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Pregnant moms on Medicaid will get health care coverage for a year, patients will get more detailed billing and nurses will get help with school loans. But efforts failed to gain steam for legalizing fentanyl test strips, increasing the pool of mental health professionals who accept Medicaid and expanding Medicaid benefits to more Texans.
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Kansas abortion clinics are challenging four state abortion restrictions, including a decades-old 24-hour waiting period and a new “abortion pill reversal” law.
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A North Texas breast surgeon agrees with screening earlier, but explains why she favors annual mammograms instead of exams every two years.
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Successful bills this session focused on the shortage of nurses in Texas and on eliminating the tax on feminine hygiene products.
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Oklahoma offers pregnant residents special Medicaid coverage. That coverage used to last only 60 days after delivery, but under a new policy, that coverage will run for a full year instead. StateImpact’s Logan Layden and Catherine Sweeney discuss how the policy will affect thousands of new parents in Oklahoma.
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Texas State Rep. Donna Howard authored a proposal this legislative session that would exempt period products – as well as additional supplies including diapers, breast pumps and maternity clothes – from sales tax.
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If Austin Rep. Donna Howard's latest bill makes it through the Legislature and becomes law, Texas will join 24 other states that don't tax feminine hygiene products.
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“It was just a matter of time before the baby died, or maybe I’d have to go through the trauma of carrying to term knowing I wasn’t bringing a baby home,” said 27-year-old Lauren Hall. “I couldn’t do that.”
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Earlier this month, voters soundly rejected an amendment to the Kansas Constitution that could have led to an abortion ban. But abortion remains tightly restricted in the state even as women from across the region flood Kansas clinics.
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Nationally, Black people giving birth are three times more likely to die than their white counterparts, and twice as likely in Texas. That concerns reproductive justice advocates, who fear these outcomes will worsen now that Roe v. Wade is overturned, and people can’t access abortion services.