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Was the Food and Drug Administration correct when it deemed the drug safe to prescribe to patients in a virtual appointment? A study published Thursday in Nature Medicine looks at abortion pills prescribed via telehealth and provides more support for the FDA's assessment that medication abortion is safe and effective. ... The researchers found that the medication was effective – it ended the pregnancy without any additional follow-up care for 97.7% of patients. It was also found to be safe – 99.7% of abortions were not followed by any serious adverse events. (Simmons-Duffin, 2/15)

Iowa’s medical board on Thursday approved some guidance abortion providers would need to follow if the state’s ban on most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy is upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court. The restrictive abortion law is currently on hold as the court considers Gov. Kim Reynolds ' appeal of the lower court’s decision that paused the crux of it, but the medical board was instructed to continue with its rulemaking process to ensure physicians would have guidance in place when the court rules. (Fingerhut, 2/15)

For eight years, Maryland was one of the handful of blue states that loved its moderate Republican governor. Roughly a third of Maryland’s registered Democrats twice crossed party lines to elect Larry Hogan, to counter the Democrat-controlled legislature of a state that President Joe Biden won by 33 points. But Hogan won’t have an easy time convincing Democrats that he should succeed retiring Democrat Ben Cardin in a race where Republican chances went from literally nonexistent to a growing concern overnight. (Skalka, 2/16)

As lawmakers raced to pass new abortion bans in the Carolinas last year, Charlotte Driscoll, a 26-year-old North Carolina native with bipolar disorder who has struggled with suicidal thoughts, worried aloud to a statehouse panel. She’d finally found a medication that had worked for her called Lamotrigine. “But unfortunately it makes birth control ineffective. And birth control makes Lamotrigine ineffective,” she told the North Carolina Committee on Rules, Calendar and Operations of the House in May. (Raman, 2/15)

CooperSurgical, a major medical supply company, is facing a wave of lawsuits from patients who claim that one of its products destroyed embryos created with in vitro fertilization. Fertility clinics across the world used the product, a nutrient-rich liquid that helps fertilized eggs develop into embryos. This week federal regulators made public that the company had recalled three lots of the liquid, which was used by clinics in November and December. The number of affected patients is unclear, although experts estimated that it is in the thousands. (Kliff and Ghorayshi, 2/15)