#hospital-policy

#hospital-policy

"Federal law says children with developmental delays, including newborns with significant likelihood of a delay, can get early intervention from birth to age 3. States design their own programs and set their own funding levels, however. They also set some of the criteria for which newborns are automatically eligible, typically relying on qualifying conditions like Down syndrome or cerebral palsy, extreme prematurity or low birthweight. Nationally, far fewer infants and toddlers receive the therapies than should. The stats are particularly bleak for babies under the age of 1: Just 1 percent of these infants get help. Yet an estimated 13 percent of infants and toddlers likely qualify."

"The University of Michigan, including Michigan Medicine, is one of multiple institutions across the country that has received a federal subpoena as part of a criminal and civil investigation into gender-affirming care for minors," the system said in a statement to Talking Points Memo. "In light of that investigation, and given escalating external threats and risks, we will no longer provide gender affirming hormonal therapies and puberty blocker medications for minors."

Birch, a then 28-year-old emergency dispatcher in Colorado, hadn't gone into labor expecting surgery. She was healthy. Her first pregnancy had been going well, and her full-term baby was positioned face down - an ideal candidate for a vaginal birth. As her contractions grew stronger, a delivery room nurse urged Birch to get an epidural before the hospital anesthesiologist finished his shift. Birch agreed.