Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'Significant Safety Signal': Encouraging Women To 'Reverse' Medical Abortions Endangers Their Health, Halted Study Reports
The Washington Post: ‘Abortion Reversal’ Treatments Are Dangerous And Possibly Deadly For Women, New Study Shows
Several states now require women who seek medication abortions to be provided with dubious information that the procedure could be stopped, allowing a pregnancy to continue. But when researchers attempted to carry out a legitimate study of whether these “abortion reversal” treatments were effective and safe, they had to stop almost immediately — because some of the women who participated in the study experienced dangerous hemorrhaging that sent them to the hospital. (Epstein, 12/24)
The Associated Press: Mississippi Asks Appeals Court To Reconsider Abortion Ruling
Mississippi is asking a federal appeals court to reconsider a ruling that said the state’s ban on most abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional. The ruling was issued Dec. 13 by a panel of three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, dealing a blow to those seeking to overturn the landmark Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion nationwide. The next day, Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said he wants the state to appeal to the Supreme Court. (12/27)
Houston Chronicle: Texas Has Spent Close To $6 Million Fighting Abortion. Here’s How.
State officials take pride in protecting Texas’ image as a defender of the unborn, but those fights have cost taxpayers $5.6 million to protect a law struck down as unconstitutional and others that have no resolution in sight. The legal fights over those state laws and administrative directives that have built additional restrictions on abortions and providers have led Texans to spend $3.1 million playing defense. The costs include staff salaries, travel expenses, filing fees and expert witnesses, according to state records released to Hearst Newspapers. In one case, Texas was also ordered to pay abortion providers $2.5 million for its attorneys’ fees. (Zelinski, 1/1)
NPR: A Visit To The Abortion Clinic At The Center Of A Supreme Court Case
On a recent Saturday morning at Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, La., Kathaleen Pittman was preparing for a day of procedures, as a couple dozen patients sat quietly in the waiting area. Her clinic is challenging a law passed by Louisiana's state legislature in 2014, which requires doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital in case of an emergency. The case, June Medical Services, LLC v. Gee, is scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court next year, and the court's decision has the potential to chip away at existing precedent protecting abortion rights. (McCammon, 12/29)
USA Today/The Fuller Project: Worried About Abortion Laws? More Catholic Hospitals Also Seen As Threat
In 1995, Lois Uttley was working as a reproductive rights advocate in New York when the merger of two hospitals in Troy, a city near Albany, caught her off-guard. One was secular, the other, Catholic. The secular hospital agreed to abide by rules written by Catholic bishops banning certain procedures deemed “immoral” by the church, like abortion, contraception, in-vitro fertilization and tubal ligation. (Rani, 12/27)
