Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a military veteran who has used the fertility treatment to have her two children, has championed the bill, called the Right to IVF Act. The bill would have also expanded access through insurance as well as for military members and veterans.
Women
There were about 3.6 million babies born in 2023, or 54.4 live births for every 1,000 females ages 15 to 44, according to provisional data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.
The Illinois State Police do have a higher-than-average presence of women in law enforcement leadership, however. Women make up 14% of ISP’s leadership, according to an agency spokesperson. A new initiative aims to increase that number.
Illinois has laws to protect against gender discrimination in pay, but it can be difficult for workers to know whether there’s a pay discrepancy. That may be easier to figure out starting next year.
It’s part of a nationwide increase in congenital infections, passed along to an infant during pregnancy. If undiagnosed, the baby can be born with a number of health issues, including cataracts, deafness and a low birth weight, or can even be stillborn.
A recent Alabama Supreme Court ruling is raising questions about IVF. In Illinois, the Reproductive Health Act protects the increasingly popular path to parenthood while establishing people’s right to make decisions about their own reproductive health.
The drug’s approval came despite some concerns by FDA scientists about the company’s results, including whether women with certain medical conditions would understand that they shouldn’t take the drug.
The nonprofit Chicago South Side Birth Center will mark the city’s second active midwife-led birth center, but the first for the South Side. Advocates say the Black-led center offers safe birthing alternatives in a medically underserved area of the city.
The maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is two- to threefold greater than in other high-income countries, and it has only increased in recent years, according to a new evidence review.
“Some people feel it’s a stigma, and I don’t want people to feel like it’s a stigma,” state Sen. Cristina Castro said. “There’s great treatment out there. We’re just trying to help lower the barrier to that treatment.”
In a foreign policy address to ambassadors accredited to the Holy See, Pope Francis lamented that 2024 had dawned at a time in which peace is “increasingly threatened, weakened and in some part lost.”
“They make an environment where it’s easy to be a beginner, it’s easy to not know people and find someone to talk to and work on a trick together,” longtime skateboarder Randi Rogers said of froSkate, a Chicago collective centered around women, people of color and queer people.
The state still has a long way to go toward ensuring that all Illinois residents can have a safe and healthy pregnancy, Illinois Department of Public Health Director Dr. Sameer Vohra said in a press release.
Demand for donor breast milk has been growing as the country continues to recover from last year’s infant formula shortage that left many store shelves empty following a host of supply chain issues and product recalls.
Awareness of the lung cancer’s effects on women is lacking, experts say, and the U.S. government spends significantly less on its research than on similar studies in men.
Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than White women, according to the Centers for Disease Control. It’s a grim reality that led advocates to start The Gathering campaign.
