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shefali.bsky.social
Shefali Luthra
@shefali.bsky.social
5K followers 370 following 360 posts
Reproductive health reporter @19thnews.org‬
I wrote UNDUE BURDEN, a book about abortion post-Dobbs. Past lives: KHN, The Texas Tribune.

Julien Baker/Boston Celtics/Jaguars enthusiast. She / Her. sbluthra(at)19thnews(dot)org; Signal: shefaliluthra.94
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shefali.bsky.social
What it could mean for child care in the country’s largest city: 19thnews.org/2025/10/mamd...
The issue that forged the unlikely Mamdani-Hochul alliance
A shared interest in affordable, universal child care is a sign of how critical the issue is to many New York voters, experts say.
19thnews.org
November 5, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Shefali Luthra
19thnews.org
Virginia has elected Ghazala Hashmi as the state’s next lieutenant governor, making her the first Muslim woman ever elected to statewide office in the United States. 19thnews.org/2025/11/virg...
November 5, 2025 at 12:41 AM
shefali.bsky.social
We spoke to lawyers, researchers and doctors about the conditions in which immigrants are being kept, and the consequences for their pregnancies.

All say signs point toward an increase in pregnant, postpartum and nursing people being detained. Only ICE knows how many.

Some stories of the impact:
Antonia Aguilar Maldonano, a mother of two from El Salvador, was arrested by ICE on her way to work and detained at the Kandiyohi County Jail in Minnesota for almost a month. Her youngest child is 22 months old and still nursing; he has acid reflux and an allergy to other forms of milk. The jail was not equipped to house someone who was nursing, said Gloria Contreras Edin, her lawyer: It did not have a breast pump when Aguilar Maldonado arrived, forcing her to use her hands to massage milk out until the facility was able to buy a pump. Workers helping integrate deported immigrants in Honduras told researchers from the Women’s Refugee Commission that nursing women who were deported had not received enough food and water to continue lactating. “They arrive with hardly any milk — or milk that looks like water — and this affects the babies’ weight,” one worker said, according to a report published by the organization.
October 20, 2025 at 1:02 PM
shefali.bsky.social
A quote that stood out to me:

“It gives employers maximum flexibility to design benefits that are consistent with their values."

Some religiously affiliated employers oppose IVF!

And here's more about the conservative alternatives that could also be covered under any of these new insurance
Abortion opponents have encouraged Trump to promote alternatives to IVF, including what some call “restorative reproductive medicine,” which they say treats the root causes of infertility. Many reproductive endocrinologists have voiced criticism of that alternative — which relies on tracking fertility through one’s menstrual cycle, along with emphasizing nutrition and exercise — saying it is unreliable and lacking a strong evidence base and that many patients with infertility are already taking those steps. Restorative reproductive medicine providers have met with Health and Human Services officials, encouraging the government to have insurance cover restorative reproductive medicine, said Linda Ruf, who runs the Vitae Clinic, one such health center in Texas. Overton suggested that employers could choose to emphasize this option in any fertility benefit they choose to offer. “Employers are going to be able to decide how to cover the root causes of infertility, things like obesity, metabolic health and other things that are impacting infertility,” she said. “And also, if they want to encourage their employer, their employees, to see certain types of doctors, and they can work with providers that are identifying the highest quality fertility providers.”
October 16, 2025 at 10:04 PM
shefali.bsky.social
The tenacious Mel Leonor Barclay spent time with Jacqueline, a mom in Florida whose husband was recently deported. She fears the same could happen to her.

She has no income. Someone donated her a crib & carseat. She still needs a bathtub for her son, who was just born.

19thnews.org/2025/10/preg...
Jacqueline approached the last days of her pregnancy hopeful that the place she had chosen — a large university hospital that workers at her local clinic recommended — would be a safe place for her to give birth. One night at the end of September, when labor pains grew too intense, she called for an ambulance and made it to the hospital. When she got there, she asked her providers if there were any ICE agents near the building. She had heard of a man at a local hospital being detained after having surgery. They told her there were none they were aware of. She went on to deliver her baby under general anesthesia after a long, difficult labor. “I didn’t even hear him cry when they pulled him out,” she said. Her only relative left in the area was taking care of her daughter, so she recovered alone at the hospital for five days before heading home in an Uber that a social worker procured for her and her son. “If my husband was here, he would have been there with me at the hospital,” Jacqueline said while recovering at home. “He would be here taking care of me, of us. I wouldn’t be worried about the things I still want to get for the baby.”
October 7, 2025 at 1:12 PM