Candidates are leveling charges of abortion extremism in both directions

A top campaign line this year: Casting your opponent as extreme on abortion

The war of words over abortion is playing out on debate stages across the country.

Both Democrats and Republicans are attempting to paint their opponents’ position on the hot-button issue as running counter to public opinion.

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Republicans had largely attempted to pivot to the economy, crime or immigration — issues where polls show they have an edge over Democrats. But during debates, moderators have tried to corner them, while also quizzing Democrats on whether they support limitations on the procedure. 

Roughly 51 percent of voters say they trust Democrats more on the issue of abortion, compared with 34 percent who favor Republicans, according to a September Washington Post-ABC News poll. Opposition to legal abortion increases at later stages of pregnancy with roughly twice as many adults saying abortion should be illegal at 24 weeks than those who want it legal.

Here are three standout moments on abortion from debates this week in Pennsylvania, Florida and Maine:

Pennsylvania: Attempting to flip the script

The backdrop: Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz faced off Tuesday in the first and only debate in the Pennsylvania Senate race — a critical seat that could determine which party controls the chamber. As recently as 2019, Oz appeared to espouse abortion rights, saying he opposed the procedure on a “personal level” but didn’t “want to interfere with everyone else’s stuff.”

On the debate stage: This was a quintessential example of the Republican candidate attempting to cast the Democrat as out of step with Americans. Oz claimed that Fetterman would allow abortions “at 38 weeks … that’s radical. That’s extreme. That’s out of touch,” he said. 

Fetterman countered that he believes Roe v. Wade “should be the law” and would push to codify the 1973 decision allowing for abortions until the point of fetal viability, usually viewed as 22 to 24 weeks. Roe didn’t limit abortions afterward but instead gave a timeframe for when the procedure was constitutionally protected. Less than 1 percent of abortions are performed at or after 21 weeks, according to CDC data. (When asked where Fetterman stands on limits after viability, spokesperson Emilia Winter Rowland reiterated his support for codifying the protections established in Roe and said he’d vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act in the Senate. )

But Oz’s attack was a blip on the post-debate radar. Democrats pounced on a comment he made mentioning the involvement of local politicians in making decisions on abortion, with the Fetterman campaign quickly turning the moment into a television ad the next day. 

• “I want women, doctors, local political leaders leading the democracy that’s always allowed our nation to thrive to put the best ideas forward so states can decide for themselves,” Oz said.

The Fetterman campaign’s new ad:

Florida: A question on limits

The backdrop: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation earlier this spring banning abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy except in the cases of life, physical health or for fatal fetal abnormalities. He’s running against Rep. Charlie Crist, a former Florida Republican governor turned Democrat.

On the debate stage: The moderator asked when in pregnancy abortion should be banned. DeSantis said he was “proud” of the new 15-week restriction on the procedure, but didn’t specifically answer the question. (His campaign didn’t respond to an inquiry seeking clarification.) Similar to other Republicans, he argued his opponent supports abortion “until the moment of birth.”

“Ron, that’s just not the truth — and you know it,” Crist responded. He didn’t lay out whether he supports limits on abortion, but a spokesperson for his campaign said he supports the standard set out in Roe — allowing abortions up until the point of viability — and then in the cases of the life or health of the mother or child afterward.

The backdrop: Republican Paul LePage, a former governor of Maine, is running to unseat Democratic Gov. Janet Mills. The state allows abortions up until the point of fetal viability. Afterward, the procedure may be performed only to save the life or health of the mother. 

On the debate stage: LePage said earlier this week that he would “never change the law, it’s a good compromise,” our colleague Dylan Wells reported. Such rhetoric is different from what he’s said in the past. 

At a debate in early October, he initially struggled to answer what he would do if the legislature sent him additional restrictions on the procedure, before eventually saying he’d veto a bill banning abortion at 15 weeks. But when he was governor, he said “we should not have abortion” at an antiabortion rally in 2016, the Kennebec Journal wrote at the time.

Monkeypox can be far more devastating for patients with weak immune systems

Monkeypox is causing devastating outcomes for severely immunocompromised people, even as new cases continue to decline in the United States, our colleagues Lena H. Sun and Fenit Nirappil report.

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 57 patients hospitalized with monkeypox complications from the outbreak’s peak in mid-August through Oct. 10. Almost all of the patients had severely weakened immune systems and 82 percent had HIV.

The patient sample: The majority of hospitalized patients described in the report were Black men and nearly a quarter were homeless, trends that reflect the larger racial and economic inequities in the outbreak. Most of the patients eventually received the antiviral Tpoxx, but the treatment for some patients was delayed by up to four weeks after they first sought care.

Although monkeypox infections are rarely fatal, many patients experience excruciating pain from lesions and body aches. People of color and those with HIV make up a disproportionate share of patients with the most severe outcomes. 

The big picture: More than 28,000 cases of monkeypox have been reported since the record U.S. outbreak began in May, the vast majority of which are still among men who have sex with men, according to the CDC. At least 10 people hospitalized with the disease have died.

Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of HIV/AIDS Housing: 

FDA issues first marketing denials for menthol flavored e-cigarettes

The Food and Drug Administration for the first time yesterday issued marketing denial orders for several menthol-flavored e-cigarette products, restricting Logic Technology Development LLC from marketing or distributing some of its e-liquid packages.

The move is a part of a larger campaign by the agency to review e-cigarettes in a bid to crack down on youth vaping.

After conducting a scientific review, the agency concluded that the applications for the products — the Logic Pro Menthol e-Liquid Package and Logic Power Menthol e-Liquid Package — lacked sufficient evidence to ensure they are “appropriate for the protection of public health.” That essentially means the agency doesn’t think the products are more likely to help adult users quit smoking than to entice young people to start vaping. Japan Tobacco Inc., which owns Logic, did not respond to requests for comment from The Health 202.

The FDA noted that in the most recent National Tobacco Survey, published earlier this month, almost 85 percent of young people who use e-cigarettes reported using non-tobacco flavors. Of those, more than a quarter said they used menthol products.

American Vapor Manufacturers: 

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids: 

Meanwhile, in other agency news …

The FDA postponed a meeting of its advisory panel to discuss an application for the nation’s first daily birth control pill approved for over-the-counter use, citing the need to “review new information.” A new date for the meeting hasn’t been set.

House Republicans open probe into Boston University’s covid-19 research

House Energy and Commerce Republican leaders are pressing the president of Boston University for more information about the school’s recent research into the coronavirus.

Key context: Earlier this month, the institution’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories published the findings from a preprint study wherein researchers combined the original strain of covid-19 with the omicron variant to create a hybrid virus. The experiment sparked an intense debate, prompting allegations that the university was engaging in “gain-of-function” research, or work that involves manipulating pathogens to make them more dangerous.

The university has disputed such claims, arguing that the goals of the study were misinterpreted by critics and noting that the research actually made the virus less dangerous. School officials pointed out that the study was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston’s Public Health Commission, albeit it wasn’t cleared with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project, Stat reports.  

In a letter sent yesterday, key GOP lawmakers asked the university to turn over copies of its safety protocols, funding proposals and other documents by Nov. 8. The letter was signed by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s top Republican; Rep. Brett Guthrie (Ky.), the ranking member of the panel’s health subcommittee; and Rep. Morgan Griffith (Va.), the top Republican on the oversight and investigations subcommittee.

• On the move: Joel McElvain has joined HHS as a special counsel in the general counsel’s office, our colleague Dan Diamond reports. McElvain, who resigned from government in 2018 in protest after the Trump administration dropped its defense of the Affordable Care Act, returned to the Justice Department last year. In his new role, he’ll be providing legal advice on “new regulatory initiatives” at HHS, McElvain wrote on LinkedIn.
• New this a.m.: For workers on employer-sponsored health plans, the average annual deductible for single coverage was $1,763 in 2022. While that number is just a slight increase from last year, the figure has risen by 61 percent since 2012, according to an analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation. 
• A second women accused Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker of pressuring her to have an abortion during their years-long affair, our colleague Eugene Scott reports.

Fetterman’s debate performance reveals a divide about disability (By Amanda Morris l The Washington Post)

States Opting Out of a Federal Program That Tracks Teen Behavior as Youth Mental Health Worsens (By Daniel Chang | Kaiser Health News)

‘If I were a hospital, I’d be reading the tea leaves’: Pressures grow on the health care industry to reduce its climate pollution (By Karen Pennar l Stat)

Thanks for reading! See y’all tomorrow.