Mental health

Mental health & pregnancy + sudden cardiac arrest in women

Every year, about 350,000 people suffer sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital.  Almost 90 percent of all cases are deadly.  40 percent of these episodes are made up by women. While men and women experience different symptoms of heart disease, the risks of sudden cardiac arrest are different, too. Nancy Dagefoerde, an advanced practice nurse with the OSF HealthCare Cardiovascular Institute, says sudden cardiac arrest can happen to any adult, mostly those 30 and older. 
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Mental health emerges as dividing line in abortion rights initiatives planned for state ballots

 The weeks after Kaniya Harris found out she was pregnant were among the hardest in her life. Final exams were fast approaching for the college junior. Her doctors told her she had an ovarian cyst, and the risk of ectopic pregnancy was high. The wait times for abortion clinics near her city of Bethesda seemed impossibly long. And she couldn’t visit her family in Kentucky because of the state’s abortion ban.
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Medical exceptions to abortion bans often exclude mental health conditions

"More than a dozen states now have near-total abortion bans following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, with limited medical exceptions meant to protect the patient’s health or life. But among those states, only Alabama explicitly includes “serious mental illness” as an allowable exception. Meanwhile, 10 states with near-total abortion bans (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming) explicitly exclude mental health conditions as legal exceptions, according to an analysis from KFF, a health policy research organization...."
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Her body, her choice: Why a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy must be upheld

For abortions within 24 weeks of gestation, there is no legal requirement for pregnant persons to approach courts for permission. Yet, the petitioner in a recent case was forced to approach the Supreme Court, as healthcare providers disregarded her decisional autonomy to terminate her pregnancy.
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