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The Senate’s health committee convened its first hearing of the year on the efficacy of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, which requires a prescription, amid a growing push from conservatives to restrict abortion access across the country. Mifepristone is an oral drug typically used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to induce an abortion or to help manage an early miscarriage. In 2019, the Food and Drug Administration approved a generic version of the drug. (Jones II, 1/15)

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) decried Republican efforts to discredit medication abortion in an interview Wednesday with Mother Jones, saying that “the only reason they’re going after mifepristone is because it is the way most women get their abortive care.” On Wednesday morning, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on “protecting women” from the “dangers of chemical abortion drugs.” “Republicans are holding this hearing to peddle debunked junk ‘studies’ by anti-abortion organizations which have no credibility and have been forcefully condemned by actual medical organizations,” Murray said in her opening statement. The hearing, she continued, was “really about the fact that Trump and his anti-abortion allies want to ban abortion nationwide.”

How abortion is being linked to ACA subsidies —

A push by Senate negotiators to strike a deal on extending enhanced ObamaCare subsidies is running into a brick wall as they struggle to clear a key hurdle on abortion. But time is of the essence: Open enrollment in most states and the federal healthcare.gov exchange ends today. (Weaver and Weixel, 1/15)

Amid concerns about the president's actions, abortion opponents are threatening to redirect or withhold campaign spending and withdraw their volunteer armies in the midterms. (Ollstein and Messerly, 1/15)

More abortion news from California, North Carolina, and elsewhere —

California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday he was blocking Louisiana’s attempt to extradite a doctor in the Golden State accused of mailing abortion pills. The Democratic governor’s announcement comes a day after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said he sent the extradition paperwork in an effort to bring the physician “to justice.” Louisiana has some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the country, while California law aims to protect abortion providers from criminal prosecution for treating out-of-state patients. (Austin, 1/15)

When Ciji Graham visited a cardiologist on Nov. 14, 2023, her heart was pounding at 192 beats per minute, a rate healthy people her age usually reach during the peak of a sprint. She was having another episode of atrial fibrillation, a rapid, irregular heartbeat. The 34-year-old Greensboro, North Carolina, police officer was at risk of a stroke or heart failure. In the past, doctors had always been able to shock Graham’s heart back into rhythm with a procedure called a cardioversion. But this time, the treatment was just out of reach. (Presser and Surana, 1/14)

Prosecutors in states with abortion bans are increasingly charging mostly low-income women with pregnancy-related crimes, in a test of whether fetuses and embryos have the same rights as children. (Goldman, 1/15)

In other reproductive health news —

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Native Americans Are Dying From Pregnancy. They Want A Voice To Stop The Trend
Just hours after Rhonda Swaney left a prenatal appointment for her first pregnancy, she felt severe pain in her stomach and started vomiting. Then 25 years old and six months pregnant, she drove herself to the emergency room in Ronan, Montana, on the Flathead Indian Reservation, where an ambulance transferred her to a larger hospital 60 miles away in Missoula. Once she arrived, the staff couldn’t detect her baby’s heartbeat. Swaney began to bleed heavily. She delivered a stillborn baby and was hospitalized for several days. At one point, doctors told her to call her family. They didn’t expect her to survive. (Orozco Rodriguez, 1/15)

Administration officials have been urging Americans to get married and procreate, but some conservatives are frustrated by a lack of action. (Kitchener, 1/13)