Tag Archives: women’s reproductive health

With Roe likely in its final days, experts say reporters should sharpen focus on abortion as a health issue

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Photo by Erica TricaricoSophie Novack (on the left) and Crystal S. Berry-Roberts, M.D. (on the right)

Pregnancy is a medical condition and abortion is an intervention for it, so journalists writing about the topic should take the same approach they would when writing about cancer, diabetes, and other conditions and treatments: focus on mortality risks, patients’ rights to care and bodily autonomy.

Reporters should also step up their game to explain what the medical community has known for decades: that abortion is a safe health care procedure.

These were among the topics covered by women’s reproductive health experts who participated in a round table discussion moderated by Brenda Goodman of CNN Health, about abortion on Saturday, April 30, at Health Journalism 2022 in Austin. The conversation took place two days before what appeared to be a leak of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Roe v. Wade was published by Politico. The opinion would overturn abortion protection under Roe v. Wade.


Check out the full transcript of the round table discussion.

The speakers at the “Women’s reproductive health in a post-Roe world” round table included Crystal S. Berry-Roberts, M.D., an obstetrician and gynecologist in Austin; Lisa Harris, M.D. Ph.D., an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan; Sonja Miller, interim managing director for Whole Woman’s Health Alliance; and Sophie Novack, an independent journalist who has reported on the implications of Texas laws restricting abortions. Continue reading →

Margarita Birnbaum (@mbirnbaumnews) is AHCJ's Health Equity Core Topic Leader. An independent journalist who has covered health disparities. Birnbaum’s stories have been published by WebMD, American Heart Association News, and American Indian, the magazine of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

Panel to discuss what could happen to women’s health care if Roe v. Wade is overturned

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Photo by Mart Production via Pexels.

In December, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the pivotal Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that challenges a law enacted by the state of Mississippi in 2018.

The Mississippi law was passed as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that underpins legal access to abortion in the U.S.

Roe established a constitutional right to abortion and prohibited states from banning the procedure. It also gave women the right to end their pregnancies before a fetus could survive on its own, around 23 weeks of gestational age. The Mississippi law seeks to ban abortions after 15 weeks.

In two hours of oral arguments, Justices in the court’s conservative majority seemed poised to let the Mississippi law stand, though the court won’t officially rule until June or July.

By the time it heard Dobbs, the Supreme Court had already punted on Senate Bill 8 (SB 8), the controversial Texas law that rewards ordinary citizens for successfully suing anyone who helps a woman get an abortion. At least 12 states are attempting to copy this law. Idaho already has.

Texas has also recently made it a crime to prescribe or mail medications that induce an abortion at home.

These legal actions and many others in state legislatures across the U.S. are rolling back 50 years of legal protections for abortions in the U.S.

Continue reading →

Brenda Goodman (@ReporterGoodman) has been a reporter for 15 years, covering health, science, and medicine for television, magazines, newspapers and the Web. She was senior news writer for WebMD before joining CNN Health. Her stories have appeared in Scientific American, The New York Times, Psychology Today, Parade, Self, Health, and The Boston Globe, among others.