Mississippi Today
IVF heir bill heads to governor’s desk
A bill to correct an outdated law barring in vitro fertilization children from next of kin inheritance passed both chambers Wednesday afternoon and now heads to the governor to be signed into law.
This is the fifth year Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus, filed the measure to give inheritance rights to children conceived via IVF after the death of one parent, as 27 other states have done. These bills died in the legislative process the last four years.
“What a relief … I am just so thrilled that after all this time we came to an agreement that will soon be law,” McLean said. “This will help countless families and children have the right to be able to receive these benefits as they should.”
McLean's legislation was inspired by the personal story of one of her constituents, Katie Studdard, whose 5-year-old daughter has been denied Social Security benefits from her late biological father since birth.
“And that's how a lot of bills that we end up sponsoring come to us – from stories, from an issue someone is having where we need to make adjustments to state law,” McLean said.
Studdard, who lives in Columbus, started fertility treatments with her late husband, Chris McDill, before he died of cancer. She did not have success with the embryos while her husband was alive, but decided to continue trying for a baby after her husband's death. She conceived her daughter Elyse a year after her husband died.
House Bill 1542 passed the House unanimously in mid-March and overwhelmingly passed the Senate in mid-April at the eleventh hour. But the Senate passed it with a reverse repealer, referring it to conference in the hopes of expanding the bill beyond its original scope to protect in vitro fertilization and other forms of assisted reproduction, in the wake of recent events calling fertility treatments into question in Alabama.
Ultimately, that was too big a task to take on at the end of the session, with pro-life groups coming out publicly to express concern about new language they didn't have time to vet, explained Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall. Fillingane was one of the lawmakers tasked with debating the details of the bill in conference.
House and Senate conferees reverted the bill back mostly to its original language and were able to achieve the primary goal of securing inheritance rights for posthumously-conceived children with the final version. In addition to that goal, Fillingane said, conferees were able to come up with a definition for “alternative reproduction,” which didn't previously exist in Mississippi.
“I think Chairman (Brice) Wiggins and Chairman (Joey) Hood (of the Judiciary A committee where the bill was assigned) thought … ‘let's get this issue addressed for this family in Columbus that has waited (five) years … and let's at least get a definition in place sort of as a starting point to build a framework out hopefully over the next sessions to add to protect the IVF procedures and processes and surrogacy,'” said Fillingane.
Fillingane had two of his own children through surrogacy, but traveled to California to do so – because the state has clear statutory guidelines around parental rights in surrogacy cases.
“I did not feel comfortable having my kids in Mississippi … there were absolutely no protections that the state of Mississippi offers for parents who have children this way. As a family lawyer, I was uniquely situated to see some of these things,” he said.
Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins, R-Pascagoula, who was instrumental in getting the bill to the finish line, wasn't available for comment.
Although it's been a trying few years, Studdard said she has a newfound appreciation for the Legislature. As a teacher, she has live streamed floor debates during her lunch period at school, has become acquainted with the legislative language of various iterations of the bill, and talked extensively with lawmakers. She says that every time she hears a new legislative word that she doesn't know, she googles it.
“I've learned a lot,” she said. “I think anybody going through any life-changing event, like I did with (my husband's) cancer, and then IVF, and now this bill …you gain a whole new appreciation and so much knowledge you never thought you'd know.”
Studdard is overjoyed that the Senate proposed naming the law after her late husband, Chris McDill, and is proud to model for her daughter and her students that it is possible for an everyday person to enact policy change.
Primarily, she hopes the benefits her daughter will start receiving next year will go toward her future education.
“I just think this financially will create so much security for her and her education, that's number one for me,” Studdard said. “I want her to not have to worry about taking out a student loan. I want her to have a good financial start to life when she goes to college. To be able to hand that to your child is a gift.”
When McLean first authored a bill to address Studdard's predicament, it was the first year of her first four-year term. Now, it's the first year of her second term, and she says it feels full circle.
“When (Studdard) first told me about her little girl and being a single mom, at that time Elyse was just a baby, and it really hit home to me because I am also a single mother of a daughter, and I understood the significance of this and how we really need to protect children and women and mothers and families,” McLean reflected. “I felt like it was really something I could get behind.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Federal panel prescribes new mental health strategy to curb maternal deaths
For help, call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-TLC-MAMA (1-833-852-6262) or contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing or texting “988.” Spanish-language services are also available.
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Milagros Aquino was trying to find a new place to live and had been struggling to get used to new foods after she moved to Bridgeport from Peru with her husband and young son in 2023.
When Aquino, now 31, got pregnant in May 2023, “instantly everything got so much worse than before,” she said. “I was so sad and lying in bed all day. I was really lost and just surviving.”
Aquino has lots of company.
Perinatal depression affects as many as 20% of women in the United States during pregnancy, the postpartum period, or both, according to studies. In some states, anxiety or depression afflicts nearly a quarter of new mothers or pregnant women.
Many women in the U.S. go untreated because there is no widely deployed system to screen for mental illness in mothers, despite widespread recommendations to do so. Experts say the lack of screening has driven higher rates of mental illness, suicide, and drug overdoses that are now the leading causes of death in the first year after a woman gives birth.
“This is a systemic issue, a medical issue, and a human rights issue,” said Lindsay R. Standeven, a perinatal psychiatrist and the clinical and education director of the Johns Hopkins Reproductive Mental Health Center.
Standeven said the root causes of the problem include racial and socioeconomic disparities in maternal care and a lack of support systems for new mothers. She also pointed a finger at a shortage of mental health professionals, insufficient maternal mental health training for providers, and insufficient reimbursement for mental health services. Finally, Standeven said, the problem is exacerbated by the absence of national maternity leave policies, and the access to weapons.
Those factors helped drive a 105% increase in postpartum depression from 2010 to 2021, according to the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
For Aquino, it wasn't until the last weeks of her pregnancy, when she signed up for acupuncture to relieve her stress, that a social worker helped her get care through the Emme Coalition, which connects girls and women with financial help, mental health counseling services, and other resources.
Mothers diagnosed with perinatal depression or anxiety during or after pregnancy are at about three times the risk of suicidal behavior and six times the risk of suicide compared with mothers without a mood disorder, according to recent U.S. and international studies in JAMA Network Open and The BMJ.
The toll of the maternal mental health crisis is particularly acute in rural communities that have become maternity care deserts, as small hospitals close their labor and delivery units because of plummeting birth rates, or because of financial or staffing issues.
This week, the Maternal Mental Health Task Force — co-led by the Office on Women's Health and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and formed in September to respond to the problem — recommended creating maternity care centers that could serve as hubs of integrated care and birthing facilities by building upon the services and personnel already in communities.
The task force will soon determine what portions of the plan will require congressional action and funding to implement and what will be “low-hanging fruit,” said Joy Burkhard, a member of the task force and the executive director of the nonprofit Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health.
Burkhard said equitable access to care is essential. The task force recommended that federal officials identify areas where maternity centers should be placed based on data identifying the underserved. “Rural America,” she said, “is first and foremost.”
There are shortages of care in “unlikely areas,” including Los Angeles County, where some maternity wards have recently closed, said Burkhard. Urban areas that are underserved would also be eligible to get the new centers.
“All that mothers are asking for is maternity care that makes sense. Right now, none of that exists,” she said.
Several pilot programs are designed to help struggling mothers by training and equipping midwives and doulas, people who provide guidance and support to the mothers of newborns.
In Montana, rates of maternal depression before, during, and after pregnancy are higher than the national average. From 2017 to 2020, approximately 15% of mothers experienced postpartum depression and 27% experienced perinatal depression, according to the Montana Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System. The state had the sixth-highest maternal mortality rate in the country in 2019, when it received a federal grant to begin training doulas.
To date, the program has trained 108 doulas, many of whom are Native American. Native Americans make up 6.6% of Montana's population. Indigenous people, particularly those in rural areas, have twice the national rate of severe maternal morbidity and mortality compared with white women, according to a study in Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Stephanie Fitch, grant manager at Montana Obstetrics & Maternal Support at Billings Clinic, said training doulas “has the potential to counter systemic barriers that disproportionately impact our tribal communities and improve overall community health.”
Twelve states and Washington, D.C., have Medicaid coverage for doula care, according to the National Health Law Program. They are California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Virginia. Medicaid pays for about 41% of births in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Jacqueline Carrizo, a doula assigned to Aquino through the Emme Coalition, played an important role in Aquino's recovery. Aquino said she couldn't have imagined going through such a “dark time alone.” With Carrizo's support, “I could make it,” she said.
Genetic and environmental factors, or a past mental health disorder, can increase the risk of depression or anxiety during pregnancy. But mood disorders can happen to anyone.
Teresa Martinez, 30, of Price, Utah, had struggled with anxiety and infertility for years before she conceived her first child. The joy and relief of giving birth to her son in 2012 were short-lived.
Without warning, “a dark cloud came over me,” she said.
Martinez was afraid to tell her husband. “As a woman, you feel so much pressure and you don't want that stigma of not being a good mom,” she said.
In recent years, programs around the country have started to help doctors recognize mothers' mood disorders and learn how to help them before any harm is done.
One of the most successful is the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms, which began a decade ago and has since spread to 29 states. The program, supported by federal and state funding, provides tools and training for physicians and other providers to screen and identify disorders, triage patients, and offer treatment options.
But the expansion of maternal mental health programs is taking place amid sparse resources in much of rural America. Many programs across the country have run out of money.
The federal task force proposed that Congress fund and create consultation programs similar to the one in Massachusetts, but not to replace the ones already in place, said Burkhard.
In April, Missouri became the latest state to adopt the Massachusetts model. Women on Medicaid in Missouri are 10 times as likely to die within one year of pregnancy as those with private insurance. From 2018 through 2020, an average of 70 Missouri women died each year while pregnant or within one year of giving birth, according to state government statistics.
Wendy Ell, executive director of the Maternal Health Access Project in Missouri, called her service a “lifesaving resource” that is free and easy to access for any health care provider in the state who sees patients in the perinatal period.
About 50 health care providers have signed up for Ell's program since it began. Within 30 minutes of a request, the providers can consult over the phone with one of three perinatal psychiatrists. But while the doctors can get help from the psychiatrists, mental health resources for patients are not as readily available.
The task force called for federal funding to train more mental health providers and place them in high-need areas like Missouri. The task force also recommended training and certifying a more diverse workforce of community mental health workers, patient navigators, doulas, and peer support specialists in areas where they are most needed.
A new voluntary curriculum in reproductive psychiatry is designed to help psychiatry residents, fellows, and mental health practitioners who may have little or no training or education about the management of psychiatric illness in the perinatal period. A small study found that the curriculum significantly improved psychiatrists' ability to treat perinatal women with mental illness, said Standeven, who contributed to the training program and is one of the study's authors.
Nancy Byatt, a perinatal psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Chan School of Medicine who led the launch of the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms in 2014, said there is still a lot of work to do.
“I think that the most important thing is that we have made a lot of progress and, in that sense, I am kind of hopeful,” Byatt said.
Cheryl Platzman Weinstock's reporting is supported by a grant from the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
New law gives state board power to probe officer misconduct
The state's officer certification and training board now has the power to investigate law enforcement misconduct.
Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill making it official.
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who pushed for the legislation, said that House Bill 691 authorizes the Board of Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training “to launch its own investigations into officer misconduct. This change, along with the funding to hire two investigators, will improve the board's ability to ensure officer professionalism and standards.”
The new law comes in the wake of an investigation by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times into sheriffs and deputies across the state over allegations of sexual abuse, torture and corruption.
Tindell said the new law will “improve law-enforcement training in Mississippi by requiring all law enforcement officers to receive continuing training throughout an officer's career.”
Under that law, deputies, sheriffs and state law enforcement officers will join police officers in the requirement to have up to 24 hours of continuing education training. Those who fail to train could lose their certifications.
Other changes will take place as well. Each year, the licensing board will have to report on its activities to the Legislature and the governor.
Tindell thanked Reeves “for signing this important piece of legislation and the legislative leaders who supported its passage, including the author of HB 691, Representative Fred Shanks.”
Shanks, R-Brandon, praised the “team effort with some very smart people who want a top-notch law enforcement community.”
The new law creates a 13-member board with the governor having six appointments – two police chiefs, two sheriffs, a district attorney and the director of the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers' Training Academy.
Other members would include the attorney general or a designee, the director of the Mississippi Highway Patrol, the public safety commissioner and the presidents of the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, the Mississippi Constable Association, the Mississippi Campus Law Enforcement Association and the Mississippi Sheriffs' Association (or their designees).
“We obviously need checks and balances on how law enforcement officers conduct themselves,” said state Sen. John Horhn, D-Jackson. “This is a good first step.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Lawmakers punt to next year efforts to expand college aid for low-income Mississippians
A bill to open a college financial aid program for the first time ever to Mississippians who are adult, part-time and very low-income students fell to the wayside in a legislative session dominated by fights over Medicaid and K-12 funding.
The effort to expand the Mississippi Resident Tuition Assistance Grant, called MTAG, died in conference after it was removed from House Bill 765, legislation to provide financial assistance to teachers in critical shortage areas. The Senate had attached MTAG's code sections to that bill in an attempt to keep the expansion alive.
This takes Jennifer Rogers, the director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid, back to the drawing board after years of championing legislation to modernize the way the state helps Mississippians pay for college.
“At the end of the day, there was no appetite to spend any additional money on student financial aid,” Rogers said. “Obviously, I'm disappointed.”
All told, the original proposal would have resulted in the state spending upwards of $30 million extra each year, almost doubling OSFA's roughly $50 million budget.
The increase derived from two aspects of the proposal: An estimated 37,000 Mississippians who have never been eligible for college financial aid would have become eligible to receive it, and the scholarship amounts would have increased.
While college students from millionaire families can get MTAG, the state's poorest students are not eligible, Mississippi Today previously reported.
Rep. Kent McCarty, R-Hattiesburg, said he supports efforts to help low-income Mississippians afford college, but that HB 765 was not an appropriate vehicle to do so because it was not an appropriations bill. Attempting to expand MTAG through that legislation would have put the original subject of HB 765, the Mississippi Critical Teachers Shortage Act, at risk.
“We didn't feel it was appropriate to include an appropriation in a bill that had not been through the appropriations process,” he said.
McCarty, a member of the House Universities and Colleges Committee, added that he is in favor of changing MTAG and doesn't understand the logic behind excluding from state financial aid Mississippi college students who receive a full federal Pell Grant, meaning they come from the state's poorest families.
“What is the purpose of financial aid? To aid those who need financial aid,” he said. “Excluding a group of students because they're eligible for other financial aid doesn't make a lot of sense to me.”
Ultimately, the Mississippi House deemed the proposal too expensive. It never passed out of that chamber's Appropriations Committee.
READ MORE: ‘A thing called money:' Bill to expand financial aid stalled after House lawmakers balk at price tag
Rogers said she plans to work with lawmakers to convince them that it is a good use of state dollars to invest in financial aid. She added that the support of the business community helped keep the bill alive as long as it did this session. The Mississippi Economic Council supported the legislation.
“I don't understand why there is such a hesitancy to invest more in the future workforce of the state,” she said. “I don't understand why there isn't a willingness to invest in student financial aid as a way to help more Mississippians complete meaningful certificates or degrees, valuable certificates or degrees and improve the quality of the workforce.”
Senate Education Committee Chairman Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, told Mississippi Today that he hopes to take a closer look at MTAG this summer, noting that the Senate's version of the proposal, which also included a last-dollar tuition scholarship, was a priority of the lieutenant governor on last year's campaign trail.
“We had so many issues last session,” DeBar said. “Hopefully there won't be as many next year so we can just focus this year and get it across the finish line.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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