Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Federal Judge Won't Block Most Of New North Carolina Abortion Ban
AP: Judge Considering Blocking Parts Of North Carolina Abortion Law Won't Halt Broader 12-Week Ban
A federal judge said Wednesday that she won’t temporarily block most of a newly revised abortion law from taking effect this weekend in North Carolina, including a near-ban on the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy. U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles said at a court hearing that she won’t grant the request by lawyers for Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and a physician to set aside most of the new restrictions before they are to come into force on Saturday, calling it overbroad. (Robertson, 6/28)
NBC News: Crisis Pregnancy Center Failed To Spot Ectopic Pregnancy, Lawsuit Alleges
A crisis pregnancy center in Massachusetts failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy, causing a life-threatening emergency for the patient, a lawsuit filed last week alleges. The complaint, filed Thursday, says the anti-abortion Clearway Clinic in Worcester, about 50 miles southwest of Boston, engages in deceptive advertising, aiming to persuade women to forgo abortions rather than "providing them with the range of medically appropriate options." (McShane, 6/29)
Iowa Public Radio: A Year After The Dobbs Decision, The Future Of Abortion In Iowa Is Still Unclear
Even as abortion has remained legal, Planned Parenthood officials say the nonprofit provided 13% fewer abortions in Iowa in the year since the Dobbs decision. They attributed that to staff shortages and the state’s 24-hour abortion waiting period that took effect last summer. At the same time, the five-state Planned Parenthood region that includes Iowa provided 9% more abortions in the past year, as the number of patients coming from other states nearly doubled. (Sostaric, 6/29)
FiveThirtyEight: Nonreligious Americans Are The New Abortion Voters
Surveys conducted by the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life and the Pew Research Center found that abortion has become much more important to religiously unaffiliated Americans than it was in the past, while becoming less of a critical concern for white evangelicals. These findings suggest that an entirely different group of people could become the next generation of “abortion voters” — a label once associated with the religious right. (Cox and Thomson-DeVeaux, 6/29)
PBS NewsHour: Why Post-Roe Abortion Restrictions Worry Domestic Violence Experts
Domestic violence, which includes intimate partner violence, is often misrepresented as a private family issue, according to Justice. But this form of violence is “extremely pervasive,” she said, and people should “really talk about it in terms of a public health crisis, impacting millions of people in the U.S.” (Santhanam, 6/28)
On the abortion pill —
Reuters: US Abortion Pill Access Could Hinge On Whether Doctors Had Right To Sue
A prominent U.S. lawsuit to ban the abortion pill mifepristone has focused on the drug's safety and approval process. But the outcome may ultimately rest on a different issue: whether Ingrid Skop, an anti-abortion doctor in Texas, and other physicians behind the lawsuit can justify suing in the first place. That’s because of the legal concept known as standing, which holds that plaintiffs must have suffered harm or face an imminent injury traceable to the defendant — in this case, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill in 2000. (Hals, 6/29)
Reuters: Five Doctors Backing The US Legal Case Against The Abortion Pill
A legal case making its way through the courts could remove the abortion pill mifepristone from the market or restrict access to the drug. The case is being led by medical groups and doctors who are opposed to abortion and hinges in part on the testimony of the doctors to establish the right to bring the case, a legal doctrine known as standing. Here is a closer look at some of them. (Hals, 6/29)
In other reproductive health news —
Reuters: Menopause Hormone Pills Associated With Dementia, Causation Unclear
Use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) to ease the effects of menopause, even for short periods, was associated with a higher risk for dementia in a nationwide study from Denmark, but the cognitive declines may not have been due to the treatment, researchers said on Wednesday. The study, published in The BMJ, contradicts some earlier studies that suggest HRT may protect against cognitive decline if the treatments are started near menopause onset. (Lapid, 6/28)
