Tag: native americans

Supreme Court Decides ‘Democracy’ Can Stay, For Now

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Fears of the End of the Republic were forestalled until sometime between the next Trump rally and November 2024, as the Supreme Court decided today that state legislatures can’t just make up any old election laws — or results — they want to, without any oversight from state or even federal courts. In Moore v. Harper, the Court decided in a six to three decision — which should have been nine to zero — that the so-called “independent state legislature theory” is dumb and bogus, not to mention seriously fucked in the head. We paraphrase, but only slightly; Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, actually said the idea was “Insane in the membrane, insane in the brain.”

As many suspected following the oral arguments in December, the three dissenting justices were Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch, who probably belong on a terror watch list.

Previously:

Big Day At Supreme Court As It Hears Case Of ‘Democracy v. LOL’

Moore v Harper Oral Hearings: Democracy Maybe Only MOSTLY Dead!

NC Supreme Court Brings Back The Racist Gerrymandering Republicans Need To Win

The Independent State Legislature (ISL) Fan Fiction, as NYU Law Prof Melissa Murray likes to call it, starts with a thing that is real and then piles on, with no precedent or reason at all, a bunch of assumptions with virtually no actual backing in case law, US history, or common sense. The Constitution’s elections clause says simply that

The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.

According to the fabulists who made up the ISL foolishness a few decades ago, that clause means that no other state authority, including state courts, governors, or county elections officials, can challenge the legislature’s decisions on federal elections, even if they appear patently unfair.

The case involves an extreme gerrymander passed in 2021 by the heavily Republican North Carolina Legislature, which would give the vast majority of the state’s 14 congressional seats to Republicans. As the Brennan Center explains, the redistricting maps are “so extreme that an evenly divided popular vote would have awarded 10 seats to the Republicans and only four to the Democrats.”

Because North Carolina’s constitution includes a “free elections clause” that prohibits such partisan gerrymandering, the state Supreme Court struck down the map in 2022, calling it an

“egregious and intentional partisan gerrymander . . . designed to enhance Republican performance, and thereby give a greater voice to those voters than to any others.”

That prompted the North Carolina Lege to turn right around and pass a whole new extreme partisan gerrymander, and when it was challenged in state courts, Republicans went to the US Supreme Court to demand that it let the map stand, because independent state legislature, can’t you people even read?

In his decision today, Roberts wrote — actually this time — that several previous Supreme Court precedents had already made clear that state legislatures do not have “exclusive and independent authority when setting the rules governing federal elections,” and that the Elections Clause doesn’t invalidate the fundamental principal of judicial review as established in Marbury v. Madison. He also pointed out that “when legislatures make laws, they are bound by the provisions of the very documents that give them life,” i.e., state constitutions, and so obviously state courts have the power to rein in a state legislature in keeping with that state’s constitution. “You stupidheads,” Roberts did not add.

[NYT / Moore v. Harper]

While we’re at it, let’s also take a quick look at some other Supreme Court decisions we haven’t written about yet this term, just so we have ’em on record for you:

Sex Abuse Lawsuit Against Ohio State U Can Go Forward, you listening, Rep. Jordan?

On Monday, the Court decided not to hear an appeal of a lower court decision that allows more than 230 men to sue Ohio State over sexual abuse by the late Dr. Richard Strauss, who worked at Ohio State from 1978 to 1998. The university has apologized to those abused by Strauss, who killed himself in 2005, and has settled lawsuits with at least 296 victims, to the tune of over $60 million. But it tried to have the unsettled cases dismissed, claiming that the time limit to sue had expired. The AP explains:

The remaining plaintiffs have argued that they filed timely claims and that the time limit didn’t start running until the 2018 investigation into Strauss’ abuse made his conduct public. The men say that was when they first learned that the school had been aware of Strauss’ abuse and failed to protect them from him. Many also only realized then that they’d been victims of abuse since Strauss disguised his abuse as medical care, their lawyers said.

Among those named in the lawsuits is Rep. Jim Jordan, who was the assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994 but insists he never knew what Strauss was up to. A spokesman for Jordan yesterday reiterated Jordan’s claim that he “never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it.”

[AP / NBC News]

If Alabama Has To Fix Its Racist District Maps, So Does Louisiana

In another short, unsigned decision, the Court on Monday slapped down an “emergency” attempt by Louisiana to block a lower court’s finding that Louisiana has to redraw its congressional district maps to create at least two districts where Black voters have a chance to elect a congressional member of their choice. The Supreme Court refusal to fast-track the case follows its decision earlier this month to toss out a similar racial gerrymander in Alabama, a decision that left many surprised that the Court hadn’t decided to stomp a little more life out of the Voting Rights Act.

The case now goes back to the notoriously rightwing Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which may end up affirming Louisiana’s contention that no, its racial gerrymander is very different and more constitutional than Alabama’s, so it’s entirely possible the case will still make it back to the Supremes next term anyway.

[CNN / TPM]

Hey Navajo Nation, You Get A Reservation. Water Rights Not So Much

In one of the more bizarre rulings in a while, the Court decided last week that the US government’s 1868 treaty with the Navajo Nation, which established the largest Native American reservation in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, didn’t actually require the government to ensure that the tribe would have access to water. ProPublica tries to explain what seems inexplicable: After decades trying to negotiate with the state of Arizona, the Navajo Nation sued, in hopes of getting the Court to define what the tribe’s water rights were, and to order Arizona to stop delaying and allow the Navajo Nation reliable access to water.

ProPublica notes that while tribes have always had to negotiate for water with states, the federal government has also acted on tribes’ behalf by “helping account for how much is needed and available.” But when it came to intervening in the protracted negotiations between the tribe and the state, the Court, in a 5-4 decision, said nah, not our job.

Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the tribe’s treaties do not impose “a duty on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe.”

The case has been dragging through the federal courts since 2003, eventually accumulating briefs from “four states, more than 100 tribes and 27 trade groups representing mining companies and other water-intensive industries.” So much for all that! Now it’s back to the Navajo Nation trying to get an agreement with Arizona, which is already fighting to get enough dwindling Colorado River water for its very important subdivisions and agriculture barons.

Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said he hopes an agreement may be more likely with Arizona’s new governor Katie Hobbs, who promised while campaigning last year that she would work with tribes to resolve water claims.

Following the Court’s decision last week, Hobbs announced the appointment of four tribal officials — from the Navajo Nation, the Colorado River Indian Tribes, the Gila River Indian Community, and the Ak-Chin Indian Community — to the “Governor’s Water Policy Council,” which already includes Maria Dadgar, the executive director of the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. So at least there’s a formal place at the water policy table, which is different from the water table (just a little hydrology joke there).

Justice Neil Gorsuch continued his advocacy for tribal rights with a scathing dissent in which he agreed with tribes that the 1868 treaty does so guarantee “enforceable water rights” that the federal government is obligated to define.

“The Navajo have tried it all. They have written federal officials. They have moved this Court to clarify the United States’ responsibilities when representing them. They have sought to intervene directly in water-related litigation,” Gorsuch wrote. “At each turn, they have received the same answer: ‘Try again.’”

ProPublica also notes — drily, as is only appropriate — that if negotiations with Arizona go nowhere, the Navajo Nation’s “other option is continuing a water adjudication case in state court that began in 1978, involves 14,000 claims and has no end in sight.”

[ProPublica / Gov. Katie Hobbs / NBC News]

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Supreme Court Upholds Tribal Adoption Rights, What Horror Is This Leading Up To?

Post By Politics , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the law that gives Native American tribes preference in adoption and foster care cases involving Native children, rejecting the argument that it’s racist against white people. In a 7 to 2 decision, the Court let stand the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), which Congress wrote to address concerns that Native kids were being taken away from their families, a legacy of the US government’s attempts to wipe out Native American tribes through forced assimilation. The ’70s were a crazy time, with the disco and the occasional congressional efforts to provide at least some justice for past discrimination.

Previously

Will Supreme Court ‘Increase Domestic Supply Of Infants’ By Stealing Native American Babies?

You Guys, The Fifth Circuit Ruled *For* The Welfare Of Indian Children

What The Hell Is It With Republicans Crapping On Native Americans?

Under the ICWA, as Vox explainered, if a child is a member of a Native American tribe or even is eligible for membership, then any adoption or foster placement needs to give first preference to the child’s extended family, and then to another Native American family, ideally in their own tribe or if necessary another tribe.

The law aims to keep Native children within Native communities, after over a century of US attempts at genociding Native Americans and, for most of the 20th century, actively attempting to alienate people from their tribal identities — first by taking Native kids from their families to Indian schools that aimed to assimilate them into the dominant Anglo culture, and later by encouraging adoptions of Native kids by white parents.

(A quick note on language here: Federal law and court cases use the term “Indian,” which has very specific meanings in law, so at times we will too, even if in the wider culture it’s no longer the preferred nomenclature, Dude.)

The case, Haaland v. Brackeen, has been making its way through the federal courts for years. It involves a white Texas couple, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, who in 2016 were appointed as foster parents of a 10-month-old boy whose birth parents were Navajo and Cherokee. God told the Brackeens they needed to adopt the boy, but they found themselves in a legal fight with the Navajo Nation. Eventually they did adopt the boy, but they also wanted to adopt his half-sister, and here we are at the Supreme Court, with the Brackeens and the state of Texas (and a few other plaintiffs) arguing that the 1978 law was unconstitutional because it was an illegal racial preference and discriminated against non-Indian parents, and that by superseding state family law courts, Congress had overreached.

Ultimately, though, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, rejected that claim, as the New York Times explains:

The tribes have said that they are political entities, not racial groups. Doing away with that distinction, which underpins tribal rights, they argued, could imperil nearly every aspect of Indian law and policy, including measures that govern access to land, water and gambling.

The majority dismissed the equal protection argument, saying that no party in the case had legal standing. Instead, the justices focused on Congress’s longstanding authority to make laws about tribes. […]

“Our cases leave little doubt that Congress’s power in this field is muscular, superseding both tribal and state authority,” Justice Barrett wrote, adding that its authority touched on subjects as varied as criminal defense, domestic violence, property law, employment and trade. She added, “The Constitution does not erect a firewall around family law.”

The two dissenting justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, each wrote their own dissents. Alito griped that the law focused too much on the tribes’ rights and not the right of the child to have the best family, which we presume was shorthand for a white family, because we’re just that mean. Thomas was his usual “government overreach, boo, hiss!” self, contending that the law wasn’t fair because some of the Native kids involved in adoptions regulated by the ICWA “may never have even set foot on Indian lands.”

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who’s been consistently friendly to Tribal interests in federal law, wrote a concurring opinion in which he said the majority opinion “safeguards the ability of tribal members to raise their children free from interference by state authorities and other outside parties.” Gorsuch explained that he agrees completely with the majority, but also wanted to provide “some historical context” with an overview of “how our founding document mediates between competing federal, state, and tribal claims of sovereignty.”

Here’s his introduction, which genuinely makes me want to read the rest this weekend.

The Indian Child Welfare Act did not emerge from a vacuum. It came as a direct response to the mass removal of Indian children from their families during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s by state officials and private parties. That practice, in turn, was only the latest iteration of a much older policy of removing Indian children from their families—one initially spearheaded by federal officials with the aid of their state counterparts nearly 150 years ago. In all its many forms, the dissolution of the Indian family has had devastating effects on children and parents alike. It has also presented an existential threat to the continued vitality of Tribes—something many federal and state officials over the years saw as a feature, not as a flaw. This is the story of ICWA.

Well yeah, that’s all impressively true, which led to a very reasonable question from “Southpaw” on Twitter: How the hell is it that Gorsuch is

so attuned to—and frankly eloquent at exposing—structural racism in Indian affairs, but so seemingly indifferent to it in other aspects of American life?

New Republic legal writer Matt Ford suggested that it comes down to Gorsuch’s weird originalism, pointing out that in his concurrence, Gorsuch writes,

Our Constitution reserves for the Tribes a place—an enduring place—in the structure of American life. It promises them sovereignty for as long as they wish to keep it. And it secures that promise by divesting States of authority over Indian affairs and by giving the federal government certain significant (but limited and enumerated) powers aimed at building a lasting peace.

Bummer for anyone else who’s faced systemic discrimination, though. You people should have found a way to get yourselves into the Constitution, and don’t you go saying “the 14th Amendment” because that’s not specific enough. He’s an odd one.

In a statement, President Joe Biden celebrated the Court’s decision, pointing out that he had supported the ICWA when he was in the Senate, he’s so old. Biden also did his own Critical Race Theory, noting that

Our Nation’s painful history looms large over today’s decision. In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them. They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families—all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens. These were acts of unspeakable cruelty that affected generations of Native children and threatened the very survival of Tribal Nations. The Indian Child Welfare Act was our Nation’s promise: never again.

So now all we have to do is worry what this pretty reasonable decision, combined with one that didn’t strike down the Voting Rights Act in its entirety last week, means for the next bunch of decisions coming from the Court, not that we’re cynical that way. Maybe it’ll decide not only to strike down Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, but also to eliminate student aid going forward because George Washington never got a student loan, now did he?

[AP / NYT / Vox / Haaland v. Brackeen / Photo: Jarek Tuszyński, Creative Commons License 3.0]

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Proposed Florida Textbooks Won’t Say Why Rosa Parks Stayed Seated. Maybe She Was Stubborn, Who Knows?

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Now that Ron DeSantis has scrubbed all the woke out of Florida math textbooks, it’s time for the state’s social studies textbooks to be winnowed, so that no traces of critical race theory remains, and so no children feel guilty or sad about history. The New York Times reports (gift link) that as part of the periodic review of textbooks this year,

a small army of state experts, teachers, parents and political activists have combed thousands of pages of text — not only evaluating academic content, but also flagging anything that could hint, for instance, at critical race theory.

Remember, of course, that while in academia, critical race theory is a graduate-level topic of study, on the right, CRT means anything that makes white people fretting about The Blacks uncomfortable.

One group involved in the effort, the Florida Citizens Alliance, determined that 29 of the 38 textbooks its volunteers examined were simply inappropriate for use in Florida, and urged the Florida Department of Education to reject them. The Times notes that the group’s co-founders helped out with education policy during DeSantis’s transition (to governor, not in a trans kind of way, heavens!), and that it has “helped lead a sweeping effort to remove school library books deemed as inappropriate, including many with L.G.B.T.Q. characters.”

We bet the books they rejected were just full of critical racecars and critical footraces! Just how bad were these awful textbooks?

In a summary of its findings submitted to the state last month, the group complained that a McGraw Hill fifth-grade textbook, for example, mentioned slavery 189 times within a few chapters alone. Another objection: An eighth-grade book gave outsize attention to the “negative side” of the treatment of Native Americans, while failing to give a fuller account of their own acts of violence, such as the Jamestown Massacre of 1622, in which Powhatan warriors killed more than 300 English colonists.

Good call, because while Native Americans may have been genocided by disease — and later by US federal policy — some fought back, and that evens everything out.

Hilariously, the Times also notes that that the White Citizens Council Florida Citizens Alliance is “pushing the state to add curriculum from Hillsdale College, a small Christian school in Michigan that is active in conservative politics.” There’s just one little problem, though, because what Hillsdale offers for K-12 history and civics isn’t in any sense a “textbook,” but instead a set of guidelines for teachers, with recommended primary readings like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and probably Rush Limbaugh’s awful children’s books (we’re guessing on that one). But it’s from Hillsdale so that’s what the kids need.

The Times simply notes that “The curriculum was not included in Florida’s official review, and the state did not comment on the group’s recommendations.”

Moar Here!

Rush Limbaugh’s Crappy Books Will Save Kids From A.P. History

Biden Just Deleted The Stupid Ahistorical Bullsh*ts Of T—p’s ‘1776 Commission Report‘

Florida Takes Its Turn On ‘Please Don’t Make White People Uncomfortable’ Bandwagon

Ask The Gay Penguins How ‘Limited’ Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law Is. YOU CAN’T THEY’RE BANNED

Florida’s Education Department actually does require that schools teach Black history, although how exactly that’s supposed to be done in a way that won’t upset any hypervigilant rightwing parents isn’t entirely clear. The Times says the department

emphasized that the requirements were recently expanded, including to ensure students understood “the ramifications of prejudice, racism and stereotyping on individual freedoms.”

As we all know, slavery and Jim Crow were bad because they were regrettable departures from America’s founding ideas of freedom and equality, which were always the norm except in certain unfortunate moments (from 1619 through 1965 and elsewhere).

In a very sad attempt to win favor with Florida, an outfit called “Studies Weekly,” a minor-league publisher of weekly social-studies pamphlets mostly for early elementary grades, attempted to completely remove race from its first-grade lessons on Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. That took some doing!

The absolutely essential progressive parent group the Florida Freedom to Read Project provided the Times with three different versions of Studies Weekly’s very brief lessons on Parks. The first is currently used in Florida schools, and is pretty accurate:

“In 1955, Rosa Parks broke the law. In her city, the law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down. She would not give up her seat. The police came and took her to jail.”

There were also two versions created for the new textbook review; the Times points out it’s not clear which one the company submitted, and as it turns out, Studies Weekly was rejected because it messed up its paperwork, so we’ll never know what the Florida Department of Education thought of the Rosa Parks lessons.

One version mentions race only indirectly:

“Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”

Another version eliminates race altogether, making it really unclear whether Parks was a hero or just kind of a jerk.

“Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”

It’s really something of a wonder that there wasn’t a third revision that simply said “Rosa Parks showed courage. She rode a bus. Good for her! Buses are big and scary!”

A fourth-grade lesson about discrimination following the Civil War and Reconstruction had similarly bizarre edits. In the initial version, the lesson explained that even after the war, many people in former Confederate states “believed African-Americans should be enslaved” and that they were “not equal to anyone in their community.” (Yes, that’s already problematic since it suggests white is the norm, but oh my, it gets very much worse.)

That got revised to the far weirder observation that “many communities in the South held on to former belief systems that some people should have more rights than others in their community.”

And where the initial discussion of Southern “Black Codes” made very clear that African Americans were regularly denied their basic rights, the second version still uses the term “Black Codes,” but says only that it became “a crime for men of certain groups to be unemployed” and that “certain groups of people” were prevented from serving on juries. Sounds like members of those certain groups were treated like they were particular individuals.

For the little it’s worth, the Times also adds that

The Florida Department of Education suggested that Studies Weekly had overreached. Any publisher that “avoids the topic of race when teaching the Civil Rights movement, slavery, segregation, etc. would not be adhering to Florida law,” the department said in a statement.

The story also notes that it’s not clear yet whether other publishers attempted similar decolorization; to find out, we may have to wait until Florida announces the textbooks that passed muster.

Until then, we’ll just have to hope none of the textbooks explain that the Voting Rights Act was passed after John Lewis and a certain group of his friends took a leisurely Sunday stroll across a bridge.

[NYT (gift link)]

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For the first time, US task force proposes expanding high blood pressure screening recommendations during pregnancy | CNN

Post By Health , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,



CNN
 — 

The US Preventive Services Task Force has released a draft recommendation to screen everyone who is pregnant for hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, by monitoring their blood pressure throughout the pregnancy, and the group is calling attention to racial inequities.

This is the first time the task force has proposed expanding these screening recommendations to include all hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, which are on the rise in the United States.

It means the average person might notice their doctor paying closer attention to their blood pressure measurements during pregnancy, as well as doctors screening not just for preeclampsia but for all disorders related to high blood pressure.

The draft recommendation statement and evidence review were posted online Tuesday for public comment. The statement is consistent with a 2017 statement that recommends screening with blood pressure measurements throughout pregnancy.

It was already recommended for blood pressure measurements to be taken during every prenatal visit, but “the difference is now really highlighting the importance of that – that this is a single approach that is very effective,” said Dr. Esa Davis, a member of the task force and associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

The draft recommendation urges doctors to monitor blood pressure during pregnancy as a “screening tool” for hypertensive disorders, she said, and this may reduce the risk of some hypertensive disorders among moms-to-be going undiagnosed or untreated.

“Since the process of screening and the clinical management is similar for all the hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, we’re broadening looking at screening for all of the hypertensive disorders, so gestational hypertension, preeclampsia, eclampsia,” Davis said.

The US Preventive Services Task Force, created in 1984, is a group of independent volunteer medical experts whose recommendations help guide doctors’ decisions. All recommendations are published on the task force’s website or in a peer-reviewed journal.

To make this most recent draft recommendation, the task force reviewed data on different approaches to screening for hypertensive disorders during pregnancy from studies published between January 2014 and January 2022, and it re-examined earlier research that had been reviewed for former recommendations.

“Screening using blood pressure during pregnancy at every prenatal encounter is a long-standing standard clinical practice that identifies hypertensive disorders of pregnancy; however, morbidity and mortality related to these conditions persists,” the separate Evidence-Based Practice Center, which informed the task force’s draft recommendation, wrote in the evidence review.

“Most pregnant people have their blood pressure taken at some point during pregnancy, and for many, a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy is first diagnosed at the time of delivery,” it wrote. “Diagnoses made late offer less time for evaluation and stabilization and may limit intervention options. Future implementation research is needed to improve access to regular blood pressure measurement earlier in pregnancy and possibly continuing in the weeks following delivery.”

The draft recommendation is a “B recommendation,” meaning the task force recommends that clinicians offer or provide the service, as there is either a high certainty that it’s moderately beneficial or moderate certainty that it’s highly beneficial.

For this particular recommendation, the task force concluded with moderate certainty that screening for hypertensive disorders in pregnancy, with blood pressure measurements, has a substantial net benefit.

Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy appear to be on the rise in the United States.

Data published last year by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, between 2017 and 2019, the prevalence of hypertensive disorders among hospital deliveries increased from 13.3% to 15.9%, affecting at least 1 in 7 deliveries in the hospital during that time period.

Among deaths during delivery in the hospital, 31.6% – about 1 in 3 – had a documented diagnosis code for hypertensive disorder during pregnancy.

Older women, Black women and American Indian and Alaska Native women were at higher risk of hypertensive disorders, according to the data. The disorders were documented in approximately 1 in 3 delivery hospitalizations among women ages 45 to 55.

The prevalence of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy was 20.9% among Black women, 16.4% among American Indian and Alaska Native women, 14.7% among White women, 12.5% among Hispanic women and 9.3% among Asian or Pacific Islander women.

The task force’s new draft recommendation could help raise awareness around those racial disparities and how Black and Native American women are at higher risk, Davis said.

“If this helps to increase awareness to make sure these high-risk groups are screened, that is something that is very, very important about this new recommendation,” she said. “It helps to get more women screened. It puts it more on the radar that they will then not just be screened but have the surveillance and the treatment that is offered based off of that screening.”

Communities of color are at the highest risk for hypertensive disorders during pregnancy, and “it’s very related to social determinants of health and access to care,” said Dr. Ilan Shapiro, chief health correspondent and medical affairs officer for the federally qualified community health center AltaMed Health Services in California. He was not involved with the task force or its draft recommendation.

Social determinants of health refer to the conditions and environments in which people live that can have a significant effect on their access to care, such as their income, housing, safety, and not living near sources for healthy food or easy transportation.

These social determinants of health, Shapiro said, “make a huge difference for the mother and baby.”

Hypertensive disorders during pregnancy can be controlled with regular monitoring during prenatal visits, he said, and the expectant mother would need access to care.

Eating healthy foods and getting regular exercise also can help get high blood pressure under control, and some blood pressure medications are considered safe to use during pregnancy, but patients should consult with their doctor.

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