Rachel can’t taste any of the foods she makes, but cooking gives her a connection to her family and friends. This essay is part of Teen Voices’ Girl Fuse series, featuring stories by and about girls with disabilities.

In order to bring down the teen girl dropout rate at their high schools, teens in Johannesburg head to their local health clinic.

Dr. David Keefe, a specialist in infertility at New York University’s School of Medicine, talks about what is known, what remains unexplained and how genome sequencing is helping to reduce miscarriages.

“Most of us in the U.S. are lucky to be in the periphery,” says Kacey Ernst, an epidemiologist. “But of course with sexual transmission it doesn’t matter where you live.”

“My entire sixth grade experience was people not believing that I was sick,” says one girl. “People thought I used a wheelchair for fun.” Part of Teen Voices’ Girl Fuse series, highlighting stories by and about girls with disabilities.

Among those celebrating was a young woman who, in a court briefing, described her own abortion. “I knew what was best for my family,” she said, her voice shaking, shortly after the ruling came out June 27.

Getting hospitals to stop estimating blood loss and start quantifying it—going from “EBL to QBL”–is now a major goal of an effort to reduce postpartum hemorrhage, a leading cause of maternal death that disproportionately afflicts black women.

A scarcity of physicians with special training in the needs of one trans man left him giving his doctor guidance on his own testosterone dosage. “There’s a huge online community,” he says, “and luckily I knew from YouTube and Facebook what was typical.”

As her family was fleeing Syria, one mother thought an arranged marriage for her 11-year-old daughter was a chance at safety. Instead, it opened the door to devastation, according to a doctor who met them at her clinic and tells what she observed.