The Biden administration on Wednesday will head to the Supreme Court to defend one of its primary efforts to protect abortion rights after the fall of Roe v. Wade.   At stake is whether a federal emergency care law passed 37 years ago trumps state laws that ban abortion in nearly all circumstances.   The Justice Department contends the law requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to provide an abortion if necessary to stabilize the health of an emergency room patient, regardless of state abortion bans.   Conservatives say the administration is trying to us ..read more

Particles of bird flu were detected in some samples of pasteurized milk, though the virus in that form is not a threat to humans, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Tuesday. As a bird flu epidemic spreads through avian and cattle livestock across the country, the FDA increased testing of domestic milk supplies. Some of the testing samples found inactive remnants of the bird flu virus, killed during the pasteurization process, the agency said. “To date, we have seen nothing that would change our assessment that the commercial milk supply is safe,” the FDA said Tuesday. The agency ..read more

Republican Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake in an interview with an Idaho media outlet expressed disappointment that her state's 1864 law banning nearly all abortions is not being enforced, backtracking on comments she made earlier this month when she said the resurrected measure went too far.  “The Arizona Supreme Court said this is the law of Arizona. But unfortunately, the people running our state have said we’re not going to enforce it,” Lake said in a video interview with the Idaho Dispatch on Saturday.  “We don’t have that law, as much as many of us wish we did,” she added.&n ..read more

Archaic pieces of legislation are coming back to life as the fight over abortion access rages across the country ahead of the 2024 election.   When the Arizona Supreme Court ruled to ban nearly all abortions in the state, it did so by upholding an 1864 law — passed before Arizona was made a state — that made performing abortions a felony.  There are at least five other states that have similar so-called "zombie laws" on the books, which could be used to restrict or ban abortions entirely.  And anti-abortion groups have made the Comstock Act of 1873 a central part of their p ..read more

President Biden will deliver a speech in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday focused on reproductive rights, taking center stage on abortion about one week ahead of the state’s six-week ban taking effect.   Biden is expected to place the blame for the state’s abortion restrictions squarely on former President Trump, who has repeatedly taken credit for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.  The Biden campaign said the president is going to “forcefully advocate for reproductive freedom and call out Donald Trump's abortion bans.”   The campaign is makin ..read more

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule Monday blocking the disclosure of protected health information to aid in the investigation or litigation of patients or providers involved in legal reproductive health care. The rule issued by the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR) prohibits providers, clearing houses and their business associates regulated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) from disclosing a patient's protected health information to facilitate an investigation or impose liability by law enforcement. "Each and every American s ..read more

Nursing homes will be required to have minimum levels of front-line caregivers for the first time under a new requirement the Biden administration announced Monday.  The final policy, unveiled by Vice President Harris, comes despite intense lobbying from the nursing home industry and opposition from bipartisan lawmakers, who argue a federal standard is unfeasible because of a nationwide staffing shortage made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.  In his 2022 State of the Union address, President Biden announced a slate of nursing home reforms and vowed staffing minimums would be among the ..read more

A ..read more

A ..read more

A ..read more