Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Viewpoints: Plastic — It's What's For Dinner; Arizona Just Rolled Back The Clock To 1864 For Women's Rights
Recent news from a study led by Madeleine Milne with Ocean Conservancy and the University of Toronto showed that 90 percent of the items that they tested, items we find in our fridges and grocery stores—from burgers and steaks to chicken and even plant-based foods—contain those seemingly ubiquitous tiny particles of plastics, often referred to as microplastics. (Michael Rennie, 4/9)
Arizona’s Supreme Court just re-instated the near-total abortion ban, turning back the clock on women to the territorial era. Tuesday’s ruling is deeply troubling and utterly predictable since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, giving states the power to decide the future of reproductive rights. (Elvia Diaz, 4/9)
For most of my lifetime, public opinion on abortion was fairly stable, leaning pro-choice but with a strong pro-life minority and a lot of people in the middle expressing support for some restrictions but not others. But since the mid-2010s there has been a clear shift in favor of abortion rights: More Americans support abortion without restriction that at any point since Roe v. Wade was handed down. (Ross Douthat, 4/10)
Under the Graham approach, conservative states that want to impose more draconian limits would remain free to do so; the real impact would be to limit abortion access in states that prefer more permissive rules. And while the vast majority of abortions are performed before 15 or 16 weeks, cutting off abortion access at that point would affect women in many situations where fetal anomalies are not detected until later in pregnancy. (Ruth Marcus, 4/9)