(The Atlantic) – Babies are catching measles in utero for the first time in decades.

In Pennsylvania, at least 1,398 people have been infected with measles this year, according to recent estimates from the state health department; the Amish community, which has significantly lower vaccination rates than other Pennsylvanians, has been especially hard hit. Experts caution that the actual number of infections is likely much higher. “Every house that I go into, either my pregnant mama has it, her husband has it and she’s going to get it, or a family member has it,” Devers told me last week as she drove from one patient appointment to another through Lancaster County’s rolling farmland. Measles can be especially dangerous during pregnancy, leading to low birth weight, early labor, and miscarriage; one of Devers’s patients recently miscarried at 17 weeks while she was fighting a measles infection.

If more pregnant women get measles, the number of newborns who have measles will almost certainly rise too. (Read More)