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The abortion rate is holding steady in the US despite total and partial bans in some states – largely because of travel across state lines and a significant increase in telehealth appointments, a new report says.

US regulatory officials are weighing changes to the ways mifepristone, an abortion medication, may be dispensed, but they have reportedly pushed their review until after the midterm elections, given the widespread support for abortion across the US.

The number of abortions in the US increased slightly last year, from 1.124m to 1.126m, according to a Guttmacher Institute report. There’s also a shift away from traveling and toward telehealth, in which providers may prescribe mail-order pills.

One major change in this report is the provision of telehealth for patients in states with total bans – with clinicians in states such as New York or Massachusetts, which have shield laws to protect providers, seeing and prescribing remotely to patients living in states such as Texas or Alabama.

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A new COVID-19 variant, BA.3.2, has been detected in 25 states, according to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The new variant was first found in South Africa in November 2024 and has since spread to at least 23 countries; it accounts for 30% of current COVID-19 cases in certain parts of Europe.

BA.3.2 was first identified in the United States in January 2026 and currently makes up less than 1% of cases in the country, according to Dr. Abraar Karan, an instructor in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

“In the U.S., it has been detected in wastewater across multiple states which suggests low-level spread, but it has not emerged as the dominant variant,” Dr. Syra Madad, an epidemiologist and author of the Substack Critical Health Voices, told HuffPost via email. (The current dominant variant in the U.S. is XFG, according to CDC data.)

While COVID-19 levels are low throughout most of the country, this variant is capturing researchers’ attention for a reason. Here’s what to know:

“BA.3.2 is a newer SARS-CoV-2 variant that public health officials are watching closely because it has a large number of spike protein mutations, which may help it partially evade immunity from prior infection or vaccination,” said Madad.

“It does have more mutations than some other variants ... in the spike protein, which is particularly relevant for various proxies of whether this could cause more problems to humans,” Karan said.

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A New Mexico jury determined Tuesday that Meta knowingly harmed children's mental health and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation on its social media platforms, a verdict that signals a changing tide against tech companies and the government's willingness to crack down.

The landmark decision comes after a nearly seven-week trial, and as jurors in a federal court in California have been sequestered in deliberations for more than a week about whether Meta and YouTube should be liable in a similar case.

New Mexico jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta — which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp — prioritized profits over safety, and violated parts of the state's Unfair Practices Act.

The jury agreed with allegations that Meta made false or misleading statements and also agreed that Meta engaged in "unconscionable" trade practices that unfairly took advantage of the vulnerabilities of and inexperience of children.

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A Georgia judge set a $1 bond for a woman facing murder charges tied to allegations she used abortion pills to end a pregnancy, potentially paving the way for a possible reduction or dismissal of charges.

Alexia Moore, 31, was arrested by police in Savannah earlier this month on a warrant that echoed a 2019 Georgia law banning abortions after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected.

Moore was charged with murder after police determined she had been pregnant beyond six weeks “based on the medical staff’s knowledge that the baby had a beating heart and was struggling to breathe”.

Moore’s case is believed to be one of the first occasions of a woman being charged for terminating a pregnancy in Georgia since it passed a law banning most abortions and criminalized medical or hospital staff for aborting a fetus older than six weeks.

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A 31-year-old Georgia woman has been charged with murder by police who say she took pills to induce an illegal abortion.

If state prosecutors decide to move forward with the murder charge brought by local police against Alexia Moore, her case would be one of the first instances of a woman being charged for terminating a pregnancy in Georgia since it passed a 2019 law banning most abortions.

The arrest warrant charging Moore with murder uses language that echoes the law, saying police determined that Moore had been pregnant beyond six weeks “based on the medical staff’s knowledge that the baby had a beating heart and was struggling to breathe”.

“No one should be criminalized for having an abortion,” Dana Sussman, senior vice-president of the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice said in a statement, calling Moore’s case “an unprecedented murder charge for an alleged abortion”.

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A federal judge on Monday blocked Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s changes to vaccine policy, including the reduction of the recommended childhood immunizations and his remaking of a key vaccine advisory panel.

U.S. District Judge Brian E. Murphy, a Biden appointee, granted a motion by the American Academy of Pediatrics for a preliminary injunction against the reduced childhood immunization schedule earlier this year, along with the remaking of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, invalidating all votes made by the committee since.

Murphy found that the reconstitution of the ACIP last year failed to abide by the Federal Advisory Committee Act. He also found that the CDC bypassing the ACIP when changing the childhood immunization schedule was both a “technical, procedural failure” and “an abandonment of the technical knowledge and expertise embodied by that committee.”

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