Democratic lawmakers are trying to find alternative ways to keep Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas afloat just one day before the state officially bans the organization from receiving funding through the joint state-federal Women’s Health Program. Tomorrow, a new rule goes into effect stopping any clinic affiliated with an abortion provider from receiving WHP funds, and federal officials have said they will cut off funding to the state program if Texas bans Planned Parenthood from WHP. If the program stops, 130,000 women will lose their access to affordable health care.

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee and state Rep. Garnet Coleman have been meeting with the Department of Health and Human Services about creating a women’s health “look-alike program” that would keep money flowing to Planned Parenthood, which treats nearly 44 percent of the program’s patients:

The Medicaid Women’s Health Program is due to end in Texas on March 31, the result of the state’s decision to exclude clinics affiliated with abortion providers, even those that do not provide abortions. Federal regulations say a state can’t exclude qualified providers from the program.

Coleman and Lee said the alternative might involve the federal government allocating money to local entities, such as counties, hospital districts or federally qualified health clinics. They noted that school districts have been allowed to apply for federal grants independently rather than through the state.

Ninety percent of the Women’s Health Program’s total operating costs are covered by federal funds, but last week, Republican Gov. Rick Perry announced the state would continue funding the Women’s Health Program without including Planned Parenthood and without federal funds. His administration has not explained how he plans to carve $30 million out of the state’s budget to do so. Although HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius maintains that federal funding for the Women’s Health Program will be phased out gradually over the course of several months, she also inferred that the option of providing direct federal funding for Planned Parenthood was on the table.

While the rule goes into effect Wednesday, Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas will accept WHP patients to the end of March. Last week, Texans protested against the Republicans’ decision to take away health care for hundreds of thousands of women just so they can take funding away from Planned Parenthood.

– Fatima Najiy

State legislatures are busy debating another round of anti-choice legislation (after passing a record number of anti-abortion measures in 2011). But this year, women are speaking up more loudly.

To push back against the Republican-backed proposals, Democrats have proposed satirical bills mocking extreme measures bestowing personhood on a zygote and requiring women to have ultrasounds before abortion procedures.

And constituents have voiced their opposition, rallying against cuts to funding for women’s health care, ultrasound bills, and personhood measures. And the protests are spreading.

In Georgia, hundreds protested on Monday against two anti-abortion bills approved by the state Senate. One would prevent state employees’ health care plans from covering abortion, and the other exempts religious health care providers from having to cover birth control:

Demonstrators held signs saying “Trust Georgia women” and “My body is not a political playground” as they walked around the Gold Dome. They chanted “Not the church, not the state, women must decide their fate.”

“I don’t think that a few men in this state have the right to take away the rights of women,” said Suzanne Ault, 48, of Atlanta. “It’s not their call to make, the health and life of a woman.”

The Georgia House is now considering both bills.

And in Wisconsin, demonstrators rallied today against a push on the last day of the state’s legislative session to pass several anti-woman bills. The measures would prevent private insurance plans from covering abortion, add barriers for women seeking abortions, and end a program to provide information to teenagers about avoiding unintended pregnancies.

House Republicans are pushing to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), which is tasked with making binding recommendations to Congress for lowering health care spending. But estimates from the Congressional Budget Office found that the GOP repeal plan would add $3 billion to the deficit, and now Democrats who supported it are revoking their support for a new Republican plan to pay for repealing IPAB with a medical malpractice reform measure.

Twenty Democrats had signed on as co-sponsors, but several have spoken out against the new idea, according to Talking Points Memo:

“Unfortunately, Republican leadership is manipulating the dialogue on this issue for political purposes, which will undoubtedly lead many Democratic members to vote against the bill — despite support for the underlying policy from House Democrats across the ideological spectrum,” Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA), the most outspoken Democratic opponent of Obama’s Medicare panel, told TPM. “By unnecessarily tying repeal of IPAB to a partisan malpractice bill, House Republicans have effectively ensured that this bill is dead. This is deeply disappointing.”

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), another signatory of IPAB repeal, told TPM the GOP lost his vote with the tort reform pay-for — and predicted other Dems will bolt, too. “It’s typical of their irresponsible approach,” Frank said in an interview Monday. “They have a lot of Democratic support to repeal [IPAB] and they know it. They were dangerously close to having some bipartisanship and they couldn’t accept that.” [...]

House GOP leaders have opted to fund the $3.1 billion cost to repeal IPAB with medical malpractice reform legislation, which is a poison pill for most Democrats and even some key Republicans. It’s an indication that the GOP has given up on getting a bill to Obama’s desk, where he’d probably veto it anyway.

Republicans have attacked the board as health care rationing, but the panel’s recommendations cannot “include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums…increase Medicare beneficiary cost- sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and co- payments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.” The Senate-confirmed members will only make recommendations to cut Medicare payments to providers — not endangering seniors’ health care — no matter how much Republicans try to scare seniors into thinking otherwise.

In recent years, Utah has earned a reputation for being one of the reddest states in the country. Indeed, less than 35 percent of 2008 voters in the Beehive State cast their ballots for the Obama-Biden ticket. But a new poll by Brigham Young University shows even Utahans are not backing the growing “abstinence-only” push by the right-wing.

In recent weeks, the state legislature passed HB 363, a bill to prohibit Utah schools from teaching students about contraceptives and to permit school districts to skip sex education entirely. The bill passed easily in the Republican-dominated state legislature (the GOP has 22 of 29 seats in the state senate and 58 of the 75 seats in the state house). Republican Gov. Gary R. Herbert has not yet said whether he will sign the bill.

Utahans, according to the BYU poll, would prefer that he veto the measure. Of those surveyed, 58 percent said they believe “”Public schools in Utah should teach about the use of contraceptives.” Only 30 percent said they should not. Only among those identifying as “strong Republicans” was there widespread (68 percent) opposition to the idea.

Chris Karpowitz, a political science professor at the university, told the Salt Lake Tribune:

The thing that was interesting to us was such a strong majority believed public schools should teach about contraceptives… Utah is a fairly conservative place, and you might have assumed that this would have gone in the other direction.

I think it means the governor has a tough decision to make, and he has to decide whether he’s going to side with the strongest Republicans who seem to have the most opposition to this — and that’s an important group for any Republican governor in the state of Utah — or is he going to side with the larger majority that seems to support this.

Hebert’s quandary is a microcosm of the challenge the Republican Party faces nationally: appeal to a narrow but vocal base that wants to pursue a culture war against contraception and women or focus on the real struggles of working families.