Our guest blogger is Katrina Womble, an intern at the Center for American Progress.

Last week, February 26 to March 3, was National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. The National Institute of Mental Health defines an eating disorder as an “illness that causes serious disturbances to your everyday diet, such as eating extremely small amounts of food or severely overeating.” In the United States, up to 24 million people of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder, such as anorexia or bulimia.

Although eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, only 1 in 10 men and women with eating disorders receive treatment. This low incidence of treatment for eating disorders is often the result of inadequate protections in federal and state laws. The federal mental health parity law only requires health insurance plans that already offer mental health coverage to provide the same level of benefits for mental illnesses as for other physical illnesses and diseases. This law does not mandate that group plans must provide mental health coverage and the law also allows states to determine which mental illnesses will be covered.

While some state laws provide comprehensive coverage for all mental illnesses (such as Arkansas), some states limit the coverage to “serious mental illnesses” or a specific list of “biologically based” mental illnesses (like Iowa’s does). These categories have been used by states and insurance companies to restrict or exclude individuals, including those suffering from eating disorders, from receiving life-saving treatment.
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States enacted a record number of anti-abortion laws in 2011 and conservative lawmakers aren’t wasting any time advancing legislation that limits women’s access to abortion services in the first few months of 2012. The bills, if enacted into law, would not only restrict women’s constitutionally-protected right to abortion, but would also significantly hamper women’s abilities to make their own decisions about reproductive health, effectively putting the government in between a woman and her doctor.

But a few state lawmakers are offering counter legislation that seeks to give men a taste of their own medicine:

EVERY SPERM HAS A RIGHT (OKLAHOMA): To poke fun a “personhood” bill that give full rights to a zygote, state Sen. Constance Johnson (D) introduced an amendment that would also declare every sperm to be sacred. “However, any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child,” her amendment stated.

CHILDREN DENIED BIRTH BECAUSE OF VASECTOMIES (GEORGIA): State Rep. Yasmin Neal (D) introduced legislation that would limit vasectomies. “Thousands of children are deprived of birth in this state every year because of the lack of state regulation over vasectomies,” Neal explained. Her measure is in response to a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks on the grounds that a fetus can feel pain — a claim disputed by doctors.

MORE HOOPS TO CLEAR FOR VIAGRA (OHIO): In response to Ohio’s so-called Heartbeat Bill, which would prevent abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, state Sen. Nina Turner (D) will introduce a bill that would make men jump through hoops, like a psychological screening, before they could obtain Viagra and similar drugs for erectile dysfunction. “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 said.

RECTAL EXAMS FOR A VIAGRA PRESCRIPTIONS (VIRGINIA): To protest Virginia’s bill requiring women to receive an ultrasound before an abortion, state Sen. Janet Howell (D) attached an amendment to the bill that would have required men to receive a rectal exam and pass a cardiac stress test before doctors wrote them a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. “We need some gender equity here,” Howell said. The Virginia Senate rejected her amendment, but both chambers passed the ultrasound requirement after clarifying that women would not be forced to undergo a transvaginal ultrasound.

KNOW THE SIDE EFFECTS OF VIAGRA (ILLINOIS): State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D) decided to push back against GOP attacks on women’s health by offering an amendment that would require men to watch a “horrific video” about the side effects of Viagra before the received a prescription for the drug. His bill is in response to a measure requiring women to undergo an ultrasound before an abortion. “If we are going to do this, we need to do it in a way that is applied equally,” Cassidy said.

PROTECT ALL SPERM (DELAWARE): Mocking the “personhood” measures, the town council in Wilmington, Delaware approved a satirical resolution “that asks state legislatures and U.S. Congress to enact laws that forbid men from destroying their semen.” The resolution notes that if lawmakers think a female egg has full rights, then they should say the same thing about sperm.

During an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio show this morning, Rick Santorum suggested that Mitt Romney’s campaign pressured USA Today to remove a now-infamous 2009 op-ed, in which the former governor urged President Obama to “learn” lessons from Massachusetts’ health care reform plan and use “tax penalties” to avoid “free riders” in the system. The article — first uncovered by BuzzFeed — is not on the paper’s website and was only discovered through “the former Governor’s old website via the web archive.” “I don’t know how that happens,” Santorum exclaimed to Ingraham:

SANTORUM: You know, it’s really interesting Laura that the USA Today op-ed was somehow removed from the archives. Now, I don’t know how that happens.

INGRAHAM: What, you think the Romney campaign had it removed? Do you think the Romney campaign had it removed?

SANTORUM: I have no idea, I just found it odd.

INGRAHAM: Why are you raising it then?

SANTORUM: Well, because I found it odd don’t you — that that particular op-ed was removed from the archives. And here is a situation where Gov. Romney is out there trying to make a narrative that doesn’t comport with the facts. [...]

INGRAHAM: Well, I think it’s a little odd too, but stranger things have happened in this campaign.

Listen:

As ThinkProgress has reported, Romney has repeatedly called for a federal mandate, going so far as to argue that while states can adopt their own policies, “we’ll end up with a nation that’s taken a mandate approach.” For a full timeline of his evolution, click here.

Gallup released a study last week examining uninsurance rates in all fifty states. Interestingly, the states suffer the most pronounced health care crises are not only refusing to do anything about the problem, but in many cases are actively fighting efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act.

According to Gallup, Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents among all 50 states, with 27.6 percent of the state lacking health insurance and the uninsurance rate is above 20 percent in each of the bottom 11 states. Meanwhile, Massachusetts, the state with the model for the federal health care law, enjoys the lowest percentage of uninsured residents, at 4.9 percent:

Twenty-seven states are suing the federal government to block implementation of the ACA and of the 11 states with the worst rates of uninsured residents, only California and Arkansas have not joined the lawsuits. (An Arkansas citizens group has filed a case of its own.) But compare the Gallup study to previous research from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that Republican-represented districts, including those in states fighting the law, could see more residents get coverage than Democratic-represented areas. The areas with the highest rates of uninsured also stand to gain the most from the law’s coverage expansions:

-Zachary Bernstein

Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski told a local newspaper yesterday that she regrets her vote for the so-called Blunt amendment, the GOP’s alternative to President Obama’s rule requiring employers to provide contraception coverage as part of their health care insurance plans. Under the amendment, which the Senate tabled with the help of just one Republican, employers would have been empowered to deny coverage of health services to their employees on the basis of personal moral objections.

“I have never had a vote I’ve taken where I have felt that I let down more people that believed in me,” Murkowski told the Anchorage Daily News’ Julia O’Malley, claiming that the amendment’s language went “overboard”:

“If you had it to do over again, having had the weekend that you had with women being upset about the vote, do you think you would have voted the same?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

Murkowski said she believes contraception should be covered and affordable, except when it comes to churches and religiously affiliated organizations, like some universities and hospitals. She sponsored a contraception coverage bill as a state legislator in 2002. That bill exempted “religious employers.” She said her position hasn’t changed.

“I have always said if you don’t like abortion the best way to deal with it is to not have unwanted pregnancies in the first place,” she said. “How do you do that? It’s through contraception.”

I pointed out that her support for birth control conflicts with the Catholic mandate against it. “You know, I don’t adhere to all of the tenets of my faith. I’m a Republican, I don’t adhere to all of the principles that come out of my party,” she said. “I’m also not hesitant to question when I think that my church, my religion, is not current.”

Murkowski called the Blunt Amendment a “messaging amendment” that “both sides know is not going to pass” and said “Republicans didn’t have enough sense to get off of it.” She also condemned Rush Limbaugh’s deragatory comments about a Georgetown law student testifying in favor of greater access to birth control. “I think women when they hear…mouthpieces like that say things like that they get concerned and they look to policymakers,” she said. “That’s where I feel like I have let these women down is that I have not helped to give these women the assurance they need that their health care rights are protected.”

Before the vote, ThinkProgress repeatedly called Murkowski’s office to ask how she would vote on the Blunt measure, but her office did not return our requests for comment. Retiring Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) was the only Republican to oppose the measure.