If Democrats thought that limiting access to the morning after pill would win over anti-abortion voters or at least reduce some of the vitriol spewed by Republican politicians, they’d be sorely disappointed in Rick Santorum’s comments at a town hall in Belle Plaine, Iowa this morning. Just days after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration to limit access to the medication for women under the age of 17, Santorum described the Obama administration as “the most pro-abortion” and criticized the president for even considering expanding the availability of the drug:

SANTORUM: You have this administration, the most pro-abortion. They were trying to make the morning after pill an over the counter drug. This is just outrageous…I think you still need a prescription to get it, but they wanted to make it an over the counter drug…And of course it is an abortificaiton, and not always, but many times is an abortion.

Watch it:

Santorum, of course, has his facts wrong. In August of 2006, President George W. Bush’s FDA approved over-the-counter access to Plan B emergency contraception for women 18 years and older and the medication is currently available behind the counter to women 17 and older — meaning that they do not need a prescription but they have to ask a pharmacist for the drug. Following Sebelius’ decision, girls 16 and younger will still need a prescription in order to obtain it. Plan B is a form of oral contraception that works in the same way as the birth control bill, only after sexual intercourse. It prevents pregnancy and will not work after a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus. Despite the lack of conclusive scientific evidence, some conservatives like Santorum also argue that the pill and emergency contraception could prevent implantation and thus result in an abortion.

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black: after years of gutting women’s health services in his state, GOP contender Gov. Rick Perry (TX) is attacking the Obama administration for “sacrificing the health of millions of Texas women in the name of their pro-abortion agenda.”

The administration’s crime? Refusing to let Texas violate federal law by restricting family planning providers in the Medicaid Women’s Health Program:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has turned down Texas’ request to run a family planning program that excludes certain providers — namely Planned Parenthood — saying it’s a violation of the federal Social Security Act. [...]

Gov. Rick Perry called the decisions out of Washington “one step forward” and “two steps back.”

“I am concerned the Obama Administration is playing politics by holding women’s health care hostage because of Texas’ pro-life policies,” he said in a statement, “sacrificing the health of millions of Texas women in the name of their pro-abortion agenda.”

According to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, the Medicaid-funded Women’s Health Program saves Texas at least $20 million a year and prevented over 6,700 unplanned pregnancies in 2009. But this year Perry and the GOP legislature defunded Planned Parenthood and cut family planning services by a staggering $74 million in an attempt to reduce the number of abortions. Yet the Women’s Health Program does not provide abortions — it does, however, give low-income women access to breast cancer screenings and birth control.

The state budget Perry signed slashed funding for women’s preventative health care, leaving up to 300,000 women without access to basic health services.

The Associated Press’ Ricardo Alonos-Zaldivar has this devastating take of the House GOP’s proposal to pay for a payroll tax cut by further means testing the Medicare program:

Raising taxes on millionaires may be a non-starter for Republicans, but they seem to have no problem hiking Medicare premiums for retirees making a lot less. The House is expected to vote Tuesday on a year-end economic package that includes a provision raising premiums for “high-income” Medicare beneficiaries, now defined as those making $85,000 and above for individuals, or $170,000 for families….Just the top 5 percent of Medicare recipients currently pay higher premiums, a change that took effect a few years ago. The new GOP proposal would expand that over time to include the highest-earning one-fourth of seniors. [...]

Currently the high-income premiums start at 35 percent of the cost of Medicare’s outpatient and drug coverage for individuals making $85,000 year, and rise to 80 percent of the cost at the very top income brackets….The House GOP plan would increase the high-income premium by 15 percent in 2017 and lower the thresholds at which the higher fees kick in. Most significantly, it freezes those income thresholds indefinitely, until one-fourth of Medicare recipients are paying “high-income” premiums. It’s unclear how long that would take, but currently only about 2 million out of 47 million Medicare beneficiaries pay higher premiums. Eventually that number would easily surpass 10 million.

President Obama and Nancy Pelosi have signaled that they were open to increasing means testing in the program as part of a larger deficit reduction deal, but defenders of Medicare worry that asking some people to pay more would undercut political support for the program and help build momentum for the kind of Paul Ryan reforms that would privatize and destroy it as a government benefit for all, regardless of income.

It’s also not clear that more seniors can afford to pay more for health care. “Half of seniors had income lower than $22,000 in 2010; 25 percent had income lower than $13,000. Only five percent had incomes above $85,000,” a recent study found. Health care spending “accounted for an average of nearly 15 percent of the average Medicare household’s budget in 2009, according to another Kaiser study. That’s three times the health care spending for those not on Medicare.”

The White House has issued a veto threat against the bill, noting “H.R. 3630 seeks to put the burden of paying for the bill on working families, while giving a free pass to the wealthiest and to big corporations by protecting their loopholes and subsidies.”

This year the GOP-led South Dakota legislature passed a law requiring women seeking abortions to face a three-day waiting period – the nation’s longest – and undergo counseling at pregnancy “help centers” that discourage abortion. Recognizing that the law is an assault on women’s constitutional right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade, a federal judge granted an injunction in September to prevent the law from taking effect while it’s being challenged in Court. U.S. District Chief Judge Karen Schreier noted that the law creates an undue burden and would humiliate and degrade women.

Now South Dakota’s Gov. Dennis Daugaard is requesting more than $1 million in additional funds to defend the state’s anti-abortion law:

Next year’s South Dakota budget calls for more than a million dollars in supplemental funding for the state’s legal fund, including small fees for several high-profile cases but the potential for big expenses defending a controversial abortion law.

Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s budget proposal asks for the Legislature to add $1.043 million to the state’s Extraordinary Litigation Fund, which pays for legal costs above and beyond the ordinary.

Most of the Legislature’s projected costs come from two lawsuits: the 2005 Planned Parenthood vs. Rounds case over the state’s “informed consent” law, and ongoing “diligent enforcement” legal disputes with tobacco coverage. The state Office of Risk Management predicts the Planned Parenthood case to cost South Dakota $750,000 in Fiscal Year 2012, which runs through the end of June 2012.

Additionally, if South Dakota loses the lawsuit, it could be required to pay Planned Parenthood’s legal fees. When South Dakota lost another abortion case against Planned Parenthood several years ago, the state paid around $410,000 in legal fees.

As states are facing their worst budget crunches since the Great Depression, Republican-led governments have insisted on pushing conservative social agendas instead of focusing on pressing economic needs. In fact, they’ve exacerbated state budget deficits by passing anti-abortion laws that can cost millions for the state to defend but are rarely upheld in court. Kansas, for instance, has spent $2,180 of taxpayers money every day defending its anti-abortion laws.

Politico’s Jonathan Allen recalls Newt Gingrich’s role in urging conservative Republicans to approve the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act, an unfunded expansion of Medicare that provided a drug benefit to American seniors through Medicare Part D. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initially estimated that the MMA would add to the deficit by $395 billion between 2004 and 2013 and the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) now project that the program will cost the government $16.1 trillion “through the infinite horizon.”

But ironically, Gingrich convinced Republicans to support the measure by appealing to their sense of fiscal responsibility:

If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important vote in your career than one in support of this bill. Since health expenditures comprise almost 14 percent of the U.S. GDP, a shifting away from the failed bureaucratic third-party payer model and back to a market-mediated binary payer model, where the customer controls his own first health dollars, is the single most significant reform that can be made in saving the country from skyrocketing health costs and steadily increasing calls for taxpayers to finance more and more of the healthcare system through higher taxes.

Gingrich also argued the the measure — which subsidized Medicare Advantage and introduced Health Savings Accounts — would begin to shift more seniors into private programs, noting that “it is a major step toward giving the baby boomers a multi-choice Medicare system for the 21st century.”

That “choice” has come at a cost, however. Private plans that participate in the program receive a 9 percent or $8.9 billion subsidy from the federal government and have so far produced few savings. Over the years, a number of government reports and independent estimates have found that some plans use the taxpayer subsidies to pad their bottom lines and expose beneficiaries to serious financial risks. A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that some MA plans used lower premiums to attract healthier enrollees, but then hit them “with high and unexpected out-of-pocket costs.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights and other groups will argue in a New York federal court today that the federal government acted unconstitutionally in holding the morning-after pill to a “different and nonscientific standard,” just days after HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius overruled the Food and Drug Administration to limit access to the medication for women under the age of 17.

During an event in New York yesterday, Sebelius defended her ruling, telling reporters, “Actually, it isn’t about politics.” I did not feel that the science supported [making the contraceptive readily available to all ages, because there was a large missing piece of the puzzle,” she insisted.

But Judge Edward Korman “was highly critical of the government’s handling of the issue when he ordered the FDA two years ago to let 17-year-olds obtain the medication” and may be tempted to agree with women’s health advocates who have harshly criticized Sebelius’ decision. They argue that “the science has been solid that the drug is safe and should be available to anyone who needs it” and note that “worries about the use of medicines by teenagers, have not been applied to other products” “such as acetaminophen, and others with known and serious risks, over the counter.”

Teva, the manufacturer of Plan B, has already presented data showing it tested the drug in 11-to-16-year-old girls and has submitted evidence in support of its over-the-counter application at least three separate times.