Arizona lawmakers gave final passage to three anti-abortion bills Tuesday afternoon, including one that declares pregnancies in the state begin two weeks before conception.

 

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to prohibit abortions after the 18th week of pregnancy; a bill to protect doctors from being sued if they withhold health information about a pregnancy that could cause a woman to seek an abortion; and a bill to mandate that how school curriculums address the topic of unwanted pregnancies.

 

The 18th week bill includes a new definition for when pregnancy begins. All of the bills passed the Senate and now head to Gov. Jan Brewer (R) for her signature or veto. Passage of the late-term abortion bill would give Arizona the earliest definition of late-term abortion in the country; most states use 20 weeks as a definition.

Despite wide-spread and vocal opposition, including two walk-outs by women legislators, and after one legislator compared pregnant women to pregnant cattle, Georgia has passed bill limiting abortions to 20 weeks.

State Rep. Doug McKillip, R-Athens, capped off a busy and sometimes contentious legislative session late Thursday by bringing up what may have been the most controversial bill of the year.

 

As the clock approached midnight, McKillip shepherded through a revised version of his bill limiting abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy rather than the current 26 weeks, legislation that upset female Democratic lawmakers so much they protested by wrapping themselves in police tape.

 

The bill appeared dead earlier in the week after the Senate passed a watered-down version that House leaders rejected, but Republicans in both chambers came to an agreement.

Citing the right of parents to be involved in their children's lives, the House Judiciary Committee has passed a bill that would make it a crime for anyone but a parent to accompany a minor across state lines to have an abortion and would impose a prison sentence on any doctor who performed an abortion on an out-of-state minor without a parent present.  This bill now goes to the House floor where is has 158 cosponsors and a companion bill awaiting in the Senate.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 20-13 on Tuesday to advance a bill that would make it a crime for anyone but a parent to accompany a young woman outside of her home state to have an abortion. The committee rejected several proposed amendments that would have provided exceptions for victims of rape or incest, women facing threats to their health, and grandparents and older siblings trying to accompany their family members to abortion clinics.

 

The Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), sponsored by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), imposes a prison term of up to a year for a doctor who performs an abortion on an out-of-state minor that is not accompanied by a parent. It has 158 cosponsors in the House and a companion bill in the Senate.

 

"This legislation is based on common-sense," Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement on Monday. "Parents have the right to be involved in their children’s lives."

 

Opponents of the bill argue that it fails to consider the extenuating circumstances in which a teen would turn to another adult -- such her grandmother or adult sister -- for support, and could force young women to instead turn to unsafe alternatives to terminating her pregnancy.

Read more at Huffington Post

Thursday, March 8 is International Women's Day, and Republicans in Congress are celebrating by debating a new bill that would restrict abortion rights.

 

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution held a hearing on Thursday to discuss the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA), which is sponsored by two Florida Republicans, Marco Rubio in the Senate and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the House. The bill would make it illegal for anyone but a parent to accompany a young woman across state lines to seek an abortion -- even if her parents are absent or abusive.

 

Perhaps more significantly, the bill is the latest in a long series of attempts by Republican lawmakers to criminalize physicians who perform abortions, to chip away at women's constitutionally protected right to decide when and if they will have a child and to otherwise politicize women's health.

In response to recently proposed legislation aimed at stating life begins at conception and others requiring invasive testing to make sure women "know the facts" prior to having an abortion, several state lawmakers around the country have introduced bills to ensure that men are informed of importance of medical testing for erectile dysfunction and the dangers its treatment can pose, as well as legislation requiring testing prior to a vasectomy. 

On Tuesday, Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) will introduce a bill aimed at cracking down on prescription drugs like Viagra that treat erectile dysfunction. Turner’s legislation would make men jump through certain hoops — such as psychological screenings — before they could obtain the meds. The bill follows FDA recommendations to determine the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction — but that’s certainly not the only reason Turner is putting the measure forward.

“All across the country, including in Ohio, I thought since men are certainly paying great attention to women’s health that we should definitely return the favor,” Turner told TPM. Her bill is one of several pieces of legislation offered over the past several weeks by women lawmakers eager to prove a point about the raging contraception debate.  Their bills seek to regulate men’s sexual health, from Viagra to vasectomies, just as Republican-led state governments and Congress have zeroed in on access to abortion and family planning care.

 

Turner’s bill mimics language found in Ohio’s so-called Heartbeat Bill, which passed the Ohio state House and is now pending in the Senate. The bill would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, sometimes as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. Turner’s bill, she says, offers men a taste of their own medicine — it would require physicians to inform patients in writing of the risks involved in taking erectile dysfunction drugs and requires men to sign a document acknowledging the risks, just like the anti-abortion bill does.

Read more at Talking Points Memo

Police, some in riot gear, arrested 30 peaceful protestors on the steps of the Virginia State Capitol this weekend.  Protestors had gathered in response to recent anti-abortion legislation.

You might think that the right wing in this country was getting the message that women will no longer stand for legal, verbal, and physical abuse and harassment, especially by elected officials.  You would especially think that would be the case in Virginia where former Vice Presidential aspirant Governor Bob McDonnell, who is contemplating signing into law a forced ultrasound bill after doing women a "favor" and taking out the forced trans-vaginal ultrasounds initially required, has been widely pilloried.  You would also think the right-wing would be cautious after a week in which the seemingly untouchable Rush Limbaugh has, as of this writing, lost seven corporate sponsors over his debasing remarks about Sandra Fluke.

But you would be wrong.

Because, you see, women in this country are so dangerous, their sense of entitlement as citizens so incredibly threatening to the peace of the republic that state police in riot gear were sent to remove peaceful protestors this past weekend. According to a news article in the Richmond independent news source Style Weekly:

Read more at RH Reality Check

In a vote of 51-48, the Senate narrowly defeated the Blunt Amendment, which if passed would have allowed employers to deny insurance coverage for any medical procedure or medication on the basis of religious or moral objection.

By a vote of 51-48, the Senate agreed to table a Republican amendment offered by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) that would have empowered employers to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of personal moral objections. The measure represented the GOP’s response to President Obama’s rule requiring employers to provide contraception and other preventive health services as part of their health insurance plans. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME) — who announced her retirement earlier this week — was the only Republican to join Democrats in “tabling” the amendment, while three Democrats, Sens. Ben Nelson (NE), Joe Manchin (WV), and Bob Casey (PA) voted to preserve it.

During the nearly two hour debate, Republicans attempted to frame the issue as an attempt to prevent religious organizations from the Obama administration’s overreach and, despite supporting efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, maintained that women could obtain birth control from public sources. Blunt took to the floor to argue that employers would be discouraged from denying certain treatments by existing state mandates and a provision in the amendment requiring employers to replace the benefit with another service.

Read more at Alternet

A new chart shows the extreme positions of the GOP Presidential candidates when it comes to women's health care.  It's not just about contraception and abortion.

Conservatives have launched an all-out assault on affordable access to birth control, but their war on women’s health care doesn’t stop at contraception. We’ve compiled a chart showing the extreme positions on women’s health care issues that the four remaining GOP presidential contenders have taken. To a man, they oppose everything from no-cost coverage for cancer screenings to the elimination of domestic violence as a preexisting condition.

Read more at Think Progress

Coinciding with the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, House Republicans have introduced three new bills to restrict access to abortion.

Read more at The Hill Blog

In a rulling last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that women must be have an ultrasound prior to an abortion, and doctor must describe what the ultrasound shows.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling last week, pretty much says that women are idiots and that Texas can dragoon doctors into becoming ideological tools.

Ultimately, you can thank the state Legislature, which last year passed a bill requiring doctors to describe sonogram images to a woman before an abortion — an effort to get women to change their minds about ending pregnancies. But the 5th Circuit is holding up its end.

Earlier, U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks imposed a preliminary injunction on that law in August, finding it probable that — in forcing doctors into medically unnecessary speech and women to listen — First Amendment protections are breached.

Read more at MySanAntonio.com

Appeals court has ruled Texas may enforce a law requiring mandatory sonograms for women seeking an abortion.

A Texas abortion law passed last year that requires doctors to show sonograms to patients can be enforced while opponents challenge the measure in court, a federal appeals court said Tuesday in a ruling that signaled the judges believe the law is constitutional.

When the state will begin enforcing the law was not immediately clear. The group that brought the case, the Center for Reproductive Rights, is weighing how to proceed and has 14 days to ask for a rehearing of the case. If there are no appeals by then, the court would likely allow the state to begin enforcing the law.

The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a temporary order against enforcing the law and went further to advise U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks how he should ultimately rule in the case. Chief Judge Edith H. Jones used her opinion to systematically dismantle the argument that the Texas law infringes on the free speech rights of doctors and patients, the key argument against the law.

Read more at ABCNews.com

Mississippi voters overwhelmingly rejected the 'personhood" amendment last year; this year their Legislature will bring it up as a bill.

Voters soundly rejected the so-called "personhood amendment" with 58% of the vote in November, but anti-abortion advocates say they have hope in the Capitol.

"We're going to work with the Legislature and reach out to Mississippians," said Personhood Mississippi leader Les Riley of Pontotoc.

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who first expressed concern over the initiative but eventually said he voted in favor of it, repeatedly has said he thought the effort would be more successful in the Legislature.

Read more at USA Today

In the early morning hours of January 1st, fire raged through the abortion clinic in Pensacola, FL that has been the site of attacks and protests for the last 30 years.

An abortion clinic that burned here New Year's Day has been in the crosshairs of the anti-abortion movement for decades: the scene of bombings, shootings and other violence.

Things calmed down in the past 15 years, save for the near-daily protesters who carried anti-abortion signs, Bibles and white crosses as they marched outside of the unassuming, two-story grey building. Yet once again, the clinic is encircled by yellow police tape.

Authorities said the fire was suspicious and they are investigating whether it was intentionally set. So far, they have said only that the blaze started in some bushes near the back of the American Family Planning building. No one was injured.

Read more at CBSnews.com

A look at abortion laws enacted in 2011 shows significant restrictions across the country

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Yesterday I wrote about how little health-care legislation managed to move in Washington this year. After the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, barely anything related to health could make it through a polarized Congress. I overlooked, however, one area where a lot did happen: reproductive health. There, a wave of state-level abortion restrictions that passed this year have reshaped access more than any other year in three decades.

As the above chart from the Guttmacher Institute shows, 2011 marked a sea change for abortion rights. States passed 83 laws restricting access to abortion, nearly four times the 23 laws passed in 2010. A lot of that had to do with the 2010 elections, which ushered in a wave of Republican legislators and governors. This year, the number of states with fully anti-abortion governments — in which both the governor and the legislature oppose abortion rights — increased from 10 to 15.

That cleared the way for new restrictions. Five states banned all abortions after 20 weeks of gestation; until last year, only Nebraska had such a restriction. Seven now require an ultrasound, or the offer of one, prior to the procedure. Eight will no longer allow private insurance plans to cover the procedure. A handful of states are, to this day, battling the Obama administration over whether they can bar abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving government funds, even for the non-abortion services they provide.

Read more at Washington Post

In a radio forum organized by Personhood USA and other anti-choice organizations, four of the seven Republican presidential candidates reaffirmed their stance to promote fetal "personhood" if elected.

Four of the seven Republican presidential candidates reaffirmed their pro-life positions and pledged to protect fetal "personhood" both legislatively and constitutionally Tuesday night.

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and Texas Gov. Rick Perry participated in the "pro-life teletown hall" organized by Personhood USA and other pro-life groups. The call came less than a week before the Jan. 3 Iowa Republican caucus, where anti-abortion and Christian voters are expected to play a significant role. More than 40,000 largely anti-abortion listeners tuned in on the radio or called in to the forum, according to the organizers.

The candidates took questions from some of the listeners as well as from Personhood USA's CEO Keith Mason, while syndicated conservative radio host Steve Deace served as moderator of the forum, which was broadcast on his program and 88 radio stations nationwide.

Read more at Huffington Post