A Wisconsin clinic, Affiliated Medical Services, has stopped distributing abortion-inducing medication because a new state law makes it extremely difficult for abortion providers to offer non-invasive medication abortions. According to RH Reality Check, it is now impossible for women to receive a medical abortion from a provider in the state.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin suspended medication abortions in April because of the ambiguous anti-abortion measure that Gov. Scott Walker (R) signed into law, which requires women to make at least three separate visits to their doctor for the procedure.

NARAL Pro-Choice Wisconsin Executive Director Lisa Subeck said in a statement that women will “suffer” because Walker and state Republicans have limited women’s health care options in the state:

“Wisconsin women will suffer because of Governor Walker’s actions. It is unacceptable that women are losing health care options because Walker has put his extreme social agenda ahead of what is best for women’s health. [...] Women lose out when out of control politicians like Scott Walker practice medicine without a license and interfere in the relationship between doctors and their patients.”

Dr. Fredrik Broekhuizen, a Wisconsin medical director, told RH Reality Check in April that “[i]f we follow the FDA rules and follow protocol, we would violate this law. And we have no ability to defend ourselves,” he said of the restrictions on medication abortions.

The fight over women’s access to abortion has been particularly fierce in Wisconsin. A Planned Parenthood clinic was firebombed in early April before Walker quietly signed anti-abortion legislation into law later in the month.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan defended the lawsuits that 43 Catholic-affiliated organizations, including the University of Notre Dame, have filed against the Obama administration’s contraception regulation to expand coverage at no additional cost to employees. On CBS’ This Morning, he told hosts Charlie Rose and Erica Hill that the regulation was “strangling” religious freedom even with the accommodations given to religious organizations:

DOLAN: What we’re worried about now is the exemption given to the churches is so strangling and is so narrow. [...] It’s that exemption, it’s the straight-jacketing, handcuffing exemption that we find to be very dangerous.

ROSE: So if the president said, I’ve tried to compromise here, I’m suggesting we let insurers pay for contraception. That’s not far enough for you?

DOLAN: That’s rather superficial [...] It still gives no attention to these choking mandates, this choking definition of religion that we find to be so strangling.

Watch Dolan’s comments here:

Under the new contraception rule, insurance companies will be required to provide the coverage directly to the employees and the employer will not pay for it if a nonprofit religiously affiliated organization like a Catholic college or hospital objects to offering birth control. In addition, the organizations may delay for a year before the contraception coverage begins, and for organizations like Catholic hospitals that are self-insured, third-party administrators or another independent entity will provide the contraception coverage.

By calling the accommodations “strangling,” Dolan ignores how the administration has already addressed their concerns about religious liberty while also ensuring that women can still receive accessible, affordable contraception. Most Catholics disagree with Dolan’s and church leaders’ continuing opposition to the contraception rule, but Dolan would rather pick a fight than work toward finding a reasonable solution.

A government task force is recommending that men should stop receiving a routine blood test to check for prostate cancer because the test does more harm than good. At best, the prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood test will save one life out of 1,000 men tested, but another man will develop a dangerous blood clot, two will have heart attacks, and 40 will become incontinent or impotent because of unnecessary treatment.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force made this proposal to drop routine screenings last fall, and it’s sticking by the final guideline despite outrage from the medical community.

Not every form of prostate cancer needs to be treated because most of the cancers found through the PSA blood test are slow-growing and unlikely to cause harm, so a member of the task force said better ways to detect prostate cancer will help:

The controversy will end only with development of better tests — to finally tell which men’s tumors really will threaten their lives, and who will die with prostate cancer rather than from it, said Dr. Virginia Moyer of the Baylor College of Medicine, who heads the task force.

“We have been told for decades to be terrified of cancer and that the only hope is early detection and treatment,” she said. The reality: “You don’t need to detect all cancers.”

“We don’t want this to be the answer,” Moyer added. “We want to screen for the ones that are going to be aggressive, manage those early — and leave everyone else alone.”

Even with the new guidelines, it is unclear how many men will skip testing. The task force already recommends that men over 75 skip the blood test, but research shows that about half still have it. And for those who test positive and learn they have have prostate cancer, low-risk patients often choose aggressive treatments with few benefits, according to a 2010 study.

Overall, unnecessary health costs add $158 billion to the nation’s health care tab each year, and the Affordable Care Act invests in comparative effectiveness research to help determine the most cost-effective course of treatment to cut down on those unnecessary health costs. And to cut down on overtreatment, the task force’s guidelines to cut out PSA blood tests that do more harm than good — and lead to sometimes unnecessary treatment — are a good place to start.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad (R) has appointed a Catholic priest to its state Board of Medicine, and because the state Senate did not vote on the appointment before the end of its session, Monsignor Frank Bognanno will remain on the board until at least January.

Bognanno has said he will not bring his religion into the position, but will be firmly “pro-life” — which, for the Catholic church, means opposing not just abortion but also birth control, which serves medical purposes for many women.

Branstad first attempted to put an anti-abortion activist on the board, which has three spots for non-doctors. But when state senators rejected his nomination, the governor appointed Bognanno.

Sen. Jack Hatch (D), who helped block the first nominee, said he probably would vote for Bognanno when the legislators reconvene in January 2013, but said he’d need to talk to him first. “I know he’s going to be pro-life. That’s never been the issue,” Hatch said.