Florida state Rep. Charles Van Zant (R) is starting 2012 with yet another radical effort to ban all abortions in the state unless the woman’s life is in danger. Declaring that “the Legislature acknowledges that all persons are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that first among these is their right to life,” the Florida for Life Act would essentially (and unconstitutionally) make it a felony to perform an abortion except when a physician meets very specific circumstances. The Florida Independent reports:

A termination of pregnancy may not be performed unless:

(a) Two physicians certify in writing to the fact that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the termination of pregnancy is necessary to prevent the death of the patient;

(b) Two physicians certify in writing to the fact that, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, the termination of pregnancy is necessary because to continue the pregnancy would unreasonably reduce the likelihood of successful treatment of a life-threatening disease of the patient; or

(c) A physician certifies in writing that a medical emergency existed and another physician was not available for consultation prior to the time necessary to perform the termination of pregnancy. The physician’s written certification must clearly describe the medical emergency.

The measure also mandates that doctors provide certain women and minors who have been treated by the facility with information regarding adoption and a statewide list of attorneys available to provide volunteer legal services for adoption.” If physicians fail to meet these stipulations or provide abortion services in any other case including rape or incest, they would face maximum penalty of life in prison.

Despite the talk about the public’s supposed enthusiasm for repealing Obamacare, Michele Bachmann — a candidate who led the charge against health care reform and made repeal the cornerstone of her bid for the White House — has dropped out of the presidential the race after finishing dead last (among the contesting candidates) and winning just 6,073 votes in the Iowa caucuses.

While her bizarre concession speech contained some 11 references to the law and accused President Obama of instituting polices “based on socialism [that] are destructive to the very foundation of the Republic,” her pro-repeal message ultimately swayed few Iowans. Most split their votes between Mitt Romney — who instituted a very similar health measure in Massachusetts and until recently supported significant portions of the federal law — and Rick Santorum, a social conservative who echoes most of Bachmann’s anti-health care rhetoric.

But with the mother of health care repeal now out of the race, yesterday’s results showed that opponents of Obamacare don’t have rule of the roost, despite the GOP’s incessant attacks against Obama’s signature reform legislation. In fact, most Americans still support large portions of the law. The latest Kaiser tracking poll finds that while 44 percent of voters have an unfavorable view of reform, 50 percent want to expand or keep it in place, with only 37 percent supporting repeal. A majority favor its most popular elements like easy-to-understand benefit summaries and tax credits for small businesses.

Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich are still pledging to repeal the law on “day 1,” but Iowa showed that voters may be less enthused about that than they think.

Jon Huntsman walked back his support for repealing the Affordable Care Act during a campaign event in Lebanon, New Hampshire yesterday, promising a more “careful assessed approach,” the Union Leader reports:

When asked about Obamacare, Huntsman said he has not promised to repeal the health care law like many of his primary contenders, but said he would take a balanced approach to the bill. Good measures in the bill such as coverage for people with pre-existing conditions or allowing young adults to stay on their parents plan up to a certain age should stay in place, along with other good measures in the bill if possible, he said. He added the Supreme Court has yet to rule whether or not the bill is constitutional, he said.

“Let’s take a careful assessed approach,” he said. “As president I think my inclination would be to call together the fifty governors together, cause many of the governors have worked on various aspects of healthcare reform. … We’ve got to start with cost containment and transparency,” he said.

Huntsman has previously backed eliminating the law entirely, telling ABC’s George Stephanopoulos in May 2011, “If I had a chance to repeal it, I would. But then you have to say what goes in its place, and I think the answer to that is look at what all the states are doing.” This afternoon, campaign spokesperson Tim Miller clarified that the candidate “supports the repeal of Obamacare and would assess reinstating certain provisions once repealed.”

In 2007, the former Utah governor introduced a reform plan that closely resembles the health care law. The proposal “called for providing subsidies to help Utahns who didn’t qualify for government programs and requiring insurance companies to take all comers without charging higher premiums based on medical history. Taking a page from Massachusetts, Huntsman also sought to build a health exchange…[and] called for everyone to get insurance or face penalties.” Huntsman did establish the exchange, which is similar to the state-based marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act. He ultimately abandoned his larger version of reform (after it stopped being politically feasible) and his “goal of halving the state’s ranks of uninsured.” At the end of his term, “The state’s uninsured rate remained steady at 11 percent in 2010, meaning 300,000 Utahns went without coverage.”

Newt Gingrich told a veteran during a town hall in Concord, New Hampshire this afternoon that he would support voucherizing the Veterans Health Administration, saying, “I think we should find ways to create satellite clinics that are local so people don’t have to travel and we should also find a way to have a voucherized system for those who want it.” Watch it:

Veterans groups condemned a very similar proposal from then-GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in 2008, arguing that providing “rural veterans greater access to VA-sponsored care exclusively through private providers” would undermine the existing health care system. In a report titled “The Independent Budget,” the groups said that the VA’s “specialized health-care programs” would “suffer irreparable impact by the loss of veterans from those programs.” Mitt Romney also briefly flirted with the idea during Veterans Day, but later abandoned it.

Gingrich himself has previously praised the veterans health care system, calling it “a model for modernization and a model of using information technology that’s very impressive” during a veterans issues forum in Iowa on December 10th.

Rick Santorum delivered what sounded like a victory speech in Iowa last night, where he fell just eight votes short of victory to Mitt Romney. During his remarks, the former Pennsylvania senator said his grandfather’s decision to flee Mussolini’s Italy inspired him to enter the race and fight against President Obama’s reliance on government. The reference has become a staple of Santorum’s stump speeches, but on Wednesday morning, he went a step further, directly linking “social welfare programs” — the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid, and food stamps — to the fascism his grandfather left behind:

SANTORUM: [My grandfather] came after having fought in World War I because Mussolini has been in power now for three years and had has figured out that Fascism was something that would crush his spirit and his freedom….And we have two parties that are out talking about how they’re going to solve those problems. One wants to talk about raising taxes on people who have been successful and redistributing money, increasing dependency in this country, promoting more Medicaid and food stamps and all sorts of social welfare programs and passing Obamacare to provide even more government subsidies. More and more dependency, more and more government — exactly what my grandfather left in 1925.

Watch it:

Santorum frequently bemoans the expansion of social programs has argued that as a result of the health care law, “every single American will have an IV hooked up to them and will now be dependent upon Washington DC for whether they get their tests, whether they see a doctor, whether they get their procedure done.” During a stop in Iowa on Sunday, Santorum “singled out blacks as being recipients of assistance through federal benefit programs, telling a mostly white audience he doesn’t want to ‘make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.’”