look like it was directly invading any organs,” Ozimek said. “It looked like it was mostly implanted on the sidewall of the pelvis, which is also very dangerous but more manageable than being implanted in the liver.”

    Dr. Cara Heuser, a maternal-fetal specialist in Utah not involved with the case, said almost all pregnancies that implant outside the uterus — called ectopic pregnancies — go on to rupture and hemorrhage if not removed. Most commonly, they occur in the fallopian tubes.

    A 2023 medical journal article by doctors in Ethiopia described another abdominal pregnancy in which mother and baby survived, pointing out that fetal mortality can be as high as 90% in such cases and birth defects are seen in about 1 in 5 surviving babies.

    But Lopez and her son beat all the odds.

    On August 18, a medical team delivered the 8-pound (3.6-kilogram) baby while she was under full anesthesia, removing the cyst during the same surgery. She lost nearly all of her blood, Ozimek said, but the team got the bleeding under control and gave her transfusions.

    Doctors continually updated her husband about what was happening.

    “The whole time, I might have seemed calm on the outside, but I was doing nothing but praying on the inside,” Andrew Lopez said. “It was just something that scared me half to death, knowing that at any point I could lose my wife or my child.”

    Instead, they both recovered well.

    “It was really, really remarkable,” Ozimek said.

    Since then, Ryu — named after a baseball player and a character in the Street Fighter video game series — has been healthy and thriving. His parents love watching him interact with his 18-year-old sister, Kaila, and say he completes their family.

    With Ryu’s first Christmas approaching, Lopez describes feeling blessed beyond measure.

    “I do believe in miracles,” she said, looking down at her baby. “God gave us this gift — the best gift ever.”

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Jurors to hear closing arguments in Ohio trial of officer charged in killing

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    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Closing arguments in the murder trial of an Ohio officer charged in the shooting death of a pregnant Black mother killed in a supermarket parking lot after being accused of shoplifting are set for Wednesday.

    Prosecutors have told jurors that 21-year-old Ta’Kiya Young wasn’t a threat to anyone at the time she was shot. Defense attorneys for Blendon Township police officer Connor Grubb have emphasized that Young’s vehicle carried deadly force when she accelerated it near the 31-year-old officer, rendering his use of force within the standard of being “objectively reasonable.”

    Grubb is charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault in connection with Young’s death on Aug. 24, 2023. He faces up to life in prison. Franklin County Common Pleas Judge David Young, no relation to Ta’Kiya, dropped four of 10 counts against him Tuesday that related to the death of Young’s unborn daughter, agreeing with his attorneys that prosecutors failed to present proof that Grubb knew Young was pregnant when he shot her.

    The prosecution and defense both rested Tuesday after a roughly two-week trial. Jurors were shown the bodycam footage of the shooting on the first day of testimony, with testimony following over the trial’s course including from a use-of-force expert, an accident reconstructionist, the officer who responded to the scene with Grubb and a police policy expert.

    They never heard from Grubb, whose side of the story was contained in a written statement read into the record by a special agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

    Sean Walton, an attorney representing Young’s family, Nadine Young, Ta’Kiya’s grandmother, and an aunt, Michelle White, said they expected Grubb to take the stand.

    “It is curious that he did not testify. But the video speaks for itself and if he wants the video to speak for him, then so be it,” Walton said.

    Young and White appeared emotionally tired while taking questions from reporters Tuesday. White said that the verdict will allow the family “to finally be able to start the healing process.” At various times, Nadine held back tears while talking about the toll of the trial.

    “I just gotta hold on to God and just know, God, he’s in control,” Nadine said.

    In the body camera footage, the officer said he observed Young arguing with his fellow officer and positioned himself in front of her vehicle to provide backup and to protect other people in the parking lot. He said he drew his gun after he heard Young fail to comply with his partner’s commands. When she drove toward him, he said in the statement, he felt her car hit his legs and shins and begin to lift his body off the ground.

    Grubb and another officer approached Young’s car outside a Kroger in suburban Columbus about a report that she was suspected of stealing alcohol from the store. She partially lowered her window, and the other officer ordered her out. Instead, she rolled her car forward toward Grubb, who fired a single bullet through her windshield into her chest, video footage showed.

    The video showed an officer at the driver’s side window telling Young she was accused of shoplifting and ordering her out of the car. Young protested, and both officers cursed at her and yelled at her to get out. Young could be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”

    Then she turned the steering wheel to the right, the car rolled slowly forward and Grubb fired his gun, footage showed. Moments later, after the car came to a stop against the building, they broke the driver’s side window. Police said they tried to save her life, but she was mortally wounded. Young and her unborn daughter were subsequently pronounced dead at a hospital.

    A full-time officer with the township since 2019, Grubb was placed paid administrative leave after the shooting.

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  • Trial continues for officer charged with shooting pregnant Black woman

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    COLUMBUS, Ohio — The murder trial of an Ohio police officer continues Thursday in the 2023 shooting death of a pregnant Black mother he and another officer confronted about an accusation of shoplifting.

    Connor Grubb is charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter and felonious assault in the death of Ta’Kiya Young, 21, and the unborn girl due three months later. It wasn’t clear whether Grubb would take the stand after the officer’s written statement was read into the record on Wednesday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.

    Grubb and the fellow officer from the Blendon Township force had approached Young’s car on Aug. 24, 2023, about a report she was suspected of stealing alcohol from a grocery store in suburban Columbus. She partially lowered her window and the other officer ordered her out. Instead, she rolled her car forward toward Grubb, who fired a single bullet through her windshield into her chest, video footage showed.

    A special prosecutor told the jury during opening statements last week that Grubb lacked justification for shooting Young, arguing she did not pose a threat to him or anyone at the time of the encounter. The defense countered that Young’s acceleration of her vehicle in Grubb’s direction was grounds for the 31-year-old officer’s actions.

    In Grubb’s written statement, read to the jury by a special agent for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, the officer said he observed Young arguing with his fellow officer and positioned himself in front of her vehicle to provide backup and to protect other people in the parking lot.

    He said he drew his gun after he heard Young fail to comply with his partner’s commands. When she drove toward him, he said in the statement, he felt her car hit his legs and shins and begin to lift his body off the ground.

    Some members of Young’s family left the courtroom on Monday, the first day of testimony, as jurors were shown the bodycam footage of the shooting.

    The video showed an officer at the driver’s side window telling Young she was accused of shoplifting and ordering her out of the car. Young protested and both officers cursed at her and yelled at her to get out. Young could be heard asking them, “Are you going to shoot me?”

    Then she turned the steering wheel to the right, the car rolled slowly forward and Grubb fired his gun, footage showed. Moments later, after the car came to a stop against the building, they broke the driver’s side window. Police said they tried to save her life, but she was mortally wounded. Young and her unborn daughter were subsequently pronounced dead at a hospital.

    A full-time officer with the township since 2019, Grubb was placed paid administrative after the shooting

    Mark Collins, one of the officer’s attorneys, had told reporters after Young’s arraignment that the video shows the shooting was justified, saying the officer was facing a threat of serious physical injury or death from being hit by the car.

    Sean Walton, the family’s attorney, has said Grubb escalated the encounter by unnecessarily drawing his gun when he first confronted Young.

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  • Lawyers for Stephen Bryant make final appeal over brain damage to stop South Carolina execution

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    COLUMBIA, S.C. — Lawyers for a man on South Carolina’s death row are trying to stop his execution later this month by arguing the judge who sentenced him to die never got to consider how badly his brain was damaged from his mother’s alcohol and drug use while pregnant.

    Stephen Bryant, 44, is being put to death for killing Willard “TJ” Tietjen in his home in October 2004. Investigators said Bryant burned Tietjen’s eyes with cigarettes after shooting him and painted “catch me if u can” and other taunting messages on the wall with the victim’s blood. Prosecutors said he also shot and killed two men he was giving rides to over five days that terrorized Sumter County in October 2004.

    Attorneys for the state argue that the three killings, along with another shooting and two burglaries mostly along dirt roads in the rural county east of Columbia weren’t impulsive crimes from a damaged brain but were methodical and cunning.

    But Bryant’s lawyers are arguing in a final appeal to the state Supreme Court that while his original defense team said he was unnerved in the months before the killings because he couldn’t stop thinking about being sexually abused by relatives as a child, they didn’t detail how Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder had affected his ability to conform to the law.

    Bryant’s lawyers said he didn’t get a full brain scan before his 2008 trial that could have identified in-utero damage that was never repaired, according to court papers.

    They also submitted a 2024 interview with a clinical psychologist wherein Bryant described abuse he suffered from male relatives, his mother, a preacher’s wife and several strippers in his neighborhood before he became a teenager.

    Prosecutors have pushed back, saying Bryant’s attorneys shouldn’t be allowed to make a different case to keep him from being put to death after the first one failed.

    They argue that the number of crimes, their planning and Bryant’s lingering Tietjen’s home to desecrate his body, as well as taunting Tietjen’s wife and daughter over the phone, were deliberate acts of evil — not impulses from a broken brain.

    “Bryant was methodical, cunning, and took pleasure in deadly rampage including the gratuitous infliction of horror on Mr. Tietjen’s family,” they wrote in court papers.

    They said the only way the legal system could fail is to delay his Nov. 14 execution by firing squad.

    Beyond the appeal, Bryant can also ask the governor to reduce his death sentence to life in prison in a decision that, if made, won’t be announced until minutes before the execution is set to start. No South Carolina governor has ever granted clemency in the modern era of the death penalty.

    Bryant will be the third man executed by firing squad in South Carolina this year.

    Struggles to find drugs to use for lethal injection led to an unintended 13-year pause in executions and state lawmakers to introduce the method that’s often associated with mutinies and desertion in armies, as frontier justice in America’s Old West or as a tool of terror and political repression in the former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.

    Outside of South Carolina, only three other prisoners in the U.S. have been executed by firing squad since 1977. All were in Utah, most recently Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

    Bryant’s execution will be the seventh in South Carolina since executions restarted in September 2024. All the others have chosen execution by lethal injection after the state was able to obtain the drug needed because of a secrecy law. The state also has an electric chair.

    Bryant will have a hood placed on his head before he is shot by three volunteers from 15 feet (4.6 meters) away.

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  • More anti-abortion pregnancy centers offer medical services as Planned Parenthood clinics close

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    Pregnancy centers in the U.S. that discourage women from getting abortions have been adding more medical services — and could be poised to expand further.

    The expansion — ranging from testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections to even providing primary medical care — has been unfolding for years. It gained steam after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade three years ago, clearing the way for states to ban abortion.

    The push could get more momentum with Planned Parenthood closing some clinics and considering shuttering others following changes to Medicaid. Planned Parenthood is not just the nation’s largest abortion provider, but also offers cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and other reproductive health services.

    “We ultimately want to replace Planned Parenthood with the services we offer,” said Heather Lawless, founder and director of Reliance Center in Lewiston, Idaho. She said about 40% of patients at the anti-abortion center are there for reasons unrelated to pregnancy, including some who use the nurse practitioner as a primary caregiver.

    The changes have frustrated abortion-rights groups, who, in addition to opposing the centers’ anti-abortion messaging, say they lack accountability; refuse to provide birth control; and most offer only limited ultrasounds that cannot be used for diagnosing fetal anomalies because the people conducting them don’t have that training. A growing number also offer unproven abortion-pill reversal treatments.

    Because most of the centers don’t accept insurance, the federal law restricting release of medical information doesn’t apply to them, though some say they follow it anyway. They also don’t have to follow standards required by Medicaid or private insurers, though those offering certain services generally must have medical directors who comply with state licensing requirements.

    “There are really bedrock questions,” said Jennifer McKenna, a senior adviser for Reproductive Health and Freedom Watch, a project funded by liberal policy organizations that researches the pregnancy centers, “about whether this industry has the clinical infrastructure to provide the medical services it’s currently advertising.”

    Perhaps best known as “crisis pregnancy centers,” these mostly privately funded and religiously affiliated centers were expanding services such as diaper banks ahead of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling.

    As abortion bans kicked in, the centers expanded medical, educational and other programs, said Moira Gaul, a scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of SBA Pro-Life America. “They are prepared to serve their communities for the long-term,” she said in a statement.

    In Sacramento, California, for instance, Alternatives Pregnancy Center in the last two years has added family practice doctors, a radiologist and a specialist in high-risk pregnancies, along with nurses and medical assistants. Alternatives — an affiliate of Heartbeat International, one of the largest associations of pregnancy centers in the U.S — is some patients’ only health provider.

    When The Associated Press asked to interview a patient who had received only non-pregnancy services, the clinic provided Jessica Rose, a 31-year-old woman who took the rare step of detransitioning after spending seven years living as a man, during which she received hormone therapy and a double mastectomy.

    For the last two years, she’s received all medical care at Alternatives, which has an OB-GYN who specializes in hormone therapy. Few, if any, pregnancy centers advertise that they provide help with detransitioning. Alternatives has treated four similar patients over the past year, though that’s not its main mission, director Heidi Matzke said.

    “APC provided me a space that aligned with my beliefs as well as seeing me as a woman,” Rose said. She said other clinics “were trying to make me think that detransitioning wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

    As of 2024, more than 2,600 anti-abortion pregnancy centers operated in the U.S., up 87 from 2023, according to the Crisis Pregnancy Center Map, a project led by University of Georgia public health researchers who are concerned about aspects of the centers. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 765 clinics offered abortions last year, down more than 40 from 2023.

    Over the years, pregnancy centers have received a boost in taxpayer funds. Nearly 20 states, largely Republican-led, now funnel millions of public dollars to these organizations. Texas alone sent $70 million to pregnancy centers this fiscal year, while Florida dedicated more than $29 million for its “Pregnancy Support Services Program”

    This boost in resources is unfolding as Republicans have barred Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds under the tax and spending law President Donald Trump signed in July. While federal law already blocked the use of taxpayer funds for most abortions, Medicaid reimbursements for other health services were a big part of Planned Parenthood’s revenue.

    Planned Parenthood said its affiliates could be forced to close up to 200 clinics.

    Some already had closed or reorganized. They have cut abortion in Wisconsin and eliminated Medicaid services in Arizona. An independent group of clinics in Maine stopped primary care for the same reason. The uncertainty is compounded by pending Medicaid changes expected to result in more uninsured Americans.

    Some abortion-rights advocates worry that will mean more health care deserts where the pregnancy centers are the only option for more women.

    Kaitlyn Joshua, a founder of abortion-rights group Abortion in America, lives in Louisiana, where Planned Parenthood closed its clinics in September.

    She’s concerned that women seeking health services at pregnancy centers as a result of those closures won’t get what they need. “Those centers should be regulated. They should be providing information which is accurate,” she said, “rather than just getting a sermon that they didn’t ask for.”

    Thomas Glessner, founder and president of the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates, a network of 1,800 centers, said the centers do have government oversight through their medical directors. “Their criticism,” he said, “comes from a political agenda.”

    In recent years, five Democratic state attorneys general have issued warnings that the centers, which advertise to people seeking abortions, don’t provide them and don’t refer patients to clinics that do. And the Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether a state investigation of an organization that runs centers in New Jersey stifles its free speech.

    Choices Medical Services in Joplin, Missouri, where the Planned Parenthood clinic closed last year, moved from focusing solely on discouraging abortion to a broader sexual health mission about 20 years ago when it began offering STI treatment, said its executive director, Karolyn Schrage.

    The center, funded by donors, works with law enforcement in places where authorities may find pregnant adults, according to Arkansas State Police and Schrage.

    She estimates that more than two-thirds of its work isn’t related to pregnancy.

    Hayley Kelly first encountered Choices volunteers in 2019 at a regular weekly dinner they brought to dancers at the strip club where she worked. Over the years, she went to the center for STI testing. Then in 2023, when she was uninsured and struggling with drugs, she wanted to confirm a pregnancy.

    She anticipated the staff wouldn’t like that she was leaning toward an abortion, but she says they just answered questions. She ended up having that baby and, later, another.

    “It’s amazing place,” Kelly said. “I tell everybody I know, ‘You can go there.’”

    The center, like others, does not provide contraceptives — standard offerings at sexual health clinics that experts say are best practices for public health.

    “Our focus is on sexual risk elimination,” Schrage said, “not just reduction.”

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  • Immigrant rights group calls for removing pregnant women from detention

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    BATON ROUGE, La. — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Women taken into custody by U.S. immigration agents while pregnant say they received inadequate care in a letter Wednesday that calls on the Trump administration to stop holding expectant mothers in federal detention facilities.

    The letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is part of a broader campaign in recent months by Democrats and immigrant rights groups to draw attention to what they say is the mistreatment of pregnant women who have been detained in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

    The Department of Homeland Security has defended the care given to pregnant detainees, saying they are given regular prenatal visits and nutritional support. The agency did not immediately provide figures on the number of pregnant women in detention, as Democrats have demanded.

    The letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union gives accounts from pregnant women who say they were shackled while being transported, placed in solitary confinement for multiple days and given insufficient food and water while held in detention facilities in Louisiana and Georgia.

    The ACLU said that over the past five months it has met with more than a dozen females who were pregnant while in ICE custody — including some who had a miscarriage while detained. The women reported “gravely troubling experiences,” the letter states, including lack of translation during medical encounters and medical neglect. One suffered a “severe” infection after her miscarriage.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, one of those woman said she was kept in handcuffs while being transported to Louisiana — a journey that lasted five hours and spanned two plane rides. The woman, who has since been released from custody and given birth, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of facing retaliation during her ongoing case.

    An officer told her he considered taking off the handcuffs but worried she would escape. “How am I going to escape if I’m pregnant?” the woman said she responded.

    She said she felt as if she’d been kidnapped and experienced dizziness, nausea and suffered from vaginal bleeding. During her time in the detention facility, she said pregnant women were not offered special diets and described the food as horrible. She alleged that detainees had to “beg” for water and toilet paper.

    The ACLU’s letter is the latest call for an investigation into the arrest and treatment of pregnant detainees.

    Senate Democrats wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in September, expressing concerns about the “prevalence and treatment” of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women in ICE custody and demanded that the agency stop detaining such people unless there are “exceptional circumstances.”

    Democratic lawmakers have also said information about the number of pregnant women in ICE custody has been difficult to ascertain.

    DHS has said that pregnant detainees receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations “aligned with community standards of care.”

    “Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review,” the agency said in an August press release.

    ___ Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.

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  • Trump’s comments on autism validate ‘MAHA’ movement

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    NEW YORK — As medical professionals react with alarm to President Donald Trump’s unproven statements about Tylenol, childhood vaccines and autism, a different group of Americans is feeling vindicated.

    For the “Make America Healthy Again” movement, a diverse coalition that includes supporters of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., anti-vaccine activists and others who distrust the American health care system, Trump’s Monday announcement was a watershed moment.


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    Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By ALI SWENSON and JILL COLVIN – Associated Press

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  • Missouri judge strikes down ballot summary for anti-abortion measure backed by Republican lawmakers

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    JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge has struck down a ballot summary for an anti-abortion amendment backed by Republican state lawmakers while concluding that it presented an unfair and insufficient description to voters.

    Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ruled Friday that the ballot summary must be rewritten, but he rejected a request by abortion-rights advocates to block the proposed constitutional amendment from going to voters.

    The judge said the summary prepared by Republican lawmakers failed to inform voters that the new measure would repeal an abortion-rights amendment adopted by voters last year. He directed the secretary of state’s office to write a new summary.

    The ruling marks the latest in a series of twists and turns in Missouri’s abortion policies over the past three years.

    When the U.S. Supreme Court ended a nationwide right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, that triggered a Missouri law to take effect banning abortions “except in cases of medical emergency.” But abortion-rights activists then gathered initiative petition signatures to put their own measure on the ballot.

    Last November, Missouri voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to abortion until fetal viability, generally considered sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy. That measure, known as Amendment 3, also allows later abortions to protect the life or health of pregnant women and creates a “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” that includes birth control, prenatal and postpartum care and “respectful birthing conditions.”

    In May, the Republican-led Legislature shut down Democratic opposition and approved a new referendum that would repeal Amendment 3 and instead allow abortions only for a medical emergency or fetal anomaly, or in cases of rape or incest up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. That proposed amendment also would prohibit gender transition surgeries, hormone treatments and puberty blockers for minors, which already are barred under state law.

    Abortion-rights advocates had argued in a lawsuit that the entire measure should be stricken, alleging that the combination of abortion and transgender policies violated a constitutional requirement that amendments contain only one subject. But Green agreed with Republican lawmakers that both topics fit under the measure’s title of “reproductive health care.”

    The court order provided both sides an opportunity to claim victory.

    Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office said in a statement that the court upheld “the central constitutional issues.”

    Tori Schafer, director of policy and campaigns at the ACLU of Missouri, said abortion-rights advocates are “pleased that the judge saw through the legislature’s deceitful language” in the ballot summary.

    Both the attorney general’s office and Republican state Rep. Brian Seitz, who championed the latest measure, said they are confident in Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins’ ability to revise the ballot summary.

    If it’s a simple wording change, “I think we would be fine with that, because we do want the Missouri voters to know what they are voting on,” Seitz said Friday.

    The proposed amendment will appear on the November 2026 ballot, unless Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe schedules the vote for sooner. The new measure is slated to be listed as Amendment 3 — the same number as the original abortion amendment.

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  • Cardi releases highly anticipated ‘Am I the Drama?’ album

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    LOS ANGELES — Seven years after her landmark debut “Invasion of Privacy,” Cardi B has returned. And, in typical fashion, she’s doing it with plenty of spectacle.

    The Grammy winner made her long-awaited sophomore album “Am I the Drama?,” released Friday, feel like prime-time theater. Friday’s release arrived days after she revealed she revealed her fourth pregnancy — her first child with New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs — and barely two weeks after she emerged victorious from a Los Angeles courtroom.

    With a title that nods to the scrutiny that has trailed her career, Cardi B channels the swirl of headlines into music that doubles down on her strengths: blunt confidence, playful wit and sharp-edged bravado. The 23-track project features collaborations with Janet Jackson, Lizzo, Selena Gomez, Megan Thee Stallion, Cash Cobain, Kehlani, Summer Walker and Tyla.

    Cardi B threads in past hits like “Up” and “WAP” with Megan Thee Stallion. That choice sparked criticism online for padding the album with older material.

    However, Cardi B, never one to duck an argument, clapped back on X in June:

    “This will be the last and only time I’m gonna address this…‘WAP’ and ‘Up’ are two of my biggest songs…they deserve a home.” She added, “These two songs don’t even count for first week sales so what are yall even crying about???… Now let them eat cake. Go cry about it!!!”

    Alongside those chart-toppers, Cardi unleashed fresh tracks too. The chest-thumping “Outside” and the breezier “Imaginary Playerz” showcase her range between hard-hitting anthems and smoother, radio-ready flows.

    Cardi’s personal life has only amplified the spotlight. Her relationship with Diggs — who joined the Patriots this season after years as one of the NFL’s top receivers — has drawn as much attention off the field as on it. The couple kept a low profile until this week’s pregnancy reveal, marking their first child together.

    The announcement capped a turbulent stretch for Cardi B, who also prevailed this month in a lawsuit filed by a security guard alleging assault during a doctor’s visit while she was secretly pregnant years ago. The courtroom win and public reveal only sharpen the backdrop for “Am I the Drama?”, an album that leans into the very question that has hovered over her career.

    The rap star has three children from her previous marriage with rapper Offset: daughters Blossom, 1, and Kulture, 7, and son Wave, 4. Diggs also has a daughter from a previous relationship, Nova, who was born in 2016.

    Cardi B will now take all of her momentum into the Little Miss Drama Tour, her first arena tour. The 30-plus date trek begins Feb. 11 in Palm Desert, California, and wraps in Atlanta in April, with stops in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and Toronto.

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  • Trump administration agrees to restore health websites and data

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    NEW YORK — Federal officials have agreed to restore health- and science-related webpages and data under to a lawsuit settlement with doctors groups and other organizations who sued.

    The settlement was announced this week by the lead plaintiffs in the case, the Washington State Medical Association.

    Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, federal health officials deleted or removed information on a range of topics including pregnancy risks, opioid-use disorder and the AIDS epidemic. The move was made in reaction to a Trump executive order that told agencies to stop using the term “gender” in federal policies and documents.

    The administration saw it as a move to end the promotion of “gender ideology.” Doctors, scientists and public health advocates saw it as an “egregious example of government overreach,” says Dr. John Bramhall, the organization’s president, said in a statement.

    “This was trusted health information that vanished in a blink of an eye — resources that, among other things, physicians rely on to manage patients’ health conditions and overall care,” Bramhall said.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to restore more than 100 websites and resources to the state they were in, said Graham Short, a spokesperson for the Washington State doctors’ group.

    “We expect the sites will be restored in the coming weeks,” Short said in an email.

    The case was filed in federal court in Seattle. The plaintiffs include, among others, the Vermont Medical Society, the Washington State Nurses Association and the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care.

    The defendants included U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and federal health agencies and officials who work under him.

    Federal officials responded to questions about the settlement with this statement: “HHS remains committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”

    The case is similar to one filed in Washington, D.C., by Doctors for America and others against the government. That lawsuit also sought to force the government to restore health information to the public, and the two cases overlapped somewhat in the websites they targeted, Short said.

    In July, a judge in the Doctors for America case ordered restoration of websites. As of last week, 167 of the websites at issue had been restored and 33 were still under review, according to a court filing.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Road rage shooting of pregnant 17-year-old in Louisiana sparks outrage from officials

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    BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana officials are expressing indignation over a road rage shooting that killed a pregnant teenager and caused her baby to be delivered early.

    Katelynn Strate, 17, was a passenger in the car and seven months pregnant when she was struck in the head by a bullet fired by a driver in another vehicle on Sunday, the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office said.

    Strate was taken to a hospital and placed on life support, the sheriff’s office said in a statement Monday. Her baby was delivered by emergency cesarean section and was “doing well” in a neonatal intensive care unit, according to the statement.

    “This is terrible. This poor infant is fighting for their life in the NICU while his or her mother is on life support. All because of road rage? There is no excuse,” Attorney General Liz Murrill posted on the social platform X on Tuesday.

    The sheriff’s office later wrote in a post on Facebook that Strate had “officially become a donor hero.”

    Law enforcement said a man driving a silver truck and the driver of the SUV the teenager was riding in were tailgating and “brake-checking” each other around 9 a.m. Sunday in Ponchatoula, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of New Orleans.

    Authorities said the truck’s driver, Barry West, 54, shot one round into the SUV when it was in front of his vehicle. Police said he believed the occupants of the SUV had shot at him first, but evidence showed no shots were fired from the SUV and no weapon was found inside, the sheriff’s office said.

    West was charged with one count of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder, illegal use of a weapon and obstruction of justice.

    The Associated Press could not immediately identify an attorney who could comment on West’s behalf.

    “This is a senseless tragedy on Sunday morning with no logical reason for this family to be experiencing this heartbreak right now,” said Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Gerald Sticker.

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  • Beyoncé endorses Kamala Harris in joyful speech at Houston rally: ‘I’m here as a mother’

    Beyoncé endorses Kamala Harris in joyful speech at Houston rally: ‘I’m here as a mother’

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    “I’m not here as a celebrity, I’m not here as a politician. I’m here as a mother,” Beyoncé said at a campaign rally for Kamala Harris.

    “A mother who cares deeply about the world my children and all of our children live in, a world where we have the freedom to control our bodies, a world where we’re not divided,” she said Friday night in Houston.

    “Imagine our daughters growing up seeing what’s possible with no ceilings, no limitations,” she continued. “We must vote, and we need you.”

    At the end, Beyoncé, who was joined onstage by her Destiny’s Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, introduced Harris. “Ladies and gentlemen, please give a big, loud, Texas welcome to the next president of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris,” she said.

    She did not perform — unlike in 2016, when she performed at a presidential campaign rally for Hilary Clinton in Cleveland.

    Houston is Beyoncé’s hometown, and Harris’ presidential campaign has taken on Beyonce’s 2016 track “Freedom,” a cut from her landmark 2016 album “Lemonade,” as its anthem.

    Harris first used the song in July during her first official public appearance as a presidential candidate at her campaign headquarters in Delaware. That same month, Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles, publicly endorsed Harris for president.

    Beyoncé gave permission to Harris to use the song, a campaign official who was granted anonymity to discuss private campaign operations confirmed to The Associated Press.

    Arriving in the back-half of “Lemonade,” “Freedom” samples two John and Alan Lomax field recordings, which document Jim Crow-era folk spirituals of Southern Black churches and the work songs of Black prisoners from 1959 and 1948, respectively. It also features Pulitzer Prize winner Kendrick Lamar.

    Kinitra D. Brooks, an academic and author of “The Lemonade Reader,” says the song “‘Freedom” is so important because it shows that freedom isn’t free. The freedom to be yourself, the political freedom … it’s the idea that you must fight for freedom, and that it is winnable.”

    The Harris rally in Houston highlighted the perilous medical fallout from the state’s strict abortion ban and putting the blame squarely on Donald Trump.

    Since abortion was restricted in Texas, the state’s infant death rate has increased, more babies have died of birth defects and maternal mortality has risen.

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  • Hundreds of frozen waffle products recalled due to possible listeria contamination

    Hundreds of frozen waffle products recalled due to possible listeria contamination

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    Hundreds of frozen waffle products sold in leading retailers including Walmart and Target are being recalled because of possible contamination by the listeria bacteria, according to the manufacturer.

    TreeHouse Foods said Friday that it issued a voluntary recall after discovering possible contamination during routing testing at its plant. It said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Canadian food regulators are aware of the recall.

    Listeria infections can cause mild illness including fever and diarrhea or more serious problems. The illness is most dangerous to pregnant women, newborns, adults over 65 and people with weakened immune systems, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

    The CDC estimates that 1,600 people are infected with listeria each year in the United States and 260 die.

    The recalled waffles are sold under a variety of names including Walmart’s Great Value, Target’s Good & Gather and private label brands sold by Food Lion, Kroger and Schnucks. TreeHouse published a complete list.

    TreeHouse said there have been no confirmed reports of illness related to the waffles.

    The company said consumers holding any of the products should dispose of them or return them to the store for credit.

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  • Twins born conjoined celebrate 1st birthday after separation surgery

    Twins born conjoined celebrate 1st birthday after separation surgery

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    PHILADELPHIA — Twin brothers who were born conjoined recently celebrated their first birthday after undergoing successful separation surgery.

    Amari and Javar Ruffin, whose family lives in Philadelphia, were born via cesarean section on Sept. 29, 2023. The brothers — who shared part of their sternum, diaphragm, abdominal wall and liver — weighed a combined 6 pounds.

    On Aug. 21, a surgical team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia with more than two dozen specialists, including surgeons, anesthesiologists, radiologists, nurses, and many others, operated for eight hours to separate the boys. Their abdomens were closed and rebuilt using layers of mesh and plastic surgery techniques.

    The boys went home on Oct. 8 to be with their parents, Tim and Shaneka, and their siblings, Kaylum and Anora.

    “Seeing them each in their own beds was an indescribable feeling,” Shaneka Ruffin said. “It feels like we are beginning a new journey as a family of six. We are so grateful to CHOP for helping make this day possible and letting us start this next chapter.”

    The Ruffins learned the twins were conjoined through a routine ultrasound 12 weeks into the pregnancy. Shaneka Ruffin said it was recommended to her that she terminate her pregnancy. They got a second opinion, and the hospital told them that though the boys had a rare condition, they could be separated successfully.

    Conjoined twins occur roughly once in every 35,000-80,000 births. The hospital is one of only a few in the U.S. with expertise in separating them.

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  • Putin ‘wants Russians to have sex at WORK’ to counter plummeting birth rate

    Putin ‘wants Russians to have sex at WORK’ to counter plummeting birth rate

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    VLADIMIR Putin is telling Russians to start having sex at work in an attempt to counter the plummeting birth rates.

    The Kremlin is set to implement a sex-at-work scheme after too many citizens reportedly complained of not having enough time or energy for late night romps.

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    Vladimir Putin is telling Russians to start having sex at work in an attempt to counter the plummeting birth ratesCredit: Getty
    The Russian tyrant has called the push for more babies a 'question of national importance'

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    The Russian tyrant has called the push for more babies a ‘question of national importance’Credit: Alamy
    Putin kissing a baby during a public visit in Russia

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    Putin kissing a baby during a public visit in RussiaCredit: AFP

    The plan has been proposed by a health minister after Putin made an urgent demand to increase the number of people having babies.

    It will see staff allowed to get it on during their lunch and coffee breaks in peace.

    Bosses have even been told to encourage all midday romps.

    Russian doctor Yevgeny Shestopalov is pushing for the scheme to be implemented and sees it as a way to stop “lame excuses”.

    He said: “Being very busy at work is not a valid reason, but a lame excuse.

    “You can engage in procreation during breaks, because life flies by too quickly.”

    Putin has said in the past that “the fate of Russia depends on how many of us there will be”.

    Calling the huge push for more babies a “question of national importance”.

    Give birth, give birth and give birth again, you need to give birth

    Zhanna RyabtsevaRussian MP

    Blinkered politician Tatyana Butskaya, 49, has even drawn up a blueprint plan telling Russian employers to coerce women into having babies.

    She said:“Large families are becoming the new elite so [regional] governors should report on the birth rate.

    “Each employer should look at their workplace, what is your birth rate?

    “This is exactly how we should pose this question, we will monitor it.”

    Putin is ‘grooming secret son, 9, to be his successor with his daughters ready to act as regents’, claims ex-Russian MP

    The sex-at-work scheme is just one of many initiatives in Russia aimed at women and couples. 

    In Moscow, women aged 18 to 40 are being told to attend free fertility checks to assess their “reproductive potential”.

    Several regions are even offering students cash rewards if they give birth.

    Chelyabinsk is paying any mum under 24 a whopping £8,500 for the birth of their first child. 

    Karelia has a similar scheme with them paying £850. 

    A number of prominent Putin politicians have been ordering their residents to think about having children from a young age.

    Anna Kuznetsova has demanded women should have their first born before they reach 21 so they can go on to have multiple other children.

    As MP Zhanna Ryabtseva has echoed similar thoughts saying women should already be thinking about having kids by the time they reach 18.

    She said: “Give birth, give birth and give birth again, you need to give birth.”

    Russia’s current fertility rate is just 1.5 children per woman.

    This is far below the typical rate of 2.1 which most researchers agree is vital to keep up a stable population.

    The population of Russia is expected to take a worrying nosedive over the next 25 years.

    Projections say the 144 million population Putin controls as of today will drop to under 130 million by 2050.

    Critics say Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is to blame for the shrivelling birth rate. 

    Almost 640,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the fighting started in February 2022, according to Ukraine.

    This has torn families apart with fathers and husbands yet to return home.

    The uncertainties of war are also said to be scaring young couples away from starting a family. 

    Who are Putin’s children?

    THE official number of Vlad’s offspring is two, according to the Kremlin.

    These are a pair of daughters, Maria Vorontsova, 39, and Katerina Tikhonova, 37.

    Both come from his previous marriage to ex-first lady Lyudmila Putina.

    Their marriage lasted 30 years, spanning Mr Putin’s rapid rise to the top of Russia’s political system.

    Tikhonova started as an acrobatic dancer in her younger years before she went on to spearhead a major new Russian artificial intelligence initiative.

    Vorontsova has built a career in medical research, is an expert on dwarfism and married to a Dutch businessman, Jorrit Faassen.

    But, independent journalists recently confirmed Putin has a number of other hidden children.

    Two sons, Ivan, nine and Vladimir, five, have reportedly grown up with the tyrant and his longterm lover Alina Kabaeva, 41.

    They have already confirmed another daughter, Luiza, 21, born from an extra-marital relationship with a cleaner turned millionaire.

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  • Global players’ union builds on FIFA regulations with a guide for expectant mothers

    Global players’ union builds on FIFA regulations with a guide for expectant mothers

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    When Cheyna Matthews got pregnant with her first child back in 2018, she had a lot of questions.

    In addition to concerns about her legal rights as a professional soccer player, how would she manage pregnancy and the birth? And, importantly, when could she safely play again?

    “We play a lot of times because we love it. But now it’s also providing the financial security. So when you’re thinking of having children it’s like, `OK, I also have to figure out how I can get back to work.’ And when you’re working with your body, it’s one of the most important things,” Matthews said.

    In an effort to give players and teams alike a guide for best practices surrounding maternity, global players’ union FIFPRO released a guide on Tuesday that covers how to manage pregnancy, what to expect in childbirth and how to prepare for a return to soccer.

    Matthews, who retired from pro soccer in 2023, along with United States left back Crystal Dunn, Germany goalkeeper Almuth Schult and Iceland midfielder Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir, helped devise FIFPRO’s “Postpartum Return to Play Guide.”

    The protocol builds on FIFA’s groundbreaking regulations concerning maternity and parental rights that were first enacted in 2021 and expanded earlier this year.

    Dr. Alex Culvin, FIFPRO director of policy and strategic relations for women’s soccer, said FIFA’s new regulations and the protections that were put in place increased the likelihood that more players would feel comfortable starting families during their playing careers, but there was very little guidance about what pregnancy, childbirth and recovery looked like.

    “There is this perceived incompatibility, not just in football, in sport more generally, that you can’t have a child and be an athlete. And actually there are players out there who have disproven this on a daily basis,” Culvin said. “So we wanted to kind of bring all of this together, and elevate and listen to the player voice, centralize their experiences alongside experts on the scientific literature, and create something that hadn’t been produced before, with the FIFPRO stamp on it.”

    The medical professionals who contributed to the guide were Dr. Pippa Bennett of the U.K. Sports Institute, Dr. Rita Tomas, the team physician for the Portuguese women’s national team, professor Kirsty Elliott-Sale with the Manchester Metropolitan University’s Institute of Sport, and FIFPRO Chief Medial Officer Dr. Vincent Gouttebarge.

    Matthews, who played in the 2019 and 2023 Women’s World Cup for Jamaica, has three sons with husband Jordan Matthews, a tight end for the NFL’s Carolina Panthers.

    She had her first child when she was with the Washington Spirit in the National Women’s Soccer League. She was among the league’s first players to have a child at what would be considered the peak of her playing career. Nine months after she gave birth, she played for Jamacia at the Women’s World Cup.

    Matthews said she was lucky to have both a national team and club team that supported her before the FIFA regulations and the NWSL’s collective bargaining agreement were adopted.

    “We are seeing more pregnancies, and I’ve had a lot of players coming to me asking questions, and I’ve been able to kind of help just from my experiences,” Matthews said. “But to have this guideline just from the initial finding out that you’re pregnant — even that experience itself, you have so many thoughts, so many ideas. What do I do? But having a guideline for the players, it does ease the stress.”

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    AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

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  • The Berlin Zoo is hoping for more German-born giant pandas as scans confirm a pregnancy

    The Berlin Zoo is hoping for more German-born giant pandas as scans confirm a pregnancy

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    BERLIN — The Berlin Zoo has much anticipated news: Meng Meng the panda is pregnant again, months after the first giant pandas born in Germany were sent to China

    The zoo said Tuesday that ultrasound scans over the weekend showed Meng Meng is expecting two cubs. They still have plenty of growing to do but the zoo expects the birth at the end of August, if all goes well, it said.

    Meng Meng and male panda Jiao Qing arrived in Berlin in 2017. In August 2019, Meng Meng gave birth to Pit and Paule, also known by the Chinese names Meng Xiang und Meng Yuan, the first giant pandas born in Germany.

    The twins were a star attraction in Berlin, but they were flown to China in December — a trip that was contractually agreed from the start but delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. China gifted friendly nations with its unofficial mascot for decades as part of a “panda diplomacy″ policy. The country now loans pandas to zoos on commercial terms.

    Giant pandas have difficulty breeding and births are particularly welcomed. There are about 1,800 pandas living in the wild in China and a few hundred in captivity worldwide.

    Meng Meng was artificially inseminated in March. The zoo noted that female pandas are only capable of reproducing for about 72 hours per year.

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  • Dozens of pregnant women being turned away from ERs despite federal law

    Dozens of pregnant women being turned away from ERs despite federal law

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    WASHINGTON — Bleeding and in pain, Kyleigh Thurman didn’t know her doomed pregnancy could kill her.

    Emergency room doctors at Ascension Seton Williamson in Texas handed her a pamphlet on miscarriage and told her to “let nature take its course” before discharging her without treatment for her ectopic pregnancy.

    When the 25-year-old returned three days later, still bleeding, doctors finally agreed to give her an injection to end the pregnancy. It was too late. The fertilized egg growing on Thurman’s fallopian tube ruptured it, destroying part of her reproductive system.

    That’s according to a complaint Thurman and the Center for Reproductive Rights filed last week asking the government to investigate whether the hospital violated federal law when staff failed to treat her initially in February 2023.

    “I was left to flail,” Thurman said. “It was nothing short of being misled.”

    The Biden administration says hospitals must offer abortions when needed to save a woman’s life, despite state bans enacted after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion more than two years ago. Texas is challenging that guidance and, earlier this summer, the Supreme Court declined to resolve the issue.

    More than 100 pregnant women in medical distress who sought help from emergency rooms were turned away or negligently treated since 2022, an Associated Press analysis of federal hospital investigations found.

    Two women — one in Florida and one in Texas — were left to miscarry in public restrooms. In Arkansas, a woman went into septic shock and her fetus died after an emergency room sent her home. At least four other women with ectopic pregnancies had trouble getting treatment, including one in California who needed a blood transfusion after she sat for nine hours in an emergency waiting room.

    In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.

    Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies isn’t considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients, the Center for Reproductive Rights argues.

    “As fearful as hospitals and doctors are of running afoul of these state abortion bans, they also need to be concerned about running afoul of federal law,” said Marc Hearron, a center attorney. Hospitals face a federal investigation, hefty penalties and threats to their Medicare funding if they violate the federal law.

    The organization filed complaints last week with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service alleging that different Texas emergency rooms failed to treat two patients, including Thurman, with ectopic pregnancies.

    One complaint says Kelsie Norris-De La Cruz, 25, lost a fallopian tube and most of an ovary after an Arlington, Texas, hospital sent her home without treating her ectopic pregnancy, even after a doctor said discharge was “not in her best interest.”

    “The doctors knew I needed an abortion, but these bans are making it nearly impossible to get basic emergency healthcare,” she said in a statement. “I’m filing this complaint because women like me deserve justice and accountability from those that hurt us.”

    Conclusively diagnosing an ectopic pregnancy can be difficult. Doctors cannot always find the pregnancy’s location on an ultrasound, three doctors consulted for this article explained. Hormone levels, bleeding, a positive pregnancy test and an ultrasound of an empty uterus all indicate an ectopic pregnancy.

    “You can’t be 100% — that’s the tricky part,” said Kate Arnold, an OB-GYN in Washington. “They’re literally time bombs. It’s a pregnancy growing in this thing that can only grow so much.”

    Texas Right to Life Director John Seago said state law protects doctors from prosecution for terminating ectopic pregnancies, even if a doctor “makes a mistake” in diagnosing it.

    “Sending a woman back home is completely unnecessary, completely dangerous,” Seago said.

    But the state law has “absolutely” made doctors afraid of treating pregnant patients, said Hannah Gordon, an emergency medicine physician who worked in a Dallas hospital until last year.

    She recalled a patient with signs of an ectopic pregnancy at her Dallas emergency room. Because OB-GYNs said they couldn’t definitively diagnose the problem, they waited to end the pregnancy until she came back the next day.

    “It left a bad taste in my mouth,” said Gordon, who left Texas hoping to become pregnant and worried about the care she’d receive there.

    When Thurman returned to Ascension Seton Williamson a third time, her OB-GYN told her she’d need surgery to remove the fallopian tube, which had ruptured. Thurman, still heavily bleeding, balked. Losing the tube would jeopardize her fertility.

    Her doctor told her she risked death if she waited any longer.

    “She came in and she’s like, you’re either going to have to have a blood transfusion, or you’re going to have to have surgery or you’re going to bleed out,” Thurman said, through tears. “That’s when I just kind of was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m, I’m dying.’”

    The hospital declined to comment on Thurman’s case, but said in a statement it “is committed to providing high-quality care to all who seek our services.”

    In Florida, a 15-week pregnant woman leaked amniotic fluid for an hour in Broward Health Coral Springs’ emergency wait room, according to federal documents. An ultrasound revealed the patient had no amniotic fluid surrounding the fetus, a dangerous situation that can cause serious infection.

    The woman miscarried in a public bathroom that day, after the emergency room doctor listed her condition as “improved” and discharged her, without consulting the hospital’s OB-GYN.

    Emergency crews rushed her to another hospital, where she was placed on a ventilator and discharged after six days.

    Abortions after 15 weeks were banned in Florida at the time. Broward Health Coral Springs’ obstetrics medical director told an investigator that inducing labor for anyone who presents with pre-viable premature rupture of membranes is “the standard of care, has been a while, regardless of heartbeat, due to the risk to the mother.”

    The hospital declined comment.

    In another Florida case, a doctor admitted state law had complicated emergency pregnancy care.

    “Because of the new laws … staff cannot intervene unless there is a danger to the patient’s health,” a doctor at Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida, told an investigator who was probing the hospital’s failure to offer an abortion to a woman whose water broke at 15 weeks, well before the fetus could survive.

    Serious violations that jeopardized a mother or her fetus’ health occurred in states with and without abortion bans, the AP’s review found.

    Two short-staffed hospitals — in Idaho and Washington — admitted to investigators they routinely directed pregnant patients to other hospitals.

    A pregnant patient at a Bakersfield, California, emergency room was quickly triaged, but staff failed to realize the urgency of her condition, a uterine rupture. The delay, an investigator concluded, may have contributed to the baby’s death.

    Doctors at emergency rooms in California, Nebraska, Arkansas and South Carolina failed to check for fetal heartbeats or discharged patients who were in active labor, leaving them to deliver at home or in ambulances, according to the documents.

    Nursing and doctor shortages, trouble staffing ultrasounds around-the-clock and new abortion laws are making the emergency room a dangerous place for pregnant women, warned Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official.

    “It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” she said.

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  • 911 operator calmly walks expectant mom through a surprise at-home delivery

    911 operator calmly walks expectant mom through a surprise at-home delivery

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — When a 911 call came in saying a woman in Nashville was experiencing sudden labor, emergency operator Kaitlyn Kramer says her training kicked in as she successfully coached the expectant mom and bystanders through delivering a healthy baby boy.

    Audio of the July 7 call reveals Kramer’s calm voice guiding the process even as the voices on the other end grew frantic as the mother’s water broke and the baby’s head started crowning.

    Kramer is a training officer for Nashville’s Department of Emergency Communications.

    “Whatever the call comes in, you have to be able to maintain control,” Kramer said, adding that she had to remember to stay calm herself.

    “We’re going to do this together,” Kramer told a friend of the mother’s over the phone. Moments later, the caller is yelling with excitement that the baby arrived but mentioned that the cord was wrapped around his neck.

    Kramer said the bystanders were able to free the baby and soon enough, Kramer could hear his first wails over the phone.

    “When I think of a baby being first born, the biggest thing for me is I want to hear them cry,” said Kramer. “And he did that on his own.”

    The whole call lasted about eight minutes before the ambulance arrived and Kramer got to congratulate the mother and bystanders on a job well done. The family did not respond to a request for an interview.

    “I think my favorite part about this whole situation was there was also another younger child in the room, maybe between the ages of seven and 10 years old,” Kramer said “She started talking to the baby, welcoming him to the world. And that absolutely just melted my heart.”

    Kramer said this is the second time she has helped during a delivery over the 911 hotline.

    “We get a lot of sad here. Our job is hard,” Kramer said. “This is one of the reasons that remind me that what I do is important … it just it makes me happy to do what I do.”

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  • Competing for two: Pregnant Olympians push the boundaries of possibility in Paris

    Competing for two: Pregnant Olympians push the boundaries of possibility in Paris

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    PARIS — Many Olympic athletes take to Instagram to share news of their exploits, trials, victories and heartbreaks. After her fencing event ended last week, Egypt’s Nada Hafez shared a little bit more.

    She’d been fencing for two, the athlete revealed — and in fact had been pregnant for seven months.

    “What appears to you as two players on the podium, they were actually three!” Hafez wrote, under an emotional picture of her during the match. “It was me, my competitor, & my yet-to-come to our world, little baby!” Mom (and baby) finished the competition ranked 16th, Hafez’s best result in three Olympics.

    A day later, an Azerbaijani archer was also revealed on Instagram to have competed while six-and-a-half months pregnant. Yaylagul Ramazanova told Xinhua News she’d felt her baby kick before she took a shot — and then shot a 10, the maximum number of points.

    There have been pregnant Olympians and Paralympians before, though the phenomenon is rare for obvious reasons. Still, most stories have been of athletes competing far earlier in their pregnancies — or not even far enough along to know they were expecting.

    Like U.S. beach volleyball star Kerri Walsh Jennings, who won her third gold medal while unknowingly five weeks pregnant with her third child.

    “When I was throwing my body around fearlessly, and going for gold for our country, I was pregnant,” she said on “Today” after the London Games in 2012. She and husband Casey (also a beach volleyball player) had only started trying to conceive right before the Olympics, she said, figuring it would take time. But she felt different, and volleyball partner Misty May-Treanor said to her — presciently, it turned out — “You’re probably pregnant.”

    It makes sense that pregnant athletes are pushing boundaries now, one expert says, as both attitudes and knowledge develop about what women can do deep into pregnancy.

    “This is something we’re seeing more and more of,” says Dr. Kathryn Ackerman, a sports medicine physician and co-chair of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s women’s health task force, “as women are dispelling the myth that you can’t exercise at a high level when you’re pregnant.”

    Ackerman notes there’s been little data, and so past decisions on the matter have often been arbitrary. But, she says, “doctors now recommend that if an athlete is in good condition going into pregnancy, and there are no complications, then it’s safe to work out, train, and compete at a very high level.” An exception, she says, might be something like ski racing, where the risk of a bad fall is great.

    But in fencing, says the Boston-based Ackerman, there is clearly protective padding for athletes, and in less physically strenuous sports like archery or shooting, there’s absolutely no reason a woman can’t compete.

    It’s not just an issue of physical fitness, of course. It is deeply emotional. Deciding whether and how to compete while trying to also grow a family is a thorny calculus that male athletes simply don’t have to consider — at least in anywhere near the same way.

    Just ask Serena Williams, who famously won the Australian Open in 2017 while pregnant with her first child. When, some five years later, she wanted to try for a second, she stepped back from tennis — an excruciating decision.

    “Believe me, I never wanted to have to choose between tennis and a family,” Williams — who won four Olympic golds — wrote in a Vogue essay. “I don’t think it’s fair. If I were a guy, I wouldn’t be writing this because I’d be out there playing and winning while my wife was doing the physical labor of expanding our family. Maybe I’d be more of a Tom Brady if I had that opportunity.”

    Williams welcomed Adira River Ohanian in 2023, joining older sister Olympia. And Olympia was the name that U.S. softball player Michele Granger’s mother reportedly suggested for the baby Granger was carrying when she pitched the gold-medal winning game in Atlanta in 1996. Her husband suggested the name Athena. Granger preferred neither.

    “I didn’t want to make that connection with her name,” said Granger to Gold Country Media in 2011. The baby was named Kady.

    The choice to combine motherhood and a sports career involves many factors, to be sure, which vary by sport and by country. Franchina Martinez, 24, who competes in track for the Dominican Republic, says more female athletes retire early than male athletes in her country, and one reason is pregnancy.

    “When they get pregnant, they believe they won’t be able to return, unlike in more developed countries where they might be able to,” said Martinez. “So they quit the sport, they don’t return to compete, or they aren’t the same.”

    For the sake of her career, she said, she doesn’t plan to have children in the near future: “As long as I can avoid it for the sake of my sport, I will postpone it because I am not ready for that yet.”

    At the Paris fencing venue over the weekend, fans were mixed between admiration for the bravery and determination of Hafez, a 26-year-old former gymnast with a degree in medicine, and speculation about whether it was risky.

    “There are certainly sports that are less violent,” said Pauline Dutertre, 29, sitting outside the elegant Grand Palais during a break in action alongside her father, Christian. Dutertre had competed herself on the international circuit in saber until 2013. “It is, after all, a combat sport.”

    “In any case,” she noted, “it is courageous. Even without making it to the podium, what she did was brave.”

    Marilyne Barbey, attending the fencing from Annecy in southeastern France with her family, wondered about safety too, but added: “You can fall anywhere, at any time. And, in the end, it is her choice.”

    Ramazanova, who was visibly pregnant when competing, also earned admiration, including from her peers. She reached the final 32 in her event.

    Casey Kaufhold, an American who earned bronze in the mixed team category, said it was “really cool” to see her Azerbaijani colleague achieving what she did.

    “I think it’s awesome that we see more expecting mothers shooting in the Olympic Games and it’s great to have one in the sport of archery,” she said in comments to The Associated Press. “She shot really well, and I think it’s really cool because my coach is also a mother and she’s been doing so much to support her kids even while she’s away.”

    Kaufhold said she hoped Ramazanova’s run would inspire more mothers and expectant mothers to compete. And she had a more personal thought for the mom-to-be:

    “I think it’s awesome for this archer that one day, she can tell her kid, ‘Hey, I went to the Olympic Games and you were there, too.’”

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    Associated Press journalists Cliff Brunt and Hanna Arhirova contributed from Paris.

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    For more coverage of the Paris Olympics, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.

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