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Faced with a shortage of obstetricians and gynecologists and nurse midwives, several states are considering proposals that advocates say would improve health care for women. But with the female population of the United States and number of babies born here projected to increase sharply over the next decade and beyond, scholars and medical organizations say more dramatic changes are needed to ensure that the medical needs of American women are met. (Ollove, 8/15)

Last year, Community Health Choice, a Medicaid managed-care organization, paid for the births of 21,194 babies along the Texas Gulf Coast. For those deliveries, it spent $41.6 million on providers, such as doctors and hospitals; $11.9 million on physicians providing prenatal care; and more than $75 million on babies who ended up in the neonatal intensive-care unit. (Whitman, 8/13)

Soon after Pennsylvania's breast density notification law took effect in 2014, Jules Sumkin found himself wanting to spare women from getting a letter that might alarm or perplex them. Breast cancer density laws mean more tests, unclear benefit. Twenty-eight states, including New Jersey and Delaware, now have laws that require mammography centers to inform women with dense breast tissue that it may increase the risk of cancer and obscure a malignancy on a mammogram, so they may want to talk to their doctors about extra imaging options. (McCullough, 8/14)