O-Bits: A Bunch of Real Mothers Edition

It’s a scandal that given all the technological innovations and our supposed “best health-care system in the world,” American women are more likely to die from childbirth than those in any other developed country.  According to the World Heath Organization up to 1,200 women a year die from childbirth, and that black women are three to four times more likely to die from pregnancy of complications from childbirth than white women.  CNN reports on the discrepancy, as part of their Giving Birth In America series.

Mothers were also in the news in Stockton, California, where a group of mothers protested after the local paper ran an editorial said it was “too soon” to have a discussion after gun violence. “We’re tired of mourning. … This is a time for action,” Julie Schardt told the Stockton Record. “This is a time to call Congress.” We hope the rampage earlier in Northern California earlier this week only adds fuel to their fire.

Could your iPhone be killing you? If you’re a teenager in America, it could be. A report from the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that teen suicides went up sharply between the years 2010 and 2015, the first rise in more than two decades. While not making an outright finding of causality, they note that those years correspond to the rise of social media. Both cyberbullying and comparing themselves to the seemingly perfect lives they see on-line may have adversely affecting teens’ mental health.  They found that teens who were on-line for more than five hours a day, (nearly one-fifth of those surveyed) were 70 percent more likely to have suicidal thoughts or actions than those who reported one hour of daily use. “After hours of scrolling through Instagram feeds, I just feel worse about myself because I feel left out,” Caitlin Hearty, a 17-year-old Littleton, Colorado, high school senior who helped organize an offline campaign last month after several local teen suicides told US News. We hope her campaign is more effective than the one at Westerberg High….

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.

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