The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts’ Question 2 — the so-called “Death With Dignity” initiative that would have permitted terminally-ill patients to request physician-assisted suicide medications — was narrowly rejected by a 51-49 margin.

Question 2 would have allowed Americans with six months left to live to request medication to end their lives, after making their request multiple times and being deemed mentally competent to make the decision. Advocates portrayed it as a means of relief and dignity for ailing Americans. But the proposition’s opponents launched a fierce fundraising campaign against the measure, eventually chipping away at its public support:

The ballot question has been the subject of a ferocious political battle. After a Boston Globe poll in September showed voters overwhelmingly supported the measure, support steadily eroded in the face of a last-minute effort by a diverse group of opponents, including religious leaders, anti-abortion activists, and conservatives who aired their message in aggressive television advertisements and at church services. The concerted opposition campaign, which also included a major physician’s group, raised more than three times as much money as proponents. [...]

Massachusetts would have followed Oregon and Washington, which have passed similar initiatives to allow terminally ill patients to seek life-ending drugs from physicians. Donations to opposition groups, which raised nearly $2.6 million, came from far-flung Catholic dioceses, fueled in part by fear of a domino effect if the measure were to gain a foothold in Massachusetts.

Proponents of the measure raised about $700,000.

Question 2 was closely modeled after similar legislation in Oregon, where records show that a fairly small number of patients request fatal doses of medication and even fewer numbers choose to use them, suggesting that the legislation is not being abused there. But the measure’s critics worried that the language of Massachusett’s ballot initiative was poorly constructed and ethically at odds with the medical profession. Although advocates for the terminally-ill see physician-assisted suicide as a personal choice and fundamental right — and often a way of ensuring patients don’t have to resort to desperate tactics — the issue remains contentious across party coalitions.

One of the biggest victories in last night’s election went to President Obama’s landmark health reform law. Now that the Supreme Court has upheld the vast majority of the law and the president has been reelected, Obamacare is here to stay — and the upcoming months and years will see a flurry of major changes to the U.S. health care system aimed at protecting American consumers.

Although certain Obamacare measures — such as allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26 and requiring insurance companies to use 80 percent of their premiums for actual health care rather than their own profits — have already been implemented, the bulk of the law will go into effect over the next two years. Here’s what Americans can expect to see from Obamacare in the near future, and what it means for their health and financial security:

1) Statewide health insurance exchanges. States will soon decide whether to institute their own insurance exchanges, an exchange operated jointly with the federal government, or one run entirely by the federal government. And in 2014, those exchanges will allow individual Americans, small businesses, and eventually large businesses to purchase insurance on large marketplaces where they can leverage their purchasing power to get more affordable coverage. Plans under these exchanges must meet federal benchmarks across ten essential benefit categories, including maternal care and mental health services, helping to provide Americans with affordable insurance options that actually meet their medical needs. Members of Congress must also purchase their insurance plans from these exchanges starting in 2014.

2) An end to insurance company discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions. While Obamacare has already barred insurance companies from denying insurance to children with pre-existing conditions, this highly popular consumer protection will be extended to all Americans by January 2014. This means that Americans suffering from a host of genetic and chronic ailments that are completely beyond their control will no longer be relegated to expensive and inefficient high-risk pools, or be forced to forego critically needed health coverage entirely.

3) Prohibitions on lifetime and annual benefit caps. Also beginning in 2014, insurers will be completely prohibited from imposing lifetime and annual benefit caps on Americans. The provision will give much-needed peace of mind to Americans who require constant or expensive medical care due to a critical or ongoing health condition. During this year’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, speaker Stacy Lihn spoke movingly about how her young daughter — who suffers from a congenital heart defect — would have gone through half her lifetime benefit cap by the time she was six-months-old if it were not for Obamacare protections. Soon, all Americans will share in that potentially life-saving security.

4) Increased access to affordable contraception. Obamacare’s contraception mandate requiring employer-based insurance plans to cover contraception without a co-pay — a provision that studies have shown to benefit low-income women and reduce abortion rates — went into effect this past August. But the health law granted religious institutions some extra time to prepare for the birth control mandate. That time runs out in August 2013, when religious organizations will start implementing this aspect of the law through a workaround that shifts the cost of birth control services onto insurance companies.

5) Employer incentives for offering workers health care benefits. A little more than a year from now, Obamacare will require all employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide workers with health benefits or risk paying a $2,000 per employee fine. Although 70 percent of Americans receive employer-sponsored health insurance, companies have been steadily shifting the cost of care onto their employees. Studies have shown that Obamacare’s employer mandates will actually lower health spending for small businesses and only modestly increase large companies’ health care costs, all while substantially helping low-wage and working Americans receive the affordable health coverage they need.

These are only some of the provisions that will eventually be in place under Obamacare. In order to actually deliver on the promise of affordable, quality coverage for all Americans, lawmakers on both the state and federal level must quickly begin laying the groundwork for Obamacare’s implementation. With last night’s affirmation of President Obama’s reform policies, Americans will soon experience first-hand the numerous landmark protections and benefits of Obamacare that have only existed in abstract terms up until now.

Exit polling from last night’s election suggests that clear majorities of voters in key states support legal access to abortion, and oppose efforts to criminalize abortion in all cases. Considering the fact that voters also rejected the five anti-choice candidates who emphasized their opposition to abortion rights across the board, even for survivors of sexual assault, it’s clear that reproductive rights have become a decisive election issue:

– New Hampshire: Voters in New Hampshire overwhelmingly support abortion access, with 71 percent of voters reporting they believe abortion should be legal all or most of the time. Just 27 percent of voters there say it should be illegal. The state also has the distinction of electing the first all-female Congressional delegation, with two female Senators and two newly elected female Democrats who ousted the male Republican incumbents for seats in Congress.

– Virginia: In Virginia, which ended up casting its 13 electoral votes for Obama, only 33 percent of voters told exit pollsters that they think abortion should be illegal. Sixty-three percent, on the other hand, think it should be legal all or most of the time.

– Ohio: Ohio also went blue for Obama, and it also has a strong majority of support for reproductive rights. Fifty six percent of Ohio voters believe abortion should be legal all or most of the time, and just 39 percent say it should be illegal.

– Missouri: Voters in Missouri narrowly reelected Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) over her Republican opponent Todd Akin, who once defended his opposition for abortion rights for rape victims by asserting that “legitimate rape” doesn’t often lead to pregnancies. Exit polling reported that Missourians who support abortion access enjoy a slight majority, with 51 percent of voters saying they support access to abortion in all or most cases. Two thirds of those voters chose to support McCaskill.

After several far-right GOP candidates for the House and Senate lost their races last night, one of the clear trends emerging from this election is the widespread rejection of extremely restrictive views on reproductive rights. Even though the official Republican party platform endorses a sweeping ban of abortion without even the narrowest of exceptions, national polls confirm that the majority of the country currently supports legal access for all abortion services, and Americans overwhelmingly favor legal abortion rights for survivors of sexual assault.

After they could not pass stringent abortion restrictions in the state legislature, Florida Republicans added an amendment to the ballot that represented an unprecedented push to limit abortion access. The measure would have curtailed insurance coverage and privacy protections for women:

Flustered by their inability to pass stronger abortion restrictions, lawmakers put Amendment 6 on the ballot — which would have prohibited state funding of abortion services or insurance coverage that covered abortions, and also removed the privacy protection in the constitution that had prevented stronger parental-consent laws from surviving legal challenges.

But voters in the state confirmed their support for women’s reproductive freedom and rejected Amendment 6 yesterday. The restrictive measure lost with only about 45 percent of the vote when it needed 60 percent to pass. Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project, said that Floridians “sent a clear message” to politicians that they have no place making medical decisions for women. “Whether assaults on women’s health are made at the ballot box, in the legislature or in court, the time has come to say enough is enough. Women deserve better,” she said.

At the same time as Florida voters successfully defeated an attack on women’s access to abortion, however, Montana approved a parental notification law that will require abortion providers to notify parents at least 48 hours before performing the procedure on women under 16 years old. Two-thirds of voters cast their ballots in favor of the measure. But doctors will not have to notify a patient’s parents in situations where a youth court waives notification or in cases of medical emergency.

Genetically modified foods will not require labels in California, voters decided Tuesday. Chemical and processed food companies, led by biotech giant Monsanto, injected $46 million into a campaign to defeat Proposition 37, while labeling advocates raised just $9.2 million.

Among the biggest spenders in the anti-labeling fight were junk food companies Coca-Cola and Nestle, which rely on genetically modified corn and soy to sweeten their products. Pesticide company DuPont also shelled out millions. These companies claimed that GMOs are harmless and would unfairly bias people against their products. However, the FDA does not require safety studies before approving new strains, and mounting evidence shows that GMO crops have led to a rise of evolved weeds and pests that can withstand increasingly higher doses of potent pesticides.

California is the 21st state that has tried and failed to pass labeling legislation in the past year. The GMO industry has less of a grip abroad; more than 60 countries including China, Europe, Australia and Japan require labels on GMO products.

The 2012 campaign season came to be defined by Republican candidates making out of touch, often medically inaccurate comments about sexual assault, women’s reproductive systems, and abortion rights. Between legitimate rape, God-given rape, and emergency rape, anti-choice politicians rushed to clarify their narrow view of sexual assault and their position that rape survivors don’t deserve access to legal abortion rights. But it turns out that strategy didn’t play well with yesterday’s voters, who didn’t elect any of the five Republican candidates who incited the biggest backlash for their comments in this area:

Todd Akin (R-MO)

Akin kicked off the recent focus on rape and abortion with his assertion that rape survivors don’t need access to legal abortion services because victims of “legitimate rape” rarely get pregnant, since the female body “has ways of shutting that whole thing down.” Later, he tried to clarify his statements by explaining that he chose to use the word “legitimate” to reflect the fact that women sometimes make false claims about being raped. Akin lost his Senate bid to his Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill, who condemned his comments about sexual assault.

Richard Mourdock (R-IN)

Mourdock sparked controversy when he suggested that women who become impregnated through rape should not have legal abortion access because their pregnancies are “a gift from God.” And the same week Mourdock made his comments, Mitt Romney cut an ad for him to endorse him in his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Nevertheless, Joe Donnelly (D) narrowly defeated Mourdock in the Senate race in Indiana.

Linda McMahon (R-CT)

During her run for a Senate seat in Connecticut, McMahon attempted to convince voters that she was a moderate, pro-choice Republican — but that attempt fell flat once she revealed that she believes Catholic hospitals should be able to deny emergency contraception from rape victims as a matter of “separation of church and state.” She tried to backtrack her statements by saying that she meant that Catholic churches, not hospitals, should be exempt from providing Plan B in cases of “emergency rape.” McMahon lost to her Democratic opponent Chris Murphy by more than 10 points.

Tom Smith (R-PA)

Smith attempted to explain his position on denying rape survivors the access to abortion services by saying that he can personally relate to the situation because his daughter had a child out of wedlock. According to the Pennsylvania Senate candidate, a woman who has a child out of wedlock that resulted from consensual sex and a woman who has a child that was conceived from rape both have a “similar effect” on their fathers. Smith lost his race to the Democratic incumbent, Bob Casey.

John Koster (R-WA)

Koster clarified his position on abortion access for victims of sexual assault by casually noting that he is opposed to legal abortion in cases of “the rape thing.” Koster argued that providing full reproductive rights to women who have become pregnant from rape would only serve to “put more violence on a woman’s body.” Koster was defeated in his campaign to represent Washington state’s first congressional district by Democrat Suzan DelBene.