Punishing women who use drugs during pregnancy deters them from seeking prenatal care and entering drug treatment programs, and the relevant policies may unfairly target poor or minority women.
Registries of those considered dangerous focus wrongly on those with mental illness, who account for only 4 percent of violent acts committed in the United States.
The revisions balance a growing understanding of gender identity disorders and societal views with the need to retain conditions that benefit from intervention and the removal of which would hamper patients’ ability to receive medical treatment.