Health

Girls Have Always Had ADHD. We Just Weren’t Looking.

PUBLISHED 8/24/2026 by

A teenage girl watches a 30-second TikTok video by @Clairebear describing “a day in hell” in her life, “ADD edition”:

“I get up and go to work and realize I don’t have gas in my car. I get to the gas station and reach for my credit card and remember that I don’t in fact have my card because I keep thinking it will turn up at some point.”

She continues explaining her day and reveals that these are all symptoms and signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The teenage girl in question sees much of herself in that scenario, goes to the doctor and is evaluated and diagnosed.

Welcome to modern medicine.

I Want an Oura Ring. As a Reproductive Health Lawyer, I Know Better.

PUBLISHED 8/23/2026 by

I almost bought an Oura Ring at 3:12 in the morning. I was lying awake in my small D.C. apartment, my phone casting a blue glow across my face. I couldn’t sleep. Again. My mind was already racing through the work waiting for me in the morning: Federal Register alerts, Google alerts for abortion ban and pregnancy criminalization, another headline about a woman denied reproductive care.

So I did what people do when they can’t sleep: I shopped. I opened the Target app looking for something—anything—that might help me sleep, and soon an Oura Ring was sitting in my cart. Before checking out I opened TikTok to see whether it was actually worth it. Soon, I was watching a woman talk about her Oura Ring the way people talk about a revelation, a religious experience. One video became 10. Women talked about the ring as if it had given them access to a version of their bodies they had never been able to understand before. It noticed signs of illness before they felt sick. It helped explain their exhaustion. It tracked their cycles and identified patterns connected to fertility and pregnancy. Its promise was simple and seductive: the ring might know what was happening inside your body before you did.

It sounded incredible. I wanted the ring to tell me why I was so tired. I wanted it to warn me before I got sick. More than anything, I wanted to understand my own body. 

For generations, women have been told their pain is normal, their cycles are mysterious, and their instincts are unreliable. So when a device promises to listen to your body every minute of every day and translate its signals into something you can finally understand, it doesn’t feel like a luxury. It feels like power.

Mifepristone, Mail-In Voting and the Midterms Are All on the Line

PUBLISHED 8/22/2026 by

Trump has officially nominated Dr. Heidi Overton as the FDA commissioner. Overton previously called the abortion pill “telebortion,” and called on Congress to strictly regulate it.

With the FDA currently reevaluating its approval of mifepristone and its regulations permitting providers to mail the medication, Overton’s nomination represents yet another challenge to mifepristone’s widespread usage—accounting for over two-thirds of all abortions, including in states with bans. Not to mention the fact that Overton also recently appeared next to Trump during a press conference in which he spouted dangerous misinformation about childhood vaccines.

Asking for a friend: Will the physician in the Senate who holds a key vote on the Health Committee cave again?

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court might be on summer break—but its shadow docket is still up and running. And nothing is certain before this Supreme Court, which has committed itself to expanding Trump’s executive powers.

Thanks to SCOTUS and state legislators’ rollback of many fundamental rights, state supreme court races have been receiving increased attention, and attracted significant outside spending.

Back to School Means Back to Sex Ed. Fathers Need to Be Part of the Conversation.

PUBLISHED 8/22/2026 by

For generations, patriarchy has conditioned women to view motherhood as their ultimate calling and primary responsibility, placing the burden of raising healthy, mature adults squarely on their shoulders. Despite hard-won progress toward gender equality and a more equitable division of domestic labor, we know that society still disproportionately places the weight of parenting onto mothers. 

While modern fathers are more involved than previous generations, the equity gap remains: In most heterosexual partnerships, men shoulder significantly less of the daily labor of parenting. This persistent imbalance has led to high rates of maternal burnout.

As families settle into the back-to-school season—and teenagers encounter new classes, friendships, relationships and pressures—the work of guiding adolescents through questions about sex, consent and relationships becomes especially visible. Too often, that work still falls primarily to mothers.

To disrupt this gendered imbalance and foster healthy sexual development for adolescents, we must actively engage fathers in the work of talking to their teens about sex, consent and relationships.

Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize: Building a Future Beyond Roe

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

Nearly 50 years after Roe came, it went.

The Dobbs decision brought a devastating reversal—but it simultaneously ushered in a moment akin to 1972 … the opportunity to reimagine bodily autonomy and build something better.

And now, in 2026, we have begun to see glimmers of such vision emerge in the law by way of more expansive court rulings and bolder legislation.

What the Lindsay Clancy Trial Reveals About America’s Failure to Support Mothers in Crisis

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

News of Lindsay Clancy’s triple-murder trial is flooding the Internet, and with it, conversations about postpartum depression. In January 2023, Lindsay Clancy killed her 5-year-old, 3-year-old and 8-month-old children before attempting suicide, which left her paralyzed from the waist down. The facts of their deaths are not up for debate in this Plymouth trial, but whether or not the severe postpartum psychosis, clinical depression and bipolar disorder Clancy was experiencing meant she was criminally insane. 

Clancy’s mother-in-law explained Clancy was “begging for help” right before she killed her children. In December, just weeks before, she told her mother and then-husband Patrick (the couple are now divorced) that “she had thoughts of harming the children.”

The case has laid bare the failures of a U.S. mental healthcare system that did not protect Clancy or her children, and still leaves countless new mothers without adequate care.

While Clancy stands trial, people are mourning the loss of Hayden Panettiere, a child star who had long struggled with postpartum depression following the 2014 birth of her daughter, Kaya, and experienced domestic violence from her ex-boyfriend Brian Hickerson. This week, news outlets revisited Panettiere’s allegation that Neutrogena (one of her long-time partners) attempted to end her contract after she spoke honestly about her postpartum depression.

‘It’s Killing the Women You Represent’: Texas Widower’s Plea to Lawmakers to End Abortion Ban

PUBLISHED 8/21/2026 by

After his 35-year-old wife bled to death from a miscarriage in a Houston-area hospital, a Texas father is suing—and taking her story to Capitol Hill.

“Choosing to bring new life into the world shouldn’t be a death sentence,” insisted Michelle Maloney, the San Antonio attorney working to bring justice to Texas widower Hope Ngumezi and his two young sons.

Three years ago, in June 2023, Hope’s beloved wife Porsha was happily expecting the couple’s third child until she began to miscarry at 11 weeks pregnant. The healthy 35-year-old finance manager for a charter school went to the emergency room at Houston Methodist Sugar Land Hospital, just 10 minutes from her home in suburban Houston.

Both she and Hope were certain that she would receive the safe and critical medical care that she needed as she passed fetal tissue and blood clots the size of grapefruits at the hospital. An ultrasound confirmed that she had partially miscarried and that her fetus no longer had a heartbeat. But the heavy bleeding didn’t stop.

Still, the hospital’s OB-GYN, who examined her just once, moved Porsha from the ER—where staff were equipped to respond to emergencies—to a regular floor, where she received less monitoring. Porsha arrived at the hospital at 3:37 p.m. By 2 a.m., she began gasping for air and within minutes, she had died of hemorrhage.

A dozen doctors who reviewed her medical records for ProPublica, which broke the story about her death, said that Porsha should have urgently received a very simple and standard procedure for a miscarriage—a D&C (dilation and curettage). The 10-15 minute D&C would have removed all remaining fetal tissue in her womb, which her uterus was trying to expel with heavy contractions and bleeding. The procedure would have stopped the bleeding.

“The poor thing bled to death for lack of a D&C. It’s atrocious,” Austin OB-GYN Nancy Binford told Courier Texas.

Don’t Let AI Become the New Sex Educator for Adolescents

PUBLISHED 8/20/2026 by

“Why would I Google it when I can just ask ChatGPT for exactly what I am looking for?” 

A 16-year-old asked me this during a recent conversation with Black adolescents about where they turn for health information. Her answer was striking, but hardly surprising.

As traditional sex education faces cuts in schools and reproductive health services become harder to access—particularly for young people of color in underserved communities—adolescents are increasingly looking elsewhere for answers. AI chatbots offer something schools, clinics and even trusted adults often do not: information that feels immediate, private and judgment-free.

Ms. Global: Protests in India After Murder of Young Girl, World Cup Leads to Increased Domestic Violence in U.K., and More

PUBLISHED 8/18/2026 by and

The U.S. ranks as the 31st most dangerous country for women, 55th in maternal mortality, 43rd in closing the gender pay gap, 85th in women’s political representation, and painfully lacks paid family leave and equal access to healthcare. But Ms. has always understood: Feminist movements around the world hold answers to some of the U.S.’ most intractable problems. Ms. Global is taking note of feminists worldwide.

This week: news from Bangladesh, Colombia, the U.K. and more.

Hope Ngumezi Took His Wife Porsha to a Texas Hospital for a Miscarriage. She Left in a Body Bag.

PUBLISHED 8/18/2026 by

When Hope Negumezi took his pregnant wife, Porsha, to a Texas hospital for a miscarriage, he expected routine emergency care. Ten hours later, she bled to death.

Hope Ngumezi shares with journalist Bonnie Fuller how his pregnant wife, Porsha, bled to death while waiting in agony for hours for medical care. In this harrowing personal account, Hope recounts Porsha’s final hours—and the dangerous legal “gray area” that kept doctors from saving her life.

“Why did this nightmare happen?

“Our first meeting was at my 21st birthday party. … As soon as I saw her, it was like in the movies, when everything stops. There seemed to be an aura around her. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face to sober up and to figure out how I was going to talk to her.

“She was a great mother. She just loved her boys so much and they loved her, too. They were both mama’s boys and were always hanging around her, which I loved.”