�������ýҕ�l

Growing up in the 1960s, Susan Shurin learned that not getting pregnant was a matter of access. Shurin, now a 77-year-old retired physician and former head of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, attended high school and college in Massachusetts at a time when it was illegal to sell or dispense contraception in the state. She knew people who found ways around those restrictions — traveling to New York to get diaphragm contraceptives or, if they were already pregnant, abortions. But, she said, doing so required “money and know-how.” (Branigin and Hatzipanagos, 5/5)

In the fall, Patrice Douglas was looking for a change. She decided to move from Philadelphia to Austin, Texas, a modern-day mecca for liberal-minded young professionals like herself. She started working in the gaming unit of a technology company and soaked up the city’s youthful energy. But on Monday, after Politico published a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, Douglas felt “appalled.” She is a strong supporter of reproductive rights, and she was shaken by the idea of living in one of the 23 states that could ban abortions if the 49-year-old landmark decision is reversed. “I am questioning my decision to move,” said Douglas, 29, “but it also makes me want to be more involved in local politics.” (Arkin, 5/5)

Emma Belle was hopeful about this pregnancy. Anxious, but hopeful. In their quest to have a baby, Belle and her husband had been through three rounds of ovulation induction, a miscarriage at five weeks and two rounds of intrauterine insemination. When she was still pregnant after a few months in late 2020, she began to allow herself to imagine actually parenting a child. Then the bad news came. Belle, who lives part time in the United Kingdom and part time in Dubai, recalls that at her 12-week scan, “the sonographer’s face changed. She said, ‘I can’t not tell you what I can see.’ ” A genetic test later found a 99 percent chance the baby had Edwards syndrome, also known as Trisomy 18. Doctors told Belle that the baby would likely either die in utero before 28 weeks or live only a few hours or days. (Maloy, 4/26)

“Happening,” Audrey Diwan’s film about a 1960s back-street abortion in France, isn’t for the fainthearted. In fact, audience members have fainted at several screenings, including at the Venice Film Festival last September, where it won the Golden Lion. “It’s often men who say the experience took them to the limit of what they could bear,” Diwan said in a recent interview, “because they had never imagined what it might be like.” While “Happening,” which will be released in the United States on May 6, has struck a chord with viewers worldwide, it has also fed into larger debates in France around the perception of abortion. The film is based on a real-life experience — that of the celebrated French author Annie Ernaux, who chronicled her 1963 abortion in a book of the same name, published in 2000. At the time, ending a pregnancy was illegal in France, and it would remain so until 1975. (Cappelle, 5/4)

When Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana in August 2020, over 10,500 residents from the southwestern part of the state fled their homes for New Orleans. A central evacuation resource hub where evacuees could go to find basic necessities like food, water and clothing was set up downtown. Malaika Ludman, a doula and certified lactation consultant, along with others from the Birthmark Doula Collective, had been planning for a moment like this — they had weathered hurricane season with their clients for years.  The New Orleans Breastfeeding Center, a program run by the collective, had previously created emergency infant feeding kits tailored to nursing parents, yellow drawstring backpacks filled with things like ice packs to keep milk cold, nursing covers, water and sanitizer that Ludman and others were prepared to distribute. (Kutz, 5/5)

For two years, working parents in America have been running on fumes, hammered by the stress of remote schooling, day care closures, economic instability and social isolation. Now, a new report says that 66 percent of working parents meet the criteria for parental burnout — a nonclinical term that means they are so exhausted by the pressure of caring for their children, they feel they have nothing left to give. (Pearson, 5/5)

When a surgeon asked Sharona Ben-Haim during a 2008 interview for a neurosurgery residency program whether she planned to have children, she responded the only way she felt she could: a resounding no. “I was very much trying to hide being a woman, just trying to fit in,” said Ben-Haim, who now directs the surgical epilepsy program at the University of California, San Diego. Ben-Haim and other researchers studying the experiences of surgeons and surgical residents who are pregnant or considering pregnancy have found a bleak picture. (Shuchman, 5/6)

It was a cold, sunny morning in late January when Sen. Ben Ray Lujan awoke on his farm in New Mexico. His girlfriend was leaving early for a visit with friends, and he had set the alarm for 5:45 a.m. Lujan got up, made coffee, and helped out with packing the car. After seeing his girlfriend off, he headed back to bed for a bit more shut-eye. (Turner and Scott, 5/4)

Elise McDonnell was slowly trying to return to running after contracting the coronavirus in August. “I was constantly having to stop and huff and puff,” said McDonnell, 41, a high-altitude ultrarunner from Fort Collins, Colo., about returning to a trail she had run “a million times.” But McDonnell struggled with each step and had to turn back. (Rothenberg, 4/23)

Aging often brings impairments to vision, including cataracts, macular degeneration and loss of peripheral vision, as well as other physical and cognitive problems. Cataracts can be corrected, but drivers often struggle through a period when reduced vision makes driving difficult — if not dangerous — before cataracts become disabling enough for Medicare, the health insurance of most older Americans, to cover the cost of their removal. (Hamilton, 4/24)

“Trout pout” is a term used to describe a common effect of too much dermal filler: when, because of overzealous injections, one’s lips are so inflated they begin to curl outwards. The other frequently cited filler fail occurs when cheeks become bloated and broaden, something comedian Amy Schumer called out on her Instagram a few months back: After test-driving filler, Schumer said she looked like the pointy-cheeked Disney villain Maleficent. According to the Aesthetic Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), among nonsurgical procedures performed by board-certified plastic surgeons in the U.S., fillers are second in popularity only to Botox. Despite the name recognition, though, dermatologists say there is still plenty of confusion about what fillers should and shouldn’t be used for.  (Valdesolo, 5/4)

During the height of the pandemic, concerns about classic traveler’s diarrhea faded into the background, because few people were traveling anywhere. Now that we’re traveling again, you should be aware that 11.5 percent of patients with covid-19 experience diarrhea, according to a 2020 systematic review of 43 studies, and a different 2020 systematic review found that up to 1 in 6 of such patients have only GI symptoms. So, it’s always worth having rapid antigen tests handy on vacation. But traveler’s diarrhea also should be on our radar, advised Ronald Blanton, chair of the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Up to half of travelers from high-resource regions of the world develop diarrhea, which is usually caused by a bacteria such as E. coli, according to a 2017 study published by researchers from Helsinki. (Pasricha, 5/5)