Mitt Romney’s home state of Massachusetts — where Romney enacted a health care reform initiative that President Obama later drew on as inspiration for his own Obamacare policies — is somewhat of a test case for national health care reform, as researchers examine the impact that increased accessed to insurance has had on the state’s residents. And if Massachusetts is any indication, the Republicans who have already spent 89 hours and $51 million dollars attempting to repeal Obama’s health care law have been concentrating their efforts on rolling back pro-life policies.

A 2010 Harvard study on the first two years of Romneycare’s implementation found that as the numbers of insured residents went up between 2007 and 2009, the numbers of abortions in the state went down. And new data reveals that the abortion rate declined even more sharply after 2009, something the Harvard study couldn’t have predicted at the time:

In a recent interview with the Atlantic, the Harvard specialist who authored the 2010 study said he believes the improved health insurance services under Romneycare led to the continuing decrease in abortion rates after his study’s conclusion. “When women have more stable access to medical care, they’re more likely to see doctors, they’re more likely to have somebody inquiring about their sexual health,” he said. “The fact that you have somebody who cares about you results in people being healthier, and that includes not getting pregnant if they don’t want to be.”

Thanks to Obamacare’s unpopularity among Republicans, Romney doesn’t take credit for first implementing the health care policies that provided the foundation for Obama’s health care law. However, considering the fact that health reform helps prevent abortions — even Romney himself once rightfully described Massachusetts’ health reform as “the ultimate pro-life policy” — he might not want to keep pushing to reverse it.

In 2009, the World Health Organization reported that regular indoor tanning before age 30 increases the risk of melanoma — one of the fastest-growing rates of cancer by 75 percent. Facing criticism and increasing state restrictions on youth tanning, the $4.8 billion tanning industry is pursuing a misinformation strategy borrowed from the tobacco industry, according to a report from Bridget Huber at FairWarning.

The International Smart Tan Network has created a training video for salons with instructions to undermine medical consensus. The report chronicles the tanning industry’s campaign, which provides salon employees talking points that tanning is good for you:

At the heart of the industry’s message is the idea that tanning critics such as dermatologists, sunscreen manufacturers and even charities like the American Cancer Society are part of a profit-driven conspiracy. These critics are described as a “Sun Scare industry” that aims to frighten the public into avoiding all exposure to UV light. The tanning industry blames this group for causing what it calls a deadly epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, and tries to position itself as a more trustworthy source of information on tanning’s health effects.

Pointing to tanning as a solution to a “vitamin D deficiency epidemic,” the video echoes early tobacco company efforts to confuse the public on carcinogenic risks. Smart Tan’s misleading training video, bizarrely enough, actually casts health professionals in the same light as Big Tobacco — as villians “lying for money and killing people.”

This is the latest of the embattled tanning industry’s quiet efforts to draw in more business and prevent further regulation. As more states place age restrictions on tanning salons, the industry has stepped up its political efforts, by sending an increasing amount of campaign contributions to federal lawmakers, and employing lobbyists at the state level.

FORT GARLAND, Colorado — Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) doesn’t have 99 problems, but the government allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans is one.

In an interview after a town hall on Tuesday, ThinkProgress asked Tipton about specific protections in Obamacare, including that people with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied coverage by insurance companies. Tipton, no fan of the landmark health care law, used the opportunity to criticize Obamacare’s protections for young adults that allows them to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. “What business is it of the government?” Tipton asked:

KEYES: What about something like, one of the regulations in Obamacare says that people with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied coverage. For someone with leukemia, do you think it should be against the law for insurance companies to be able to deny them, or do you think that shouldn’t be a federal law?

TIPTON: Glad you brought that up. We actually have legislation ready to go. I visited with Congressman Price, a medical doctor, to be able to look at these state exchanges. You want to make sure it’s affordable as well, it’s competitive, we aren’t bankrupting somebody, to be able to address pre-existing conditions. If you want to be able to keep your children on your health care insurance policy, people are touting until age 26. My question is, what business is it of the government? If you want to keep your kids on until they’re 30, 40, what business is it of the government?

Contra Tipton’s assertions that families can “keep your kids on until they’re 30, 40,” most insurance companies only allowed parents to keep dependents on their plan until they turned around 22 prior to Obamacare’s passage. Keeping dependents on a plan until they’re 40 was (and is) not an option.

A new study found that in the two years since this provision of Obamacare was enacted, 6.6 million young adults now have health insurance through their parents’ plans. Unsurprisingly, the new protection is extremely popular, enjoying 71 percent support in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

ThinkProgress later pressed Tipton on whether he supported a federal law that would protect people with pre-existing conditions from being denied health insurance. He refused to say.

Two more evangelical schools — Biola University in California and Grace College in Indiana — just joined the growing number of conservative religious institutions filing lawsuits against the Obama administration over its contraception mandate. The birth control provision, which went into effect at the beginning of this month, provides contraceptive coverage without a co-pay to millions of women who need reproductive health care services. Although Obamacare includes a religious exemption that allows Catholic and evangelical institutions to opt out of paying for birth control if they object to it, right-wing groups claim the mandate still violates their religious liberty.

In preparation to sue over Obamacare, evangelical colleges are more closely examining their existing student health plans — only to discover that they actually already cover the contraceptive services they object to. In their lawsuit, Biola University officials admitted that they were covering birth control and emergency contraception right up until the point that the Obamacare mandate became politicized and they decided it must violate their liberty:

Like Wheaton College, Biola previously covered Plan B and ella in its insurance plans. Biola’s insurance plan covered FDA-approved contraceptives before April 1, the lawsuit states. “The prior inclusion of abortion-inducing drugs like ella and Plan B was neither knowing nor intentional.”

Working with several insurance companies for faculty and student plans, Biola did not look into the details of its coverage until the Obama administration’s mandate became an issue for the college, said Biola University President Barry H. Corey.

“Whether or not people were taking advantage of [ella or Plan B], that’s something we weren’t and couldn’t track,” Corey said. “We did realize at that point that our insurance companies should exclude those.”

Apparently emergency contraception — which Biola misleadingly refers to as “abortion-inducing,” in the ongoing misinformation campaign about the female reproductive system — was not a big enough threat to the university’s religious liberty before Obamacare to compel the administration to ensure that its plan didn’t cover it.

Wheaton and Biola aren’t the only institutions to suddenly realize that they are fighting against a health service they already provide. Some Catholic colleges and hospitals, such as Georgetown University, currently have insurance plans that cover birth control, and 28 states already require organizations to include contraception as part of their prescription insurance plans. The religious case against Obamacare is much more about a manufactured right-wing controversy than it is about liberty.