Anti-choice activists swarmed Washington yesterday to protest on the 39th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision and conservatives naturally used this opportunity to wax apoplectic about the constitutionally-protected reproductive right.

In his “closing argument” yesterday on Fox Business’ Freedom Watch, host Andrew Napolitano lambasted the Supreme Court for deciding that a fetus is “not a person” and that the right to privacy protects a woman’s decision. Equating the ruling to the high court’s Dred Scott decision “in which it ruled that blacks were not persons,” Napolitano later declared the it’s reasoning to be “the philosophical argument underlying the Holocaust“:

NAPOLITANO: How scary is this? The Supreme Court declares a class of humanity not to be persons, and then permits people to destroy members of that class. That’s what happened to blacks during slavery. That was the philosophical argument underlying the Holocaust. That’s what’s happening to babies in the womb, even as I speak. And that might become the basis for the government killing persons it hates or fears in the future.

Watch it:

Napolitano’s outlandish and unrelenting hyperbole was, unfortunately, not an outlier, but more the general tone of Republican remarks this week. Here are four GOP lawmakers who felt inclined to make ridiculous comparisons to belittle a woman’s right to choose:

– Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ): Smith urged a room of anti-abortion activists at the Family Research Council to “unite” under one Republican presidential candidate because “Obama is the enemy of life, as is his people.”

– Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): Speaking at the March for Life rally on Capitol Hill, Gohmert blasted pro-choice advocates for opposing further restrictions on abortion and somehow managed to equate it with the national debt. “My dear friends for life, the same selfish arrogance and reckless disregard that would allow lives to be taken and one generation to take life after life after life from a future generation will also allow a generation to forge chains made of mountains of debt to set on those they do allow to be born,” he said.

– Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN): While no longer in the running, Bachmann said in her first public appearance since dropping out that this year’s presidential elections will end all abortions, ever. “Next year we will gather in a day of celebration when we have finally ended abortion in this all important election,” she foretold.

– Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH): Also speaking at the March for Life event, Jordan insisted that the “vast majority of Americans share the values” of the anti-choice activists. After all, “Our Founders articulated their vision for a pro-life America” and thus it’s only natural that they would detest a decision made hundreds of years later to protect a right derived from the very constitution that they wrote.

But conservatives are offering more than words. Just one month into the new year, House Republicans have already introduced three new anti-choice bills to severely restrict abortion rights. One requires doctors to perform an abortion no less than 24 hours after they receive written certification from a woman seeking an abortion; another prevents women in Washington, DC from seeking abortion after 20 weeks; and the last requires women to view an ultrasound of the fetus before they can go through with the abortion procedure.

Mitt Romney has been running around the country trying to convince Republican voters that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act on “day one.” “Now, there are some programs I just don’t like and would be easy to eliminate like Obamacare,” Romney told a town hall audience in Exeter, New Hampshire this past November. “And that saves about $90 billion, Obamacare alone, by 2016.”

But this morning, Romney backer and former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) threw cold water on Romney’s claim and “predicted the GOP won’t repeal the Democrats’ healthcare reform law even if a Republican candidate defeats President Obama this November”:

“You will not repeal the act in its entirety, but you will see major changes, particularly if there is a Republican president,” Coleman told BioCentury This Week television in interview that aired on Sunday. “You can’t whole-cloth throw it out. But you can substantially change what’s been done.” [...]

“If there’s a Republican president, what you’ll see is states getting waivers … granted and then starting again, making sure that we lower costs, which this act hasn’t done, while we provide better access,” Coleman said.

Still, he said, the law “may collapse” on its own if the Supreme Court strikes down the requirement that everyone have insurance. “I don’t think the act works financially … if you don’t have the individual mandate, because your costs are going to go so far through the roof.”

Indeed, as a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report has concluded, a president cannot thwart the will of Congress by simply exempting states from the measure and would not be able to use the law’s waivers to excuse local governments from all of its requirements.

Romney has also offered to undo the law through the Senate’s reconciliation process, if Republicans fail to garner the 60 votes necessary to block a filibuster. But some core parts of the law “are not dependent on annual budgeting” and cannot be included in a reconciliation package. As a result, Romney would have to peal back provisions of the law piece by piece, injecting great havoc into the health insurance markets and destabilizing coverage for many Americans who are already benefiting from reform.

Interestingly, Coleman — whose American Action Network “has urged the courts to strike down the law’s individual mandate and its Medicaid expansion” — is not the only former Republican senator to walk back the GOP’s repeal claims. Former Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-TN) has broken with his party to support many provisions of health care reform and has publicly stated that it will survive its legal challenges. “I think what we’re going to see now is no more legislation but a demand for implementation of all these in an improved modernized way through partnerships and I’m very hopeful, based on both the most recent legislation but also the incentives of the system, that all of that centers on value that is quality and outcomes and results for dollar invested,” he said during an interview in September.

Gallup reports that while the uninsured rate has been increasing since 2008, climbing to 17.1 percent in 2011, “U.S. adults aged 18 to 25 — who are now allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26 because of a provision of the 2010 healthcare law — are less likely to be uninsured than in previous years.” “The percentage of uninsured declined further in 2011 to 24.5%, from 27.6% in 2010 and 28.2% in 2009″ and young adults is the “only group Gallup tracks that has seen a significant decline in the percentage uninsured in 2011″:

Significantly, higher-income Americans who can afford to pay for the skyrocketing costs of health care and Medicare-insured seniors are two groups “among the least likely to be uninsured” and “have not seen an increase in the percentage uninsured over time.”

During Monday night’s GOP presidential debate, Newt Gingrich defended his support for the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act (MMA), an unfunded expansion of Medicare that provided a drug benefit to seniors through Medicare Part D. Responding to Mitt Romney’s accusation that he lobbied Congress on behalf of paying health care clients, Gingrich retorted, “I have always publicly favored a stronger Medicare program”:

GINGRICH: I publicly favored Medicare Part D for a practical reason. That reason is simple. The U.S. government was not prepared to give people anything — insulin, for example. But they would pay for kidney dialysis. They weren’t prepared to give Lipitor but they would pay for open heart surgery. That’s a terrible way to run medicare. I’ll say this in Florida. I’m proud that I publicly advocated Medicare Part D. It saved lives. It’s run on a free enterprise model, includes health savings accounts and includes Medicare alternatives which gave people choices.

Romney pressed harder, arguing that Gingrich was “getting paid by health companies” that benefited from the prescription drug bill. “You then meet with Republican Congressmen and encourage them to support the legislation you can call it whatever you’d like,” he said. “You are being paid by companies at the same time you’re encouraging people to pass legislation which is in their favor,” Romney charged. Watch it:

Gingrich has long argued that by investing in prescription drug coverage, Medicare would “avoidable treatment and care” that could occur from “not covering the drugs.” In 2003, shortly after founding his for-profit Center for Health Transformation, Gingrich returned to Capitol Hill to deliver a powerful speech touting the Medicare Modernization Act and ultimately convinced conservative Republicans to support the bill 204-to-25. “Newt was critical to the passage of Medicare Part D,” recalls John Feehery, who was Speaker Dennis Hastert’s chief spokesman at the time.

Gingrich’s health care clients also benefited from his advocacy. As the New York Times reported last month, Gingrich “worked to ensure that it would cover new diabetes treatments sold by Novo Nordisk, a Danish drug company and a founding member of Mr. Gingrich’s center.” “According to a presentation by a Gingrich aide to health care executives in 2004, the center was ‘working to insure’ that Medicare covered insulin products manufactured by Novo Nordisk, and Mr. Gingrich planned to meet with members of Congress ‘to help them develop priorities’ on fighting diabetes.” The devices were ultimately covered by the government.

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,” Gingrich wrote to lawmakers in a newspaper ope-ed.

ThinkProgress intern Fatima Najiy contributed to this report.