A new study from University of Southern California researchers finds that children exposed to more air pollution had higher rates of autism. Though there is no conclusive answer about whether pollution can cause autism, the lead author says “it may be a risk factor for autism. Autism is a complex disorder and it’s likely there are many factors contributing.”

Studying 500 children California cities, the researchers found those likely exposed to the most pollution — estimated based on traffic, vehicle emissions, wind patterns, and regional data — are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with the disorder. Some children may be more susceptible because of genetics.

TIME describes the growing body of research that links autism to pollution:

Even so, the latest study findings suggest that air pollution may be one of the best characterized environmental risk factors for autism. In an earlier study published in 2010, Volk and colleagues showed that kids with autism were much more likely than kids without the disorder to have been born to mothers living within 1,000 feet of a freeway. Other researchers have shown that kids with autism are also unusually likely to have exposure to high levels of diesel exhaust particles and metals (mercury, cadmium, and nickel) and to other air-pollutant chemicals, such as those used to make rubber, plastics, and dyes.

These associations continued to remain strong even after researchers adjusted for other characteristics, like poverty, that may also be connected to pollution. Unlike asthma, for example, autism rates are not consistently higher among lower income populations. In Volk’s study, the links between air pollution and autism risk were virtually unchanged after accounting for parents’ race and ethnicity, educational attainment, and smoking status, as well as for the area’s population density.

Some questions do remain, such as why autism diagnoses have increased since 2006 to 1 in 88 children without any major changes in pollution. Although scientists need to further examine that link, outdoor pollutants are already a known trigger in asthma, which has also become more common in recent years.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the only abortion clinic in the entire state of Mississippi — has been fighting to remain open after Republican legislators, aiming to force the clinic to close, passed a restrictive regulation requiring its doctors to secure hospital admitting privileges. A Bush-appointed federal judge temporarily blocked the measure in July to give the clinic’s doctors more time to apply for privileges at area hospitals, but that order expires in early January. And so far, all seven hospitals in the area have denied privileges to the doctors.

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a motion Wednesday asking a judge to stop the law from being implemented — and forcing the clinic to stop providing abortion care — before January 6, 2013. If it closes, women in Mississippi will no longer have access to abortion in the state:

“This unconstitutional law has essentially handed over the fate of Mississippi women’s reproductive health care to hospital administrators,” said Michelle Movahed, staff attorney at the Center [for Reproductive Rights].

Betty Thompson, a spokesperson for the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, told The Huffington Post that the clinic’s staffers are “on pins and needles” waiting for the court’s decision. She said the clinic served about 2,000 patients in 2011 and that the majority of its clients are low-income and teenage women. The next nearest clinic for Mississippi residents is approximately three hours away and over the state line, and most neighboring states require women to make a second visit to the abortion clinic after a 24-hour waiting period in order to receive services.

“Mississippi women have the same constitutional rights as any other women in the United States,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “They deserve far better than to be forced to travel hundreds of miles to another state to get a safe, legal medical procedure.”

Hospitals reportedly denied privileges to clinic doctors because the fact that they provide abortion services “is inconsistent with this Hospital’s policies and practices as concerns abortion and, in particular, elective abortions.” Mississippi has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, as well as the lowest abortion rate.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has gotten in hot water with anti-choice groups for his comment this Sunday that Republicans should stop focusing on abortion if the GOP wants to appeal to broader group of Americans. The Susan B. Anthony list and Personhood USA, two leading anti-choice groups, both issued statements strongly condemning McCain’s suggestion:

“He should figure out why he decided to take that position [to oppose abortion rights] in the first place,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “The folks that have taken the stand on this issue have taken it because we’re talking about defending vulnerable human life. If it’s not about that, it’s not about anything.” …

Personhood USA took a more direct tact in an earlier statement, calling on the GOP to “drop” its former presidential candidate over his desire for a de facto truce on abortion. “We will never be successful if we compromise,” said Jennifer Mason, the group’s communications director.

These groups appear to be speaking for anti-choice advocates across the country — lawmakers in multiple states began a renewed push to enact harsh abortion legislation in the weeks right after the election, despite the fact that voters decisively rejected that agenda on November 6.

Personhood USA’s campaign in particular has been extremely unpopular with the public. The group endorses legislation to redefine legal personhood as beginning at conception — hence criminalizing abortion without exception, and potentially several forms of contraception as well — and that ambition has been frustrated at every turn, as every personhood initiative to come to a final vote has been defeated. In the most recent example, Virginia Republicans conceded earlier this week that they don’t have the votes in their own party to advance personhood legislation beyond committee.

McCain himself, however, doesn’t fit the typical profile of the politicians who anti-choice advocates usually target, since he remains staunchly opposed to abortion rights. As the New Republic’s Sarah Blustain reported in 2008, “There is no ‘latitude’ in McCain’s position on abortion. Interviews with dozens of people who have dealt with him on the issue–pro-choice and pro-life activists, Hill staffers, McCain confidants, pollsters, and staffers — along with a two-and-a-half-decade-long perfectly anti-abortion voting record, make that clear.”

Young people between the ages of 13 and 24 aren’t getting regularly tested for the HIV virus, even though rates of infection are growing among that demographic, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control finds.

Even though recent gains in HIV treatment and prevention, both here in the U.S. and around the world, have made huge strides in combating the global HIV/AIDS epidemic — so much so that United Nations officials recently declared they believe an end to the epidemic is in sight — the CDC warns that young Americans still need to be more aware of their risk. Young people from 13 to 24 years old contribute to more than a quarter of the country’s new HIV infections each year, but half of HIV-positive individuals between 13 and 24 years old aren’t even aware they have the virus:

Despite a shift in public health messaging to emphasize that early detection and treatment can help HIV-positive individuals stay healthy and reduce the spread of the virus, young Americans aren’t getting the message.

The CDC found that only about a third of those ages 17 to 24 had been tested for HIV in 2010, while just 13 percent of high school students were tested in 2011. That lack of testing is part of the reason those younger than 25 are less likely to seek treatment for HIV, which can also reduce the risk that they transmit it.

“Too few young people are getting tested for HIV,” CDC Director Thomas Frieden said on a conference call with reporters outlining the findings before World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.

CDC officials also confirmed that the HIV epidemic continues to be stratified along racial lines, since African-American males are still at the greatest risk for contracting the virus. The rate of HIV infection among black Americans is nearly eight times than the rate for white Americans, and black youth account for nearly 60 percent of all new infections among Americans between 13 and 24.

The CDC report recommends increasing education programs for youth that emphasize HIV prevention, a discrepancy that is currently furthered by abstinence-only curricula in schools across the country. Just 20 states mandate that public schools must provide both HIV education and sexual education in their health classes, and only 12 states have standards in place to require medically accurate information about HIV in the classrooms.

The Ohio Senate will not vote on two hotly contested pieces of anti-choice legislation — one that would have imposed the strictest abortion in the nation, and one that sought to strip funding from the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics — during their lame duck session this year, the current Speaker of the Senate announced on Tuesday.

State Speaker Tom Niehaus (R-OH) confirmed to the Columbus Dispatch that the Senate’s agenda for the rest of the year will not include those two bills, after he suggested earlier this month that state lawmakers might attempt to push them through:

The New Richmond Republican said publicly what has been hinted privately for more than a week – that despite support from House Republicans, and some in his own caucus, the Senate’s agenda in the lame-duck legislative session will not include these controversial bills.

“We have been the most pro-life legislature in my memory,” Niehaus told reporters today. “I want to continue my focus on jobs and the economy.”

Niehaus cited some concerns that two bills may be too overreaching, even for the most stringent abortion opponents in his legislature. The proposed “heartbeat” bill that sought to outlaw all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected — which can occur as early as six weeks, before many women even know they’re pregnant — is so extreme that it has divided the anti-choice community, and Niehaus said he wants to wait until the Ohio’s anti-choice groups are able to reach a consensus on it.

Niehaus even acknowledged that the move to deny $1.4 million in funding for Planned Parenthood clinics may be going too far. In a rare concession from a Republican official, Neihaus told the Columbus Dispatch that he believes the organization provides women with a number of health services that aren’t available elsewhere. “From my perspective, we have to look at the entirety of work done by Planned Parenthood,” he said.

The announcement is welcome news for women’s health advocates, who were gearing up for a fight even after this month’s election results confirmed that voters across the country are rejecting radical anti-choice agendas. But they aren’t convinced that GOP lawmakers are finished with the War on Women quite yet. As NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio director Kellie Copeland told the Associated Press, “We don’t believe for a second that this threat is over — perhaps delayed, but not over.”

A new ABC News/Washington Post poll reports that the majority of Americans strongly oppose raising the Medicare eligibility age in order to strike a deal to stave off the so-called “fiscal cliff,” and that opposition cuts evenly across party lines.

Researchers found that 68 percent of Republicans are opposed to raising the Medicare age from 65 to 67, compared to just 30 percent of Republicans who support it. In fact, similarly strong majorities of respondents in each political group they sampled — Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and self-identifying liberals and conservatives — are opposed to the policy, regardless of their party affiliation or political leaning. Opposition grows even stronger among older Americans, peaking at 78 percent among adults between the ages of 50 and 64 years old, and also tended to be higher among Americans making less than $100,000 a year.

And compared to the other potential compromises that lawmakers could make in their budget negotiations, like raising revenue or reducing income tax deductions, respondents reported a much stronger opposition to raising Medicare eligibility:

Even though some politicians and right-wing pundits have toyed with the idea of raising the Medicare age in fiscal cliff talks, that move would only negatively impact seniors without resulting in real savings. The policy would shift the cost burden onto older Americans who fall between the old eligibility age and the new one, since seniors in that gap would see their out-of-pocket expenses soar when they are no longer able to access Medicare coverage. And according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis, raising the eligibility age would hardly impact the long-term costs of the Medicare program, since it would involve dropping coverage for younger seniors who tend to be healthier and have lower medical costs anyway.