Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin (PPWI) announced today that they will be forced to end distribution of all medication abortions — known as the abortion pill — because of a new law just enacted that has too many gray areas and makes it too legally risky for the organization to continue providing the pill.

The law, Act 217, is part of Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) anti-abortion agenda, aimed at making it harder for a woman to choose an abortion.

“I want to take an opportunity to put this new law into context with what we’ve seen over the last 18 months from Gov. Walker and the Republican legislature,” said Nicole Safar, policy director for PPWI, “This is just one piece of a very anti-woman agenda put in place by this government.”

Specifically, Act 217 changes “informed consent” laws — the process a doctor has to follow before he or she can administer the pill. “Under this new law, women seeking medication abortion would be required to make at least three separate doctor’s vists to the same doctor,” said Terry Huyck, CEO of PPWI. Addtionally, Act 217 creates criminal penalties for providers of medication abortions if they don’t follow the ambiguous legislative restrictions. And the penalties are strict. According to the bill’s language:

Under this bill, a person who gives a woman an abortion-inducing drug in a manner that violates the prohibition is guilty of a Class I felony and may be subject to a civil action. This bill specifies that a penalty may not be assessed against a woman who receives an abortion-inducing drug.

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin gives care to about 80,000 a year. Since they will no longer be distributing the pill, it will become significantly harder to access. Women who lose the option of the abortion pill will be forced to have a surgical abortion — a more invasive procedure that can carry greater medical risks for some.

The battle over abortion in Wisconsin has been particularly fierce. Just a few weeks ago, a Planned Parenthood in the state was firebombed.

Tennessee has long had a law that allowed prosecutors to charge someone for harming a “viable fetus” — defined as about the 32nd week after conception — when someone kills or assaults a pregnant woman. Last year, lawmakers expanded that definition to apply to any fetus.

Now, they’re looking to criminalize harm to embryos, the cells that are formed before a fetus develops eight weeks after conception. Proponents of the bill say it would clarify last year’s expanded fetal harm bill, but critics say it will be difficult to prosecute because some pregnancies end naturally at that stage. They argue this is simply a fight over abortion:

[I]t will be difficult for prosecutors to prove that an embryo miscarried because of someone else’s action and not from natural causes, predicted Rep. Jeanne Richardson, D-Memphis. [...] “I think your original bill may have been OK and we voted for that. I think extending that would be iffy.”

Opponents gradually linked the measure to the abortion debate.

Rep. Johnnie Turner, D-Memphis, said the measure would give “veiled support” to the anti-abortion movement by establishing that embryos can be crime victims. Once that principle had been accepted, embryos could be recognized as persons under other aspects of the law.

The Tennessee Senate is expected to vote on this measure today.

Including Tennessee, 38 states have fetal homicide laws — 23 of which apply to the earliest stages of pregnancy. As a result of these laws, some women are being unfairly charged with harming their unborn children when they lose their babies during pregnancy.

Our guest blogger is Katrina Womble, a Health Policy intern at the Center for American Progress.

In an attempt to address state budget shortages, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett‘s (R) FY 2013 budget, released February 7th, proposes reducing funding for mental health services by $168 million (20 percent), with additional cuts to other critical mental health services. State officials, mental health advocates, and patients are concerned about Corbett’s proposed state budget. But the notion that this funding cut will save the state money is an illusion, as reduced access to mental health services have led to increased – and expensive – use of hospital emergency room services. Some of the mental health related cuts in Corbett’s budget include:

– $110 million reduction to Community Mental Health Services. The remaining Mental Health funds are to be put into county Human Services Development Fund Block Grant. Behavioral health funding accounts for 73 percent of the proposed block grant total, but there is no mechanism in place to guarantee that counties will spend that 73 percent on persons with mental illness.

– Cuts Intellectual Disability Community Services by $28.995 million

– An additional $12.6 million reduction to the Behavioral Health Services Initiative and the Act 152 Drug and Alcohol Program. These programs provide assessment, treatment, and case management services for individuals for individuals with mental illness and people in need of treatment for drug and/or alcohol abuse.

Unfortunately, Corbett’s proposed cuts are not unique. States across the U.S. have slashed state mental health agency budgets since FY 2009 as a result of the recession. The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD) estimated that states have cut $3.4 billion in mental health funding since FY 2009, while the demand for services has increased during this time period (since FY 2009, demand for community-based services has increased by 56 percent, and the demand for emergency room, state hospital, and emergency psychiatric care has climbed 18 percent).

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Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) Medicare reform plan — which would provide future seniors with vouchers to purchase health care coverage from private insurers — is predicated on the assumptions that Medicare costs are spiraling out of control and that private insurers would do a better job of controlling spending than the federal government. But an analysis of spending data from the Urban Institute’s John Holahan and Stacey McMorrow reinforces doubt in both claims and finds that the traditional fee-for-service program is more efficient than private payers. As a result, the GOP’s Medicare reforms “unlikely to be the answer to Medicare’s rising costs and will, in some versions, simply shift a substantial amount of spending onto Medicare beneficiaries,” the authors conclude.

First, consider the claim that Medicare costs are so high that legislators must fundamentally restructure the program, take it out of government hands and hand it over to the private market.

Health spending in the last decade increased about 3 percentage points faster per year than the growth in GDP. Troubling yes, but growth in both private health expenditures and Medicare declined in the second part of the decade (you can partly blame the recession for this phenomenon).

Over the next decade, private health spending and Medicare expenditures are projected to grow at 5.7 to 5.8 percent per year. Those numbers are high, but the breakdown between Medicare and private insurance is revealing. Medicare will experience an influx of babyboomers, but as a result of the payment changes in the Affordable Care Act, “expenditures per enrollee are expected to increase by only 2.7 percent per year.” Private health insurance, on the other hand, will see far smaller enrollment increases, but spend almost twice as much — 4.9 percent more per enrollee per year:

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