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Challenges in Reproductive Health in Rheumatic Disease

From the article: ”

In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, rescinding the protection of the right to safe and effective abortions and putting women’s reproductive health under the purview of the states. Abortion is likely to remain legal in only 20 states and the District of Columbia, and bans have already gone into effect in at least 24 states.1 Another effect: Pharmacies have begun refusing to fill prescriptions for methotrexate, an essential medication for patients with rheumatic disease, because it could also be used as an abortifacient prior to nine weeks of gestation.2

The ACR has made it clear that it opposes any action that interferes with the practice of evidence-based medicine or intrudes upon the doctor-patient relationship. And it has established an Access to Reproductive Health Care Task Force to explore options related to access to methotrexate and other issues.

When Michael D. Lockshin, MD, was a first-year medical student (Harvard Medical School, Boston, Class of 1963), he recorded data on pregnancies and deliveries at Boston Lying-In Hospital (now Brigham and Women’s Hospital). In what proved to be a catalyst for a long career of research in reproductive health and rheumatic disease, Dr. Lockshin encountered a pregnant woman with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The patient and her baby, unfortunately, died in the hospital. At the morbidity and mortality conference that followed, the faculty had few answers to questions about the case. “We don’t know why, but lupus patients just die in pregnancy,” Dr. Lockshin remembers hearing.”

See the full article at: https://www.the-rheumatologist.org/article/challenges-in-reproductive-health-in-rheumatic-disease/

 

 
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