God damn it Guardian.

Pregnant people and fetuses not being protected from wildfire risks – report

Wildfires pose serious risks to pregnant people and their developing fetuses, including low birth weight and preterm birth. But public health officials are not doing nearly enough to keep these vulnerable populations safe, according to a new report.

“While we know that wildfires are continuing to intensify in the US, and we’re increasingly clear on what damages wildfires represent to maternal and newborn health, we’re still not seeing the kind of response from policymakers and public health officials that we need,” said Skye Wheeler, a researcher at Human Rights Watch and one of the report’s authors.

Maternal health? How did that get in there? Surely xir meant parental health, not maternal.

Wheeler and researchers with the perinatal health non-profit Nurturely surveyed more than 50 doctors, midwives, doulas, lactation consultants and other community-based birth workers in Oregon, which this year has experienced its worst-ever fire season.

Midwives? Surely that should be midspouses.

They said public health officials were not doing enough to communicate warnings and safety information to vulnerable communities, particularly the unhoused and those who speak little English…

But deleting the word “women” from the language is a brilliant way to communicate warnings and safety information to vulnerable communities, right?

Health providers said that authorities had not provided them with guidance on the specific risks wildfires posed to pregnant people – and that they typically had to rely on their own research to answer patients’ questions.

Please inform what the research has turned up about the usefulness of never saying “women.”

In a statement, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) said it “recognizes and remains highly concerned about the negative health effects that wildfire smoke poses to people who are pregnant, those who are unhoused, and people with limited English proficiency. We have promoted and shared educational materials in multiple languages since 2017.”

Great. Brilliant. We are hugely relieved to know that the Oregon Health Authority carefully avoids using the word “women” when talking to pregnant women.

“Environmental risks like wildfire smoke and heat are increasing every day,” said Rebecca Schmidt, associate professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Davis who was not involved with the report. “Right now, I don’t think clinicians have been trained very well on those potential exposures and what they might be doing to [patients’] health.”

Oh look – the Guardian actually altered what she said, changing “women’s” to “patients’.” That takes some fucking gall, I must say. It’s not enough for the Guardian to lie in order to erase women, it has to make its sources lie in order to erase women too.

But, suddenly, the rules change, I guess because Black women have walked to the front of the stage?

“The US is the only high-income country in the world where that’s true,” Wheeler said. “The US can’t afford more pressure on its maternal health systems, and public health officials need to do everything they can to try and reverse worsening maternal health, especially for Black and other women of color.”

Black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women, with risk spanning income and education levels. They are also disproportionately exposed to air pollution. Exposure to harmful pollutants, poor air quality, and high temperatures are associated with women of color delivering babies with lower birth weights.

Yikes. Four “women” in that short passage – it’s dizzying.

It’s at the very end though. It’s notorious that vanishingly few people read news articles all the way to the end.