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The Iowa legislation includes exceptions for rape or incest, when the mother’s life is in serious danger or she faces a risk of certain permanent injuries, or when fetal abnormalities “incompatible with life” are present. Officials with Planned Parenthood said in a statement that they would comply with the new law, and would be “prepared to help patients determine whether they can still be seen in Iowa or must travel to different health centers in Minnesota, Nebraska and other neighboring states.” (Smith, 7/29)

One of the nation’s strictest abortion laws will take effect in Iowa on Monday. Abortion care providers in Minnesota expect an increase in patients as another border state limits abortion access. The Iowa law prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, when fetal cardiac activity can be detected but before many know they are pregnant. The only exceptions to the ban are in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the patient. (Zurek, 7/28)

A federal judge ruled Friday that a provision in North Carolina’s abortion laws requiring doctors to document the location of a pregnancy before prescribing abortion pills should be blocked permanently, affirming that it was too vague to be enforced reasonably. The implementation of that requirement was already halted last year by U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles until a lawsuit challenging portions of the abortion law enacted by the Republican-dominated General Assembly in 2023 was litigated further. Eagles now says a permanent injunction would be issued at some point. (Robertson and Seminera, 7/27)

A judge on Friday rejected an effort by GOP lawmakers to use the term “unborn human being” to refer to a fetus in the pamphlet that Arizona voters would use to weigh a ballot measure that would expand abortion access in the state. Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Christopher Whitten said the wording the state legislative council suggested is “packed with emotion and partisan meaning” and asked for what he called more “neutral” language. The measure aims to expand abortion access from 15 weeks to 24 weeks, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb. (Govindarao, 7/27)

In other reproductive health news —

�������ýҕ�l Health News and WABE: Maternity Care In Rural Areas Is In Crisis. Can More Doulas Help? 
When Bristeria Clark went into labor with her son in 2015, her contractions were steady at first. Then, they stalled. Her cervix stopped dilating. After a few hours, doctors at Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany, Georgia, prepped Clark for an emergency cesarean section. It wasn’t the vaginal birth Clark had hoped for during her pregnancy. “I was freaking out. That was my first child. Like, of course you don’t plan that,” she said. “I just remember the gas pulling up to my face and I ended up going to sleep.” (Mador, 7/29)

The young wife sought fertility treatment from a gynecologist in downstate Illinois in 1973 in the hope of conceiving via intrauterine insemination. Her husband had a vasectomy prior to their marriage in 1971. But the couple longed to have a child together. Patient Paula Duvall recalled that Dr. Bradley D. Adams of Christie Clinic in Champaign agreed to perform the procedure, adding that he would use fresh sperm samples from an anonymous University of Illinois medical student whose physical features resembled those of her husband. (Lourgos, 7/28)

President Joe Biden is set to call for major Supreme Court reforms Monday, according to a White House official, a move that would make him the first sitting president in generations to back seismic changes to the way the nation’s highest court operates. Biden’s election-year push comes amid deep unpopularity for the high court but stands little chance of going anywhere. He will call for a constitutional amendment stripping the president of immunity for crimes committed while in office, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a binding code of conduct for the high court, the White House official said. (Graef, Benbrook, Fritze and Saenz, 7/29)

In the month since the Supreme Court granted former President Donald J. Trump substantial immunity from prosecution, a recurring critique of the decision has emerged. Lawyers and scholars say the ruling bears a striking resemblance to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. They point to at least four features of the immunity decision that also figured in Roe, which was overturned in 2022 as “egregiously wrong” in a slashing majority opinion from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. (Liptak, 7/29)

Representative Joseph Morelle of New York introduced a constitutional amendment Wednesday seeking to undo the court's landmark decision in Trump v. United States. The proposed constitutional amendment would provide that "there is no immunity from criminal prosecution for an act on the grounds that such act was within the constitutional authority or official duties of an individual." It would also prohibit a president from pardoning themselves. The proposal was referred to the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Morelle was joined by 49 other House Democrats. A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds vote in the House and Senate, plus ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures. (Fung, 7/26)

The Supreme Court began the year poised to build on its 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and to deliver a new blow to abortion access. ... But over the next six months, sources told CNN, a combination of misgivings among key conservatives and rare leverage on the part of liberal justices changed the course of the case. (Biskupic, 7/29)

State lawmakers — concerned with a surge in class-action suits over data breaches — are passing legislation to limit hospitals and other health care organizations’ liability following a cyberattack. Tennessee in May became the fourth state to limit organizations’ liability in exchange for adopting cyber defenses, following Utah, Connecticut and Ohio. (Leonard, 7/29)

The Biden administration is overhauling its health IT bureaucracy to address the proliferation of cyberattacks on the sector and the growth of data and artificial intelligence in medical settings. The goals include setting an AI policy and strategy for HHS and streamlining critical infrastructure protection within the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, or ASPR, per a notice to be published in the Federal Register on Monday. (Bettelheim, 7/29)

In other tech news —

Halfway through the year, the conversation around artificial intelligence's role in healthcare largely has centered on clinical documentation. Generative AI's ability to streamline charting within electronic health records has caught the attention of established EHR vendors, investors and health systems. Some AI developers and researchers are looking beyond that by preparing and piloting AI models, relying on genetic data on patients to diagnose diseases and develop treatment plans. (Perna, 7/26)

An alliance of little-known advocacy groups has convinced five states to pass laws to protect kids online and is now making inroads in Washington. The nonpartisan coalition has done it by delivering parents’ and kids’ stories about bullying and exploitative content on Facebook, TikTok and other platforms. By focusing on the harms to kids’ health, these organizations have helped enact laws in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland and New York meant to regulate social media for minors. (Reader, 7/28)

Other news from Capitol Hill —

The Department of Veterans Affairs is facing a nearly $15 billion combined budget shortfall this fiscal year and next, and congressional Republicans are crying foul at the last-minute notification about a funding crisis lawmakers have little time to try to fix. VA officials told lawmakers on July 15 that the agency needs $2.9 billion in mandatory spending for veterans pensions and other benefits to cover a gap for the remaining months of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30. And they need another $12 billion in discretionary medical care funds for next year on top of what was provided in a March appropriations package or in the fiscal 2025 House and Senate Military Construction-VA bills. (Quigley, 7/26)

Around November, Kivo Health, a telehealth provider of pulmonary rehabilitation services, will need to start warning older patients that their sessions may not be covered by Medicare in the new year. (Aguilar, 7/29)

Leading Medicaid insurer Centene aims to expand into additional states after losing millions of members during the eligibility redeterminations process, CEO Sarah London said Friday. During the second quarter, Centene's Medicaid enrollment fell 18.2% to 13.1 million as states neared the end of a year-plus effort to unwind federal continuous coverage rules enacted to preserve benefits during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the insurer's remaining Medicaid enrollees proved costlier than expected, Centene reported Friday. (Berryman, 7/26)

Steward Health Care plans to shut down two Massachusetts hospitals next month, bringing the total number of closures in the commonwealth this year to three. ... A Steward spokesperson said in a statement issued Friday the organization is in final negotiations to sell six Massachusetts hospitals but could not find buyers for Carney Hospital in Dorchester and Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer. In April the system closed a rehabilitation hospital in Stoughton. (Kacik, 7/26)

A broad coalition of western North Carolina doctors, patient advocates, clergy members, a state senator and others are calling on HCA Healthcare to give up the Mission Health network, decrying the level of care it has provided since its $1.5 billion purchase in 2019. (Jones, 7/27)

Mercy Health paid former executive Donn Sorensen almost $1 million in 2022 after his departure from the Chesterfield-based health care giant, recently released tax documents show. This was in addition to the combined total of nearly $7 million he received over the previous two years. (Barker, 7/26)

Also —

Breakthrough technology is helping UC Davis Health treat more cases of lung cancer in its earliest stages. It's the first hospital system in Northern California to marry two cutting-edge advanced imaging technologies that make finding abnormalities in the lungs faster and safer. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths nationwide, expected to take the lives of 125,000 Americans this year alone. ... "This is the Cios Spin, here. What it does is take 3D images of the patient's lungs," said Dr. Chinh Phan, showing CBS13 the machine. (Sharp, 7/26)

Aspiring surgeons and medical devices have long been tested on cadavers, but this experience doesn’t translate to living patients. Now, a Missouri company has figured out how to make bodies bleed, breathe and handle like a live person. (DeSalvio, 7/26)

Scientists have made another major stride toward the long-sought goal of diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease with a simple blood test. On Sunday, a team of researchers reported that a blood test was significantly more accurate than doctors’ interpretation of cognitive tests and CT scans in signaling the condition. The study, published Sunday in the journal JAMA, found that about 90 percent of the time the blood test correctly identified whether patients with memory problems had Alzheimer’s. Dementia specialists using standard methods that did not include expensive PET scans or invasive spinal taps were accurate 73 percent of the time, while primary care doctors using those methods got it right only 61 percent of the time. (Belluck, 7/28)

A key protein that helps assemble the brain early in life, also appears to protect the organ from Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging. A trio of studies published in the past year all suggest that the protein Reelin helps maintain thinking and memory in ailing brains, though precisely how it does this remains uncertain. The studies also show that when Reelin levels fall, neurons become more vulnerable. (Hamilton, 7/29)

In other health and wellness news —

In recent years, more and more women struggling to breastfeed have taken their babies to a dentist to sever the tissue under the tongue. But little evidence supports the use of these “tongue-tie releases” for most babies, according to a report published on Monday by the American Academy of Pediatrics, which represents 67,000 doctors. The tongue procedures, which often cost several hundred dollars, should be done only to the small fraction of infants with severely tethered tongues, the report said. (Kliff, 7/29)

If your systolic blood pressure — the top number of your blood pressure reading — consistently edges above normal, new research from the University of Michigan suggests you're at an increased risk for stroke. A study published in JAMA Open Network found that if a person's systolic blood pressure hovers 10 points above the 120 mmHg threshold over a sustained period of time, that person's risk for ischemic stroke is 20% higher and the chances of an intracerebral hemorrhage climbs by 31%. (Jordan Shamus, 7/27)

The top food and drug regulatory agency in the US is warning consumers to stop using a kratom product after it was linked to a death. OPMS Black Liquid Kratom, a plant-extract drink that is sold online and in certain stores, shouldn’t be consumed, the US Food and Drug Administration said in an advisory issued on Friday. “OPMS Black Liquid Kratom has been linked to serious adverse health effects, including death,” according to the statement on the FDA’s website. (Milton, 7/26)

More than a dozen vegetables including peppers, cucumbers and squash have been recalled due to possible contamination with listeria. The recall affects produce sold at select Walmart and Aldi stores, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said in a news release Monday. It is an expansion of the Wiers Farm July 12 recall. The original recall was for a limited number of whole cucumbers and bagged salad cucumbers. (Burke, 7/26)

Boar’s Head has recalled more than 207,000 pounds of deli meat, including liverwurst and ham products sold nationwide, because they may contain the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes. The company initiated the recall after liverwurst at a store in Maryland tested positive for listeria. The sample was collected as part of an investigation into a multistate listeria outbreak that had sickened 34 people across 13 states as of Thursday. (Bendix, 7/26)

US health regulators warned that patients may be injecting themselves with incorrect amounts of copycat weight-loss drugs, causing harm that has landed some in the hospital. Because of shortages of the brand-name medicines made by Novo Nordisk A/S and Eli Lilly & Co., the Food and Drug Administration allows compounding pharmacies to make copies of drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound. ... The compounded drugs often come in vials. That requires patients to measure the amount they get with each injection themselves. (Swetlitz, 7/26)

Abbott Laboratories was ordered by a jury to pay almost $500 million over allegations that it hid the risk that its premature-infant formula can cause a potentially fatal bowel disease, according to lawyers for the mother who won the first case against the company to go to trial. Jurors in state court in St. Louis on Friday awarded $95 million to compensate the family for its losses and $400 million in punitive damages, according to Tor Hoerman, the lead lawyer for the plaintiff. (Burnson and Feeley, 7/27)

Sarepta Therapeutics demanded a prominent patient advocacy organization censor a video that contained pointed criticism of the company’s recently approved gene therapy for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, STAT has learned. The incident raises questions about the financial ties between Sarepta and the advocacy group, Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy, and whether the drugmaker uses its money to influence, or even muzzle, debate over its Duchenne medicines. (Feuerstein, 7/29)

Izzy McKinney was a healthy teenager who wrote poetry, played the mandolin and took pride in her flair with an eyeliner pencil. She also had acne. She tried topical medications and then antibiotics. Two weeks after starting a doctor-prescribed antibiotic — trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole — Izzy came down with a mild fever. Less than three months later, one month after her 16th birthday, Izzy’s heart failed, and she died. An autopsy revealed the cause was DRESS — drug reaction with eosinophilia and systemic symptoms. (Ellison, 7/27)

Brittany Yeager was leading a troop of girls at Girl Scout camp in Idaho last summer when a mosquito bite upended her life. Once a runner, hiker and math wiz, Yeager, 30, now takes 23 pills a day to manage symptoms that include paralysis, pain, seizures, muscle spasms, depression and memory problems. She recently learned to stand again and take a few steps, but she relies on an electric wheelchair to get around. (Goodman, 7/27)

Three of the nine reported human cases of West Nile virus have had the more severe form of the disease, also known as West Nile neuroinvasive disease, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). (Russ, 7/27)

A Bay Area county has reported its first mosquito-related death in nearly two decades. Contra Costa County officials announced Saturday that a resident succumbed to a West Nile virus infection this month. The death of the unidentified man from East County was reported on July 16, marking the first West Nile virus-related fatality in Contra Costa since 2006. (Vaziri, 7/28)

On the covid surge —

US COVID activity continues a steady rise across most of the nation, according to the latest indicators today from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In its latest respiratory illness snapshot, the CDC said most areas of the country are seeing consistent rises in COVID activity. "Surges like this are known to occur throughout the year, including during summer months," it said, adding there are many effective tools for preventing the spread of the virus or becoming seriously ill. (Schnirring, 7/26)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Journalists Drill Down On Ongoing Covid Risks, Escalating Health Care Costs
�������ýҕ�l Health News and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media in the last two weeks to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. (7/27)

On bird flu and rabies —

With the number of U.S. dairy herds infected with H5N1 bird flu rising almost daily, fears are growing that the dangerous virus cannot be driven out of this species. That belief is amplifying calls for the development of flu shots for cows. (Branswell, 7/29)

Aircraft will drop rabies vaccination baits across Allegheny County next month as part of a massive effort to eventually eradicate the raccoon variant of the virus from the country. ... Raccoon rabies can be found throughout the state, and the disease is almost always fatal to both people and animals, the health department says. The goal is to eventually push the westward boundary of raccoon rabies all the way to the East Coast, basically eradicating raccoon rabies from the United States. (Bartos, 7/27)

A federal judge this week set the stage for a trial in a battle over the state House’s attempt to obtain internal information about how the Florida Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics developed standards of care for children diagnosed with gender dysphoria. (Saunders, 7/25)

The Washington University Transgender Center continues to offer some treatments to transgender patients under 18 after state legislators passed a law last year that prohibits doctors from providing minors with comprehensive gender-affirming care. Wash U officials recently sought to clarify that Washington University would continue some services after a former caseworker at the center said that the pediatric center would close. (Fentem, 7/29)

On the gun violence epidemic —

15-year-old who was among those charged with opening fire during the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally has been sentenced to a state facility for youths. “That is not who I am,” the teen, who was referred to as R.G. in court documents, said at Thursday’s hearing. He described himself as a good kid before he became associated with a group of peers involved in the Feb. 14 shooting, The Kansas City Star reported. The host of a local radio program was killed, 25 were wounded and 69 others sustained other injuries, such as broken bones and dislocated joints, as they fled, Kansas City police detective Grant Spiking testified. (7/26)

The Moon Township man who was injured during the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump is out of the hospital. James Copenhaver has been discharged from Allegheny General Hospital, a spokesperson for Highmark Health said. (Lang, 7/28)

More health news from across the U.S. —

Children with a family history of incarceration are more likely to be diagnosed with physical and mental health conditions than other kids, a recent analysis suggests. Published in Academic Pediatrics, the study looked at 11 years’ worth of electronic health records from Cincinnati Children’s, analyzing over 1.74 million unique patients under age 21 years between 2009 and 2020. It sheds light on the ripple effects of mass incarceration. (Blakemore, 7/28)

They are plumbers and casino supervisors, pizzeria managers and factory workers. They deliver groceries, sell eyeglasses and unload trucks at Amazon. And they’re the new, unlikely face of homelessness: Working Americans with decent-paying jobs who simply can’t afford a place to live. Homelessness, already at a record high last year, appears to be worsening among people with jobs, as housing becomes further out of reach for low-wage earners, according to shelter interviews and upticks in evictions and homelessness tallies around the country. (Bhattarai, 7/28)

Legionella bacteria — a pathogen that can cause the serious Legionnaires’ disease and the less serious Pontiac fever — has been detected in the water fixtures of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and Social Security Administration facilities in Woodlawn. Out of an “abundance of caution,” most employees and contractors at the CMS headquarters are working remotely, but the agency isn’t aware of any health problems affecting its workforce, a CMS spokesperson said. (Roberts, 7/26)

By now, most of us understand that extreme heat is bad for our health, making our hearts, lungs, kidneys and other organs work much harder. But too often we overlook the quieter, less obvious toll heat takes on another vital organ: our brain. (Lisa Jarvis, 7/26)

As more than 7,500 clinicians and researchers converge in Philadelphia for the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference, a sharp division is emerging over new treatments for the disease that brings them together each year. This divide is over when to prescribe one of the newer drugs to treat Alzheimer’s disease. (P. Murali Doraiswamy and Lon S. Schneider, 7/28)

On top of dangerous and extreme decisions that overturn settled legal precedents — including Roe v. Wade — the court is mired in a crisis of ethics. Scandals involving several justices have caused the public to question the court’s fairness and independence, which are essential to faithfully carrying out its mission of equal justice under the law. For example, undisclosed gifts to justices from individuals with interests in cases before the court, as well as conflicts of interest connected with Jan. 6 insurrectionists, raise legitimate questions about the court’s impartiality. (President Joe Biden, 7/29)

Let’s get to the most important part first. Somewhere in Milton Keynes, England — or maybe in some remote corner of the globe, should she be seeking an escape — there is a woman in her early 20s who has lived for a decade with a vile, unspeakable crime against her. She was 12 years old. She met a Dutch man online. He flew to meet her. And he raped her. No amount of punishment to her assailant — not the four years he was sentenced to and certainly not the 13 months he served — can change that. (Barry Svrluga, 7/28)

Americans are facing at least two prescription drug crises simultaneously. One is the outrageously high cost of drugs, which runs to more than $500 billion per year. The other relates to extreme drug shortages requiring rationing of lifesaving medications. Crises can generate opportunities. Mark Cuban, the wildly successful entrepreneur and NBA owner, has committed himself to solving these two problems. Through the creation of the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company (MCCPDC), Cuban aims to reduce drug prices and also drug shortages. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel and John Connolly, 7/29)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Why Many Nonprofit (Wink, Wink) Hospitals Are Rolling In Money 
One owns a for-profit insurer, a venture capital company, and for-profit hospitals in Italy and Kazakhstan; it has just acquired its fourth for-profit hospital in Ireland. Another owns one of the largest for-profit hospitals in London, is partnering to build a massive training facility for a professional basketball team, and has launched and financed 80 for-profit start-ups. Another partners with a wellness spa where rooms cost $4,000 a night and co-invests with “leading private equity firms.” Do these sound like charities? These diversified businesses are, in fact, some of the country’s largest nonprofit hospital systems. (Elisabeth Rosenthal, 7/29)