Policy Fails Everywhere, All At Once: Birth Control Bans, Oil Explosions, Buried Health Reports, and the Shrinking Pipeline of Black Doctors

Wellness Debrief No. 001 is dark, but Morgan State is building a medical school, and that's excellent news. I also discuss the recent face-lift wars, which are also fun, even if they're spooky.

Source: Sen. Warnock’s Instagram

When I checked the news on Wednesday morning, I realized that so much had happened in the span of two or three days. I felt as though this information should be included in my monthly Wellness Debrief, but if I waited until the end of the month, I’d be late informing you, and I’d have too much material to put into the newsletter. So, I decided to move to a biweekly model. I would say “Welcome to your Wellness Debrief for September 12,” but that feels oddly cheerful for a post that is anything but.

So, uh, let’s hop on into the muck, shall we?

South Carolina Republicans Move to Ban Birth Control (Abortion Everyday) — South Carolina Senate Bill 323 is nasty work, and it is being created with the intention of being a national model for other states to follow. This bill would:

• Ban all abortion.

• Remove exceptions for rape, incest, and fetal abnormalities that could harm the birthing parent or the fetus.

• Allow people who have abortions to be charged with murder and face the death penalty.

• Force people with life-threatening pregnancy conditions into labor or to have a c-section—despite the vitality of the fetus.

• Make referring a patient for an abortion or sharing information about how to get an abortion a felony.

• Open up abortion providers to RICO charges.

• Mandate that anti-abortion propaganda videos be shown in classrooms.

• Redefine contraception to exclude anything that stops ovulation or egg implantation—which is basically all hormonal birth control and emergency contraception— effectively banning them.

This is really fucking bad. This bill strips people of medical autonomy, endangers lives, criminalizes health care, censors information, and escalates state control over private decisions. It’s a full-scale attack on reproductive freedom and health care rights.

RFK Jr. and Trump silenced a groundbreaking report on cancer and alcohol (Vox) — All this shows is that the Trump administration doesn’t care about human health; they care about money and power. Their decisions consistently align with industry and other capitalistic interests rather than protecting the health of their constituents.

Louisiana Oil Plant Explosion Spreads Toxic Chemicals in Roseland (Capital B News) — Pollution is violence of a kind Americans tend to ignore, but it is as deliberate and as politically determined as any more recognizable act of violence. The erosion of environmental protections and other civil rights will not bode well for the people living through the explosion's aftermath, and they make it clear in the piece that they know that. Like many marginalized communities, the residents of Roseland know that whatever happens will be the sum of a series of political choices not made by them, but the effect will transmute into the very air they breathe, the water they drink, and the land they live on.

RFK Jr., HHS to Link Autism to Tylenol Use in Pregnancy and Folate Deficiencies (Wall Street Journal) — Shoutout to WSJ for making it clear that Kennedy and other MAHA allies’ claims about the supposed causes of autism are false. But, once again, we’re seeing this administration promote ableist ideas that edge a bit close to eugenics.

DeSantis, Ladapo to end vaccine mandates in Florida law (Miami Herald) — Part of the push to eliminate vaccine mandates is because vaccines work so well that people have forgotten the devastation of communicable diseases like polio, measles, and smallpox. The absence of disease is the best proof of vaccination’s power, and paradoxically, it helps those who value the individual over community to create laws that do the same. It’s a tale as old as America.

Medical School Admissions After the Supreme Court’s 2023 Affirmative Action Ruling (JAMA Network) — The year after the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision eliminating race-conscious affirmative action in higher education, fewer applicants from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups got into U.S. medical schools. This drop was most noticeable in states that didn’t already have affirmative action bans, suggesting the Court’s ruling likely played a role in the change. Affirmative action never gave positions to unqualified applicants. However, it did work to level the playing field in a system that has long advantaged white applicants through legacy admissions, wealth, and access to resources. Without it, inequities in medicine and healthcare will grow sharper.

Morgan State University plans to launch its own medical school after securing a $1.75 million grant (CBS Baltimore) — We’re getting another HBCU medical school, which is great considering the JAMA study. We still don’t know the effect of this decline in Black applicants being accepted into medical schools on the health and well-being of Black communities, but history offers up a grim possibility.

As I’ve written before:

In 1910, Abraham Flexner released a report that led to the closure of 75 percent of U.S. medical schools. Commissioned by the Carnegie Foundation to evaluate and standardize medical education, Flexner's investigation included six Black medical schools, four of which were shut down by 1923. Although the goal was to enhance the quality of medical care—and due to a lack of access to quality secondary school education, Black students arrived at medical schools unprepared—the consequences were particularly harsh for Black communities. Researchers estimate that, had those schools not closed, 30,000 to 35,000 Black doctors would have received a medical degree in the past century. With limited acceptance of Black students into predominantly white institutions, the number of healthcare providers willing to serve Black populations significantly decreased.

Of the Black doctors currently practicing, 80 percent were educated at Meharry Medical College or Howard Medical School, the only two Black medical schools left.

At least now, there will be a third.

UNC Health launches OBGYN fellowship for rural care (News & Observer) — I will always cape for culturally competent care. Typically, that looks like getting more POC into the workforce or more queer folks. UNC coming in with a lens on rural healthcare and addressing the particular needs of these communities is fantastic. As Kavita Arora, director of the UNC Rural Obstetrics and Gynecology Fellowship, explains:

Rural maternal health disparities are especially critical given the number of maternity hospitals in the United States that have closed over the last decade, and I think with changes in funding—especially Medicaid funding—on the horizon, the likelihood of OB hospitals closing around the country is only going to go up rather than down.

'Ozempic vulva' is making women look aged, droopy down there (NY Post) — ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH ENOUGH!!!!!

How America Got Hooked On A Dangerous New Herbal 'Supplement' (Women’s Health) — Wellness culture often sells the idea that natural means safe, but that can be a deeply harmful misconception. Take kratom: an herbal substance with opioid and stimulant-like effects. This is another example of how traditional substances—which, when used in their original cultural context, rarely led to mass addiction—get skewed under capitalism. In this case, the herbal dosage is being supersized and concentrated, fueling a new addiction crisis.

Forever 35: The Rise of ‘Undetectable’ Deep-Plane Face-Lifts (The Cut) — I’m going to bullet point my thoughts for this one:

• $76.5k MINIMUM for a facelift feels dystopian in an economy where people can’t afford rent or food. Another woman in the story paid $100k, and a third was quoted $300k. All that money to look only marginally different indicates how our social narratives about aging affect how we perceive what we see in the mirror.

• Granted, some of the transformations shown in the piece are staggering—a testament to modern medicine meeting the demand to always look 35—but I agree with Imber, one of the doctors quoted in the piece: the photos are likely cherry-picked and used as a marketing ploy.

• This piece speaks to the same problem we always run into: youth is being packaged and sold, and that’s really fucking weird.

• I really love how deeply reported this piece is. Also a fan of how it positions the anti-aging obsession alongside the turf war among plastic surgeons. SMAS devotees vs. the deep-plane truthers feels so high school to me—with grown adults who are at the top of their respective fields arguing over which method of (unnecessarily) slicing open a woman’s face is best.

$10 Million in Contraceptives Have Been Destroyed on Orders From Trump Officials (The New York Times)

'Type 1.5' diabetes is real—and underdiagnosed. Here’s how it differs from type 1 and 2 (National Geographic)

Blue States That Sued Kept Most CDC Grants, While Red States Feel Brunt of Trump Clawbacks (KFF Health News)

Diabetes and HBP leads to dementia for black Americans (University of Georgia study)