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The rate of babies born prematurely in the US grew 12% from 2014 to 2022 to nearly 8.7%, with pronounced racial and age disparities among the mothers, a new analysis from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) found. Black mothers were almost twice as likely as white mothers to give birth before babies reached full term, 12.5% versus 7.6% respectively. Similarly, women older than 40 had a greater risk of preterm birth compared to women aged 20-29, 12.5% versus 8.23%. (Glenza, 1/31)

The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to give more veterans who use the VA for medical care broader access to advanced fertility treatments, including those who require in vitro fertilization to conceive and who need egg or sperm donations as part of their efforts to start a family. The revised policy, based on a change required at the Defense Department by ongoing litigation, is expected to expand availability of the benefit to single veterans, same-sex couples and married couples unable to use their own gametes. (Kime, 1/30)

The American Civil Liberties Union is warning the Supreme Court that lower court decisions in a closely watched battle over a widely used abortion pill relied on "patently unreliable witnesses" and "ideologically tainted junk science." In a friend-of-the-court brief the ACLU filed with the Center for Reproductive Rights and The Lawyering Project, the groups argued the lower courts that have ruled in the case involving the drug mifepristone supplanted the Food and Drug Administration's scientific judgment with unproven assertions from anti-abortion rights medical associations and doctors about the alleged harms of medication abortion. (Quinn, 1/30)

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday she feels daily “frustration” as conservative justices move the country to the ideological right. In an appearance at the University of California, Berkely School of Law, Sotomayor was asked how she copes with the consistently conservative rulings from the court. “Every loss truly traumatizes me,” but “I get up the next morning,” she said in response to the question, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The crowd — about 1,300 students — applauded. (Fortinsky, 1/30)

Governors of California and other Democratic-led states urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to maintain women’s access to the pills used in more than half of all U.S. abortions, saying a ban or restrictions on mifepristone would harm women and their states and would protect no one. “Significantly reducing access to mifepristone will not make patients safer — it will only add extreme burdens to healthcare providers, patients, state medical systems, and those responsible for safeguarding public health and safety,” the governors of 21 states and the territory of Guam said in a filing with the court. (Egelko, 1/30)

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has cast abortion to the background of his campaign and declined calls to champion a national abortion ban. But, if reelected, Trump’s tune could change: Without the aid of Congress, the former president would have tools to quickly curtail access to the procedure — and the pressure on him to wield them has already started. (Luthra and Barclay, 1/30)