A state judge has ruled that the Oklahoma law that severely restricts “the ways in which doctors can treat women with abortion-inducing drugs” is unconstitutional. In his ruling overturning the 2011 law, Judge Donald Worthington wrote that the law violates a woman’s right to privacy and bodily integrity. And Worthington added that the law ignores medical standards, according to RH Reality Check:

Judge Worthington ruled that the bill’s restrictions on medication abortion are unconstitutional because they are “so completely at odds with the standard that governs the practice of medicine that [the bill] can serve no purpose other than to prevent women from obtaining abortions and to punish and discriminate against those women who do.” [...]

The law — which had been temporarily blocked since October — would have banned any off-label use of medications for abortion or treatment of ectopic pregnancy, while explicitly allowing off-label use of the same medication for other purposes. According to the lawsuit, the law not only jeopardizes women’s health by preventing doctors from using safe and effective methods available, but also undermines women’s ability to exercise the full range of their fundamental constitutionally protected reproductive rights.

A judge temporarily blocked the law from going into effect in October. At the time, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice, a group that challenged the law, noted that 21 percent of all drugs are prescribed for off-label use and that the injunction ensured “women in Oklahoma will continue to be able to access medical care that accounts for scientific evidence, sound medical judgment and advancements in medicine.” Now that the law has been declared unconstitutional, women’s access to medical care in Oklahoma can continue.

In their first debate, Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) and his Democratic competitor Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq War veteran, clashed over the budget debate that is dividing Congress. Among the issues debated, Walsh and Duckworth accused each other of trying to destroy Medicare.

Duckworth correctly pointed out that approving Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal would end Medicare as we know it, but Walsh insisted that passing massive tax cuts for the rich would help save Medicare, according to the Chicago Sun-Times:

Duckworth continued: “You are on the front lines, giving money to people who don’t need it. Why are you so obsessed with ending Medicare? You call it a ‘Ponzi scheme.’”

“Tammy, I want to save it!” Walsh interjected. “Every Republican and Democrat in D.C. knows it’s gone in 10 years. What do you propose to do?”

“I propose to end the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires to pay for it,” Duckworth said.

“Oh, Holy Cow, I would much rather be standing with a plan than with a president who has ignored Medicare,” Walsh told Duckworth. “If you’re going to continue down this road as the president is and say, ‘I’m just going to ignore Medicare,’ you, my dear, are ending it as we know it. And that is so wrong.”

Ryan’s budget plan would dramatically reshape Medicare and charge seniors more: led by Ryan, House Republicans voted to cut funds to Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs so that they could protect defense spending. The Washington Post reports that Ryan’s plan is still a difficult issue on the campaign trail as Democrats continue to attack Republicans for supporting the plan.

But even if it may be proving a difficult topic for congressional Republicans, likely GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has staked out the same budget plan as Ryan.

Washington State is facing a Whooping cough epidemic that state health officials say could surpass the number of cases in any year since before the vaccine went into wide use in the 1940s. The state has recorded 1,284 cases through early May — 10 times as many as last year’s total at this time. But as the New York Times reports, budget cuts are hampering state and local health departments’ responses to the increasing number of Whooping cough, also known as pertussis, cases.

For example, the local Public Health Department in Skagit County, which has been hardest hit by the epidemic, has half the staff it did four years ago, and most of its preventive care programs have disappeared:

The county’s top medical officer, Dr. Howard Leibrand, who is also a full-time emergency room physician, said that in the crushing triage of a combined health crisis and budget crisis, he had gone so far as to urge local physicians to stop testing patients to confirm a whooping cough diagnosis.

If the signs are there, he said — especially a persistent, deep cough and indication of contact with a confirmed victim — doctors should simply treat patients with antibiotics. The pertussis test can cost up to $400 and delay treatment by days. About 14.6 percent of Skagit County residents have no health insurance, according to a state study conducted last year, up from 11.6 percent in 2008.

“There has been half a million dollars spent on testing in this county,” Dr. Leibrand said late last week. “Do you know how much vaccination you can buy for half a million dollars?” And testing, he added, benefits only the epidemiologists, not the patients. “It’s an outrageous way to spend your health care dollar.”

State health officials suggest that there could be more pertussis cases than current estimates show. Due to incomplete testing, as few as one in five cases is being tracked because of incomplete testing. Becky Neff, a registered nurse with a school district in Skagit County, told the New York Times that she has stopped asking for confirmation of suspected Whooping cough cases because there are only two nurses processing the disease reports instead of the five nurses doing the job a few years ago.

Mary Selecky, the state’s secretary of health, said under-immunization in children could be a compounding factor in the rapid increase in pertussis cases. Until the Washington legislature changed the state law last year to make it more difficult to opt out of childhood vaccines, Washington state had the highest number of kindergartners who did not meet state or national goals for any required immunizations, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

And because the vaccine for pertussis fades over time, the CDC recommends that adults receive a booster shot every 10 years to increase their protection against pertussis. Officials say this is especially important for adults who are around infants too young to be vaccinated because of how easily pertussis can spread.

A new study from the Guttmacher Institute unsurprisingly finds that greater knowledge about contraceptive services is directly correlated to a decrease in young adults’ risky sexual behavior. However, after quizzing a nationally representative sample of 1,800 sexually active Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 on their basic knowledge of contraception methods, Guttmacher reports that “more than half of young men and a quarter of young women received low scores on contraceptive knowledge, and six in 10 underestimated the effectiveness of oral contraceptives.” The study ultimately concluded:

Programs to increase young adults’ knowledge about contraceptive methods and use are urgently needed. Given the demonstrated link between method knowledge and contraceptive behaviors, such programs may be useful in addressing risky behavior in this population.

Pervasive misinformation about contraceptives — often leading to higher rates of unintended pregnancies — is one of the serious consequences of abstinence-only education programs. Sex education programs that lack comprehensive sexuality information prevent young adults from fully educating themselves about their reproductive health, their contraceptive options, and the best sexual practices to avoid potentially risky behavior.

The Guttmacher study highlights this very educational gap. Although a majority of respondents (69 percent of the women and almost half of the men) agreed that they were “committed to avoiding pregnancy,” they seem to doubt that birth control is an effective means to achieve this goal. 40 percent of respondents said that birth control doesn’t matter because “when it is your time to get pregnant, it will happen.”

It’s especially important to emphasize the need for comprehensive sexual education programs in light of the Obama administration’s recent decision to support an abstinence-only curriculum as part of the Department of Health and Human Services’ list of “pregnancy prevention programs.” Considering that abstinence-only programs have been proven to be less effective at preventing pregnancy, how much more evidence does the Obama administration need to revoke its endorsement of birth control misinformation campaigns?