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From the obscure perch of a backbench senator’s office, Katy Talento used to warn against what she saw as the health hazards of birth control pills — cancer, infertility and miscarriage. From his post at a Christian legal advocacy group, Matthew Bowman spent years attacking the requirement that most health insurance plans cover contraception under the Affordable Care Act. Now on the inside — one at the White House, the other at the Department of Health and Human Services — Ms. Talento and Mr. Bowman have a clear path to prosecute their strong belief that birth control coverage should not be a mandate from Washington. (Pear, 7/10)

Women who are unable to conceive because of uterine fibroids may have an easier time getting pregnant after minimally invasive procedures to destroy the fibroids, a recent study suggests. For the study, researchers followed 359 women for an average of almost six years after they had what is known as uterine fibroid embolization, a procedure in which doctors destroy fibroids by blocking the arteries supplying them with blood. By the end of the study, 149 of the women, or 42 percent, had become pregnant one or more times, and 131 women had a total of 150 live births. (Rapaport, 7/10)

When patients consider a medical procedure, they may be told “there are no known long-term effects.” But unless such effects have been systematically studied, that does not mean there are no long-term effects. That’s a major concern for Dr. Jennifer Schneider, mother of a three-time egg donor, Jessica Grace Wing. Ms. Wing was a tall, lean, attractive, athletic and musically talented Stanford University student when she decided to donate her eggs to help pay for her education. Through her multiple donations, five healthy children were born to three formerly childless families. (Brody, 7/10)