The Oklahoma Supreme Court has just struck down a proposed personhood ballot question — which would have granted embryos the rights of people and outlawed all abortions — calling the measure “clearly unconstitutional”:

4. The United States Supreme Court has spoken on this issue. The measure is clearly unconstitutional pursuant to Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). The states are duty bound to follow its interpretation of the law. Twenty years ago, this Court was presented with an initiative which facially conflicted with the Casey decision. This Court held: “The issue of the constitutionality of the initiative petition is governed by the United States Supreme Court’s pronouncement in Casey.”

5. The only course available to this Court is to follow what the United States Supreme Court, the final arbiter of the United States Constitution has decreed. In re Initiative Petition 349, 1992 OK 122, ¶ 8, 838 P.2d 1, 5.

6. The mandate of Casey is as binding on this Court today as it was twenty years ago. Initiative Petition No. 395 conflicts with Casey and is void on its face and it is hereby ordered stricken.

In Casey, the Supreme Court held that states may enact some abortion regulations, but they may not “strike at the right itself” to terminate a pregnancy. A law redefining embryos as people is thus a direct attack on women’s constitutional right to choose.

Unnecessary health costs add some $158 billion to the nation’s health care tab, and requiring women to undergo pelvic exams before receiving a prescription for birth control pills only adds to this total. As Mother Jones’ Stephanie Mencimer explains, despite any evidence showing that the annual exam improves health outcomes, one-third of doctors always require women to undergo a Pap smear before they prescribe hormonal contraception, and 44 percent regularly do so:

For instance, there’s no evidence that doctors can diagnose ovarian cancer with a pelvic exam in women showing no symptoms. A clinical trial found that doctors were unable to identify any cancers in test subjects by pelvic exams alone, and the National Cancer Institute no longer recommends the tests for postmenopausal women. [...]

The scientific basis for much of the traditional well-woman ob-gyn annual check-up is so slim that “the routine pelvic examination may be an example of more service leading to worse outcomes,” Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an ob-gyn at Columbia University, wrote in the Journal of Women’s Health last year.

So why are doctors so adamant about the additional testing? Drug and medical device companies fund most continuing medical education, which is primarily how doctors learn about new science, and these industries are not interested in limiting care, Shannon Brownlee, a health policy expert at the New America Foundation, explains to Menicmer. Under the existing fee-for-service health reimbursement system, doctors are also paid for every additional procedure — regardless of whether it actually improves patient care.

Delinking pelvic exams from women’s birth control prescriptions underscores the importance of health research in guiding health care decisions. The Affordable Care Act invests in comparative effectiveness research to help determine the most cost-effective course of treatment, and it also begins to recalibrate the system so we stop paying doctors for unnecessary care and instead reimburse them for treatments that only bolster patient outcomes.

One of the things Americans like most about the Affordable Care Act is that insurance companies can no longer deny people coverage because of a pre-existing condition like cancer or diabetes. That provision will take effect in 2014, but in the meantime, individuals and families with pre-existing conditions can enroll in temporary high-risk insurance pools that provide coverage for those who are can’t find insurance elsewhere.

Since large groups of sick people are very expensive to insure — they spend the premiums they pay into the risk pool — enrollment has lagged behind expectations, as high risk pools attracted the sickest (and more desperate) individuals willing to pay a hefty price for coverage. But since the federal government instituted a series of reforms, enrollment has picked up. In Alabama, for instance, the size of the state’s pool increased six-fold over the last year, when premiums were cut by 40 percent. Other states also saw tens of thousands more Americans join their state’s pools:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that as of the end of February, 389 people in Alabama were on the special insurance, an option for people with illnesses that make them a high risk, such as cancer or diabetes. Last February, there were 61 enrollees. [...]

Alabama’s uptick in enrollment follows a national trend over the last 12 months, when enrollment grew from 12,437 to 56,257. The plans are for people who have been denied coverage because of their health status and are struggling to find affordable insurance. To qualify, people must have gone without health insurance for six months and not be eligible for Medicaid or Medicare.

“For too long, Americans with pre-existing conditions were locked out of the health care system, and their health suffered,” HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a recent prepared statement. “Thanks to health reform, our most vulnerable Americans across the country have the care they need.”

Alabama is far from alone in seeing higher enrollment. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 49 states, plus Washington, DC, saw an increase in enrollment in their high-risk pools last year. (The lone outlier, Vermont, was not listed as having any enrollees in its pool, but is a “guaranteed issue state” which offers policies to all eligible applicants regardless of their health.) The federal government’s contribution to the program — $5 billion — is running out fact, but given the new enrollment numbers, the law is clearly having an impact.

-Zachary Bernstein

Women across the country participated in “We Are Women” rallies on Saturday to protest state legislation limiting access to contraception and abortion. Hundreds of advocates gathered in Kansas, Colorado, Virginia, Florida, Arkansas, Idaho, and Oklahoma to demand that lawmakers abandon efforts to undermine women’s health.

“Today’s rally was part of a national movement that has had enough of the war on women,” Kansas rally organizer Kari Ann Rinker said. “Not only do we have a governor who sees fit to sign every piece of anti-choice legislation that crosses his desk, the atrocity is the failure to care for the living, breathing children and families that reside here in Kansas.” Protesters in Virginia carried signs that read “Stop the War on Virginia Women,” “Women’s Rights are Human Rights” and “Va. Gov. McDonnell. The Vaginal Probe Guy.” And demonstrators in Oklahoma — where lawmakers have approved more than 30 anti-abortion measures since the GOP gained control of the House after 2004 — rallied against the state’s personhood measure, noting, “That’s not progress. That’s not even status quo backward.”

The Guttmacher Institute estimates that so far this year, at least 45 state legislatures have introduced 944 measures related to reproductive health. At least 75 abortion restrictions passed at least one legislative chamber, and nine have been enacted into law.

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

This Sunday, during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) was asked about the House Republicans’ plan to avoid an increase in student loan interest rates by taking money from a health care fund that particularly benefits women. The Prevention and Public Health Fund, created by the Affordable Care Act, provides states and communities with funds for “promoting wellness, preventing disease, and protecting against public health emergencies.”

But Boehner, noting that the Obama administration had earlier agreed to take some money out of the account to pay for the payroll tax cut extension, claimed that none of the money in the account benefits women. He told Crowley:

CROWLEY: We have [House Democratic Leader] Nancy Pelosi out there saying, well, they want to protect the big oil companies because they want to pay for the student loan interest rates by closing loopholes in the oil industry and we want to protect women’s health. We want to prevent breast cancer and cervical cancer and that’s what this fund is for.

BOEHNER: That is just nonsense. There’s no women’s health issue here.

CROWLEY: It’s a preventive fund, isn’t it?

BOEHNER: I’ll guarantee you they’ve not spent a dime out of this fund dealing with anything to do with women’s health.

Watch the video:

Boehner’s statement is absolutely false. The fund has already been used to provide health care workforce development and public health initiatives to combat diseases like obesity, diabetes and HIV/AIDS. It will soon invest millions more in cancer screenings, immunizations, and detection of birth defects — benefits with particularly benefit women. Already, $17 million from the fund has gone to grants in Boehner’s own state of Ohio to provide community prevention, clinical prevention, public health infrastructure and training, and research and data collection.

Rather than protect student loan rates by ending special corporate tax breaks for hugely profitable oil companies, Boehner is asking Americans to choose between enabling students to afford college and investing in preventative care for women and children.