Last week, Mitt Romney went so far as to draw up an endearingly simplistic whiteboard chart to reassure current seniors his plans for Medicare involve no changes for them. Paul Ryan, the newly-minted vice-presidential candidate, and Romney’s deputies have been pushing the same message. All of this stems from both Romney’s pledge to undo the cuts to provider payment rates in the Affordable Care Act, and to not introduce privatization or premium support into Medicare for anyone currently over 55 years of age.

But one program both Romney and Ryan have proposed cutting drastically and immediately is Medicaid. And while that program is mainly known for providing health care to the poor, it often provides health care to the elderly as well.

Medicaid helps pay for seniors’ long-term care, including more than two-thirds of all nursing home residents. Medicaid also helps support seniors with disabilities due to Alzheimers or stroke, with their Medicare premiums, and in general provides support for retired low-income Americans. All told, at least 6 million seniors rely on Medicaid, and account for a fourth of its spending.

Mitt Romney has taken cuts to Medicare, Social Security and defense off the table. With those parameters, his plan to reduce the federal budget to 20 percent of the economy by 2016 requires cutting every other program by 40 percent, including Medicaid. Given the portion of the program going to support them, such a cut to Medicaid would devastate current seniors.

In engineering the House Republicans’ latest budget, Paul Ryan was even more specific. Unlike Romney’s vague, over-arching spending cap, Ryan explicitly named Medicaid for cuts — driving the program down from 2 to 1.25 percent of the economy by 2023, and even lower beyond that. He would also block grant the program, which could provide right-wing governors and legislatures an opening to reduce Medicaid benefits even further, on top of the official cuts in Ryan’s budget.

Many seniors are forced to burn through their wealth and resources before reaching a low enough point to qualify for Medicaid’s additional support. The program is already so tight in its payments that Romney and Ryan’s cuts would reduce its eligibility still further — removing 17 million beneficiaries.

Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) has come under fire for perpetrating the dangerous myth that “legitimate rape” doesn’t often lead to pregnancy because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” Although Mitt Romney has publicly condemned Akin’s comments, some conservatives haven’t been willing to clearly articulate their opposition to Akin’s misinformation about the biology of rape.

Matt Lewis, a senior columnist at the Daily Caller, is unfortunately not one of the prominent conservative pundits who have called for Akin to withdraw from his current senate race in Missouri. Instead, although Lewis admits that there doesn’t “seem” to be any science to back up Akin’s claims about rape and conception, he still uses his column to speculate about similar junk science that contributes to Akin’s rape mythology:

I’ve heard speculation that women are perhaps more likely to conceive with a partner they deem successful or handsome — or that they are in love with. Others believe that female orgasm actually increases the odds of conception. This may or may not be junk science. But it would at least provide context. Is that what he was getting at? [...]

This is obviously a serious conundrum. [...] Having said, that, the national media tends to overplay such scandals. Can Akin explain himself and put it behind him? I think it depends how he explains himself.

The fact that Lewis lays out wild theories that “may or may not be junk science” gives a platform to dangerous distortions about women’s bodies. In fact, neither female attraction nor female orgasm have anything to do with the science behind fertility and conception. Nevertheless, these myths have permeated the discourse among radical anti-choice circles throughout the past several decades, and have made their way into politicians’ mouths before. As Mother Jones points out, this type of junk science is so widespread that Planned Parenthood includes it as a frequently asked question on its site: “I’ve heard that a woman can’t get pregnant from getting raped. Is that true?”

As Planned Parenthood feels the need to clarify, it is absolutely not true. One study on the subject, published in the Journal of American Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1996, estimated that instances of rape result in over 30,000 pregnancies annually. A separate 2001 study sampled 405 rape victims and found that 6.4 percent had become pregnant as a result of being raped.

After Susan G. Komen for the Cure ended its partnership with Planned Parenthood and cut off the grant money that funded breast cancer screening — a decision the foundation later reversing — Planned Parenthood received an influx of donations from supporters trying to help close the funding gap. Planned Parenthood announced today that those donations, which totaled about $3 million, will be used for a new breast health initiative to expand educational materials and preventative services.

In an interview with the Washington Post’s Sarah Kliff, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards explained that, because the organization raised much more than the original grant money from Komen for the Cure in the aftermath of the controversy, the additional funds will go toward bolstering the work that was threatened:

RICHARDS: Given the events of the last year, and the contributions that came in specifically around the conversation about breast health and our work with Komen, we felt it was important to use that money to expand access and education. We felt like we had a real opportunity here to do something new. [...]

We want to make sure nobody lost services or funding. The Komen partnerships are local. Some have continued, some haven’t for whatever reason. We’ve made sure everyone has gotten the funding they expected.

Planned Parenthood’s initiative will provide its affiliates with new funds on top of the grant money they already receive from the Komen charity, including an additional $1 million to help pay for more preventative screenings like mammograms, biopsies, and ­ultrasounds. The donation money will also be directed toward education and outreach programs to target the demographics that have especially high rates of fatal breast cancer, such as Hispanic women and women under the age of 40.

After Komen caved to right-wing pressure to distance themselves from Planned Parenthood — just one prong in anti-abortion activists’ strategy to increase attacks on Planned Parenthood affiliates over the past year — the public outcry led to significant leadership changes at the charity. Once Komen reinstated funding for Planned Parenthood, its anti-choice vice president stepped down, acknowledging her role in the unpopular decision to strip the organization’s grant money. Earlier this month, Komen founder Nancy Brinker announced she will resign from her role as CEO.