(Roughly) Daily

Preparing for a world post Roe v Wade…

The red states poised to ban or severely limit abortion already tend to have limited access to health care, poor health outcomes and fewer safety net programs in place for mothers and children.

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, as it’s expected to, the ensuing increase in births will likely leave families in tough circumstances and strain systems that are already hanging by a thread.

“What we’re facing as a country is hundreds of thousands of births, probably disproportionately located in the states that have been most limited in what they do for pregnant women, infants and children. So this is the great paradox that we are dealing with,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University. “We have not ever designed these programs for a world without Roe,” she added. “You need a child welfare system, the likes of which we’ve never seen.”…

A growing shortage of obstetricians, higher maternal mortality rates and worse health care outcomes generally, increased pressure on U.S. foster and adoption systems— it all bodes ill…

We know from focus on health outcomes that kids born into poverty, kids born into unstable social circumstances, tend to have higher incidence of early onset chronic diseases,” Shannon said. “We also know that when those children are raised in unstable circumstances and have to be cared for in foster care, the outcomes there are really sobering.

Richard Shannon, chief quality officer for Duke Health

“Red states aren’t prepared for a post-Roe baby boom,” from Caitlin Owens (@caitlinnowens) in @axios.

* Jean Ping

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As we contemplate care, we might sending healing birthday greetings to Thomas Huckle Weller; he was born on this date in 1915. A virologist, he developed a technique for cultivating poliomyelitis viruses in a test tube, using a combination of human embryonic skin and muscle tissue– which enabled the study of the virus “in the test tube,” a procedure that led to the development of polio vaccines. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1954.

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