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A network of medical clinics that serves low-income residents in Maine said Wednesday it is shutting down its primary care operations because of Trump administration cuts to abortion providers. President Donald Trump’s policy and tax bill, known as the “ big beautiful bill,” blocked Medicaid money from Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. The parameters in the bill also stopped funding from reaching Maine Family Planning, a much smaller provider that also delivers other medical services in the mostly rural state. (Whittle and Mulvihill, 10/1)

A Texas federal judge late Tuesday declined to dismiss a lawsuit against the Food and Drug Administration seeking to sharply restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, instead transferring the case to Missouri and keeping the effort alive. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled that Idaho, Missouri and Kansas — which were not the original plaintiffs — have no ties to Amarillo, Texas, where the original lawsuit was filed. (Weixel, 10/1)

The Trump administration has again found itself tussling with a pope. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Wednesday pushed back on Pope Leo XIV’s suggestion Tuesday that people who support the “inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States” may not be “pro life.” “This administration is trying to enforce our nation’s laws in the most humane way possible, and we are upholding the law,” she said during Wednesday’s press briefing. “We are doing that on behalf of the people of our country who live here.” The press secretary — who is devoutly Catholic and regularly prays with her staff before her press briefings — did not mention the pope. (Sentner, 10/1)

Black babies died suddenly and unexpectedly in their sleep at a rate 14 times higher than white babies in Cook County between 2019 and 2023 — a startling disparity revealed in a report released Wednesday by county and health officials. (Schencker, 10/1)

For months, Dr. Daniel Edney had watched his state's infant mortality rate rise. "It just kept climbing," he remembers. "We'd get another death coming in, another death coming in." As the public health officer in Mississippi, it's Edney's job to monitor the number of infant deaths in the state. When he saw the final figures for 2024, they were as bad as he feared. (Riddle, 10/2)

Quietly, over the past three years, babies have been conceived — and at least 20 of them have been born — through clinical trials that involve automation with little to no human intervention. The same algorithmic computer-vision software that helps autonomous vehicles spot objects on the road and finds signs of breast cancer in a mammogram can instantaneously detect the most robust swimmer among hundreds of thousands of flailing, corkscrewing sperm — each one a fraction of the width of a hair strand. It’s a capability that far exceeds any trained embryologist’s eye. A robotic arm can collect that sperm and mix the chemicals required for an egg to stay viable. And it can delicately and reproducibly fertilize an egg, initiating the moment of conception. (Dwoskin and Murphy, 10/1)

Research presented last week during the American Academy of Pediatrics 2025 National Conference & Exhibition shows maternal COVID-19 vaccination is linked to a 58% lower risk of being infected with the virus, as well as a lower risk of experiencing a stillbirth or preterm birth. But a new poll from the Annenberg Public Policy Center suggests significant hesitation among pregnant women to get vaccinated against COVID-19, with just 38% of poll respondents saying they would recommend that someone who is pregnant get the COVID-19 shot. (Soucheray, 10/1)

A US modeling study published yesterday in JAMA Pediatrics estimates that vaccinating pregnant women against COVID-19 prevented 7,000 hospitalizations in infants and 3,000 in pregnant women from January 2024 to May 2025. (Van Beusekom, 9/30)

Researchers have shut pregnant women out of gold-standard clinical trials in order to protect them and their babies. But the practice has had the opposite effect. Instead, women have to wade through a chaotic data landscape, and many may choose to suffer through untreated illnesses. (Lawrence, 10/2)

Robin Phillip’s fresh haircut is dyed her favorite color — green. But beneath the dye job is a scar that runs along the side of her head, the result of two craniotomies. ... Today, Phillip believes her birth control is to blame. For nearly 30 years, stopping only when she had her two children, she used Depo-Provera — a progestin shot given every three months. She’s one of more than 1,000 women suing Pfizer, which makes the drug, alleging it knew more about the risks and failed to warn users. (Brooks and Essamuah, 10/1)

Oct.1 marks the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the American Cancer Society (ACS) is commemorating 40 years of spreading awareness about the condition. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women, with one in eight developing breast cancer in her lifetime, according to the ACS. (Kekatos, 10/1)

Direct mailing human papillomavirus (HPV) self-testing kits to women's homes was cost-effective for those who regularly undergo cervical cancer screening, those overdue for screening, and those with unknown screening histories who opted in, per a Kaiser Permanente–led study published today in JAMA Network Open. (Van Beusekom, 10/1)

Solar storms—giant bursts of energy from the Sun that disturb the Earth’s magnetic field—may play a role in triggering heart attacks, particularly in women, a new study has found. Researchers led from the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) analyzed hospital records from São José dos Campos, Brazil, between 1998 and 2005—a period marked by high solar activity. (Patrick, 9/30)