Since Friday is the one-year anniversary of the Department of Health and Human Services’ decision to overrule the FDA’s recommendations on emergency contraception — choosing to restrict access to Plan B for those under the age of 17 even though the FDA confirms it’s safe for women of all ages to use — health advocates are marking it as Emergency Contraception Day of Action to pressure the Obama administration to reverse its policy. The Center for American Progress has released an infographic to highlight why the age restriction on Plan B is a harmful policy that prevents young people from accessing the contraceptive methods they need:

Despite widespread information about the scientific nature of emergency contraception, it is simply a strong dose of birth control that does not actually induce abortions.

The New York Times reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs today will propose new rules and regulations aimed at expanding health care benefits for current and former service members suffering from a traumatic brain injury.

The new regulations will include certain forms of “Parkinsonism, unprovoked seizures, certain dementias, depression, and hormone deficiency diseases related to the hypothalamus, pituitary or adrenal glands” as medical conditions eligible for benefits to any veteran with a brain injury — without burdening veterans to prove that their condition is directly caused by military service:

Since 2000, more than 250,000 service members — some still on active duty — have received diagnoses of traumatic brain injury, or T.B.I., according to the Defense Department. Though T.B.I. is commonly viewed as resulting from blast exposure, the vast majority of those injuries were diagnosed in nondeployed troops who were involved in vehicle crashes, training accidents or sports injuries.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says that a much smaller number of veterans — about 51,000 — are currently receiving benefits for service-connected traumatic brain injuries. However the department acknowledges that thousands more troops with T.B.I. may be eligible for the expanded benefits.

Veterans of prior wars will also be eligible for the benefits, if they can demonstrate that a traumatic brain injury was connected to their military service.

Under current rules, a veteran with one of the five illnesses has to provide medical evidence that the disease is the result of military service in order to receive veterans’ benefits.

The new rule would potentially speed up and simplify their cases, provided a veteran could first demonstrate a service-connected traumatic brain injury. Once that is established, the department will accept without further evidence that any of those five diseases was caused by the T.B.I., making the veteran eligible for additional compensation and health care for that particular disease.

While the expanded benefits will give America’s veterans some much-needed peace of mind, the rules will still place certain limitations related to the severity of the diseases being treated. And service members face many physical and mental health risks not necessarily associated with a traumatic brain injury. The number of suicides in the armed forces is on the rise, and retired military leaders have called on Congress to address the epidemic.

Our guest blogger is Erik Stegman, Manager of the Half in Ten campaign for the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

With only three weeks left for Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), one man is standing in its way: House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). The House passed a version of VAWA last May by a narrow 222-205 vote, which stripped protections for LGBT, immigrant and Native American women included in an earlier Senate version of the bill. The Senate version passed by a now-rare 68 vote super majority, including every female Senator.

So, what’s the hold up? Protections for Native American women. As law enforcement, victims, and advocates have turned up pressure to pass the widely-supported Senate bill before the end of the year, other Republican House leaders have changed course and offered a compromise. Two members of senior Republican leadership, Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Tom Cole (R-OK), an enrolled member of the Chicasaw Nation, introduced a stand alone bill that responds to their caucus’ concern about the Senate bill. The concern is over a provision that restores local tribal authority to prosecute domestic violence against Native American women. The Issa-Cole compromise adds protections for defendants with a new option to remove the case to federal court. In fact, Issa tried to offer this language as an amendment during committee consideration of the bill, but was shut down by Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) who didn’t even allow a vote on it.

Although it is expected that the Majority Leader has worked through a compromise with advocates on the LGBT and immigration provisions, he has dug in his heels on stripping the Native American protections, even in light of the Issa-Cole compromise language.

After an election rife with statements splitting hairs over the definition of rape, and justifying unfair treatment of women, Republicans are scrambling to mend their party’s image when it comes to women and the inability to compromise. With few work days left in the 112th Congress, time is running out for this landmark legislation that strengthens law enforcement and funds services for victims of rape and domestic violence. That may explain why Republican leaders are now at odds with each other over holding up a domestic violence bill that sailed through Congress three times before. Even Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX), who offered a similar stripped-down version of VAWA during consideration in the Senate, ended up voting for the bill that included full protections for Native, immigrant and LGBT victims. As the Majority Leader ponders how to move forward, he may want to take a cue from Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), another fellow Republican: “Rape is rape, and there’s no splitting hairs over rape.”

The latest filings from Karl Rove’s American Crossroads show a last minute contribution of $1 million received just days before the election (10/29/12) from Gary Heavin — the co-founder of Curves International Inc., which calls itself “the world’s leader in women’s fitness.”

Curves, a chain of women-only fitness center franchises, claims nearly 10,000 locations in more than 85 countries. Heavin and his fellow co-founder, his wife Diane, sold Curves International to an private equity firm in October, but they remain prominently featured on the company’s website. The Heavins say they “share a passion for and commitment to women’s health and fitness.” But his massive donation to the right-wing super PAC is only the latest in a long pattern of their efforts
in support of policies that undermine women’s equality in the workplace and restrict women’s access to health care services.

American Crossroads spent $91 million to elect Mitt Romney over President Obama. Romney refused to endorse key pro-women legislation including the bipartisan Violence Against Women Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, but backed reinstating the “global gag rule” on even discussing abortion as a family planning option and supported the infamous Blunt Amendment to allow employers to deny health benefits that go against their personal views. Crossroads also worked to help far-right extremists like Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, and George Allen. Much of the American Crossroads attack strategy focused on criticizing Obamacare and those who backed the effort to expand health insurance access to all Americans.

In addition to helping fund American Crossroads, the Heavins also combined to give $92,400 to the House and Senate Republican campaign arms, $2,500 to Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), $30,800 to the Republican National Committee, $7,300 to Romney’s campaign, and $2,500 to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in 2012.

And this past election isn’t the only time that Curves and the Heavins have worked against women’s reproductive rights. Gary Heavin pledged hundreds of thousands of dollars for controversial “pregnancy crisis centers” that try to talk women out of abortions and have been accused to providing false information. They also made large donations to abstinence-only education programs — programs which often misinform and make teens more likely to engage in risky behavior and become pregnant. Curves also pulled its funding for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation over its objection to the charity’s funding for Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening services. In a 2004 editorial, Mr. Heavin attacked Planned Parenthood’s sex education literature, writing “I have a 10-year-old daughter. I would absolutely not allow her to be exposed to this material. I don’t want her being taught masturbation and told that homosexuality is normal.”

That anti-choice and anti-LGBT stance was further demonstrated when Curves partnered with the American Family Association — a group that has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group.” They joined for a 2009 healthy recipe contest and sold a Curves fitness CD on the AFA’s website. Gary Heavin has also been an outspoken enthusiast for televangelist Pat Robertson, who has blamed natural disasters on same-sex marriage equality and blamed 9/11 on abortion, the separation of church and state, and civil liberties groups.

Some GOP lawmakers in Texas are suddenly realizing that defunding their state’s Planned Parenthood clinics isn’t a good strategy for helping women avoid unintended pregnancy.

The state’s Health and Human Services Commission projects that — in the aftermath of stripping Planned Parenthood from over $70 million in funds that used to go toward its family planning services, in Texas lawmakers’ ongoing crusade to target the women’s health organization — low-income women will deliver an estimated 23,760 additional babies during 2014 and 2015 than they would have otherwise. The HHS credits the sharp rise in the birth rate to the state budget cuts that have reduced poor women’s access to affordable birth control, and estimates that taxpayers will be shouldered with an estimated additional $273 million in medical expenses and Medicaid coverage for those infants.

And now that the HHS report is being circulated among Texas legislators, some of them are experiencing a wake-up call about the real impact of defunding organizations that provide low-income women with essential preventative health services:

“I know some of my colleagues felt like in retrospect they did not fully grasp the implications of what was done last session,” said Representative Donna Howard, Democrat of Austin, who said she had been discussing ways to restore financing with several other lawmakers in both parties.

She added, “I think there is some effort they’ll be willing to make to restore whatever we can.” [...]

Senator Bob Deuell, Republican of Greenville, has been an advocate for getting Planned Parenthood off taxpayer financing, but he said last session’s family planning cuts had gone too far. He said he had the support of some of Texas’ leading anti-abortion groups to seek more money for birth control and reproductive health care in 2013 — as stand-alone services and as part of what he and Texas health officials hope will be a $70 million expansion of state-subsidized primary care.

“I’ve debated this in Republican clubs with people— people who say it’s not the government’s role to provide family planning ,” said Dr. Deuell, a primary care physician. “Ultimately, they’re right. But you have to look at what happens if we don’t.”

Even if the family planning funding is restored, it almost certainly won’t be able to go toward Planned Parenthood clinics, even though that organization is the largest women’s health provider for low-income women in Texas. In their war against abortion services and providers, GOP lawmakers have insisted on excluding Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal Women’s Health Program funding — threatening the very survival of the organization, but also forcing unaffiliated clinics to close their doors as an indirect result of the new regulations to divert the funding.

And Texas Republicans may be interested to know that the new HHS report isn’t the only source warning about future soaring rates of unintended pregnancy in their state. A recent study from the New England Journal of Medicine also predicts that Texas women will be forced to start using less effective forms of birth control as a direct result of the shrinking number of health clinics providing affordable family planning services, increasing their chances of getting pregnant. And preventing such pregnancies should certainly be an attractive goal for the Texas GOP, even outside of the economic benefits, since lowered rates of unintended pregnancy directly correlate to lowered rates of abortion.

Crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) have a long history of presenting women with misleading medical information and shame-based conservative propaganda to dissuade them from making their own decisions about having an abortion. CPCs also have a track record of evading city-level regulations that seek to crack down on their misleading advertising, winning court battles on First Amendment grounds so they can continue to use their deceptive marketing tactics against vulnerable pregnant women.

In Maryland, the struggle to effectively regulate CPCs’ deceptive tactics is playing out in full force. After Baltimore passed a law requiring CPCs to disclose that they are not a true alternative to women’s health clinics — since they don’t offer the same range of reproductive services, and are not staffed by medical professionals — a U.S. court overturned the law, siding with anti-abortion activists who claimed the regulation stifled their freedom of speech. And now the same conflict is the subject of a court case in Montgomery Country, where lawyers are defending a county-wide ordinance that requires CPCs to post signs telling women they may want to “consult with a licensed health care provider” since the anti-abortion centers don’t provide medically-licensed staff:

In 2010, the Montgomery County Council approved the law requiring that the centers post the disclaimers “conspicuously” in their waiting rooms. [...]

Shortly after the ordinance was passed, one of the pregnancy centers — Centro Tepeyac Silver Spring Women’s Center — filed a lawsuit in county district court, alleging that the law was unconstitutional. In June, a panel of federal judges ruled that the disclaimer violated free-speech rights, and the county appealed.

On Thursday, the county said the signs would be a “minimal” inconvenience to the centers. Moreover, the law protects women from false or misleading information given by some pregnancy centers and was needed to help protect women’s health, the county argued.

They cited a report by NARAL Pro-Choice America in 2008 and a minority congressional report in 2006 that found many pregnancy centers have provided “wildly inaccurate” information about the health effects of abortions.

The only city to successfully institute a similar ordinance is San Francisco, where a judge affirmed that CPCs do not deserve constitutional protections for their misleading advertisements. That ruling stated that “a person of common intelligence could discern” that the regulations aren’t intended to broadly restrict the freedom of speech of CPCs and their employees, but simply act as a mechanism to protect the public from deceitful advertising tactics.

The Montgomery County attorney’s office has yet to decide whether the arguments from the anti-abortion activists will convince them to follow in Baltimore’s footsteps.

The last four years have produced historic debates over the nature of America’s health care safety net. But Medicaid — a state-federal partnership program that serves some of the sickest, poorest, most overlooked Americans — is still in need of serious reforms when it comes to its approach toward covering Americans with special health care needs.

Federal requirements for the populations and services that states must cover under their Medicaid programs are currently broken up into “mandatory” and “optional” categories — misleading characterizations that have nothing to do with the actual medical or financial realities of the Americans these broad generalizations claim to encapsulate. For instance, nursing facility care coverage for Americans over age 21 is considered a “mandatory” service, but more extensive in-home health care services are “optional;” certain groups of the working disabled are considered a “mandatory” coverage population, but disabled Americans with slightly higher incomes can be covered “optionally.”

In an era of perpetual budget deficits and in the absence of federal matching funds for certain Medicaid benefits, states sometimes end up cutting these supposedly “optional” benefits — even for severely disabled Americans who rely completely on that care for everything from following a drug regimen to assistance in carrying out basic day-to-day activities such as moving around the house or going to the bathroom.

That’s exactly what happened to California’s Pablo Carranza, who suffers from severe muscular dystrophy. As Kaiser Health News reports, Carranza received in-home nursing care he needed through Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, until his 21st birthday — the age at which he became an adult in the eyes of the law and therefore was no longer a member of a “mandatory” beneficiary group. That’s when Carranza decided to challenge Medi-Cal’s in-home nursing benefit policy, claiming that the coverage cutbacks violate the Americans with Disabilities Act:

“We call it the nursing cliff,” said Elissa Gershon, an attorney with Disability Rights California. “When they turn 21, their needs haven’t changed, but the services available are much more limited.”

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, Carranza asked a judge to stop the state’s Medicaid agency from reducing his in-home nursing care, arguing that the limited hours would force him into an institutional facility, thereby violating his civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. [...]

[T]he reductions in health care spending since the start of California’s fiscal crisis in 2008 — more than $15 billion — are coming into conflict, legal advocates say, with federal protections for disabled people. The Americans with Disabilities Act, signed by President George H.W. Bush in 1990, along with subsequent court rulings, require that states help people with disabilities to remain in their homes or in their communities — and out of institutions like nursing homes or psychiatric hospitals — for as long as possible.

Carranza’s story is by no means unique. Millions of Americans with disabilities face these arbitrary, devastating benefit cuts, and federal Medicaid standards aren’t rigorous enough to ensure that Americans in need of “optional” services stay protected in the current scheme. So when politicians talk about block-granting Medicaid to the states in order to promote “innovation,” what they’re really proposing is giving states more authority to leave Americans like Carranza without adequate coverage or the means to live something approaching a normal life.

Carranza’s lawsuit has the potential to spur real change for those suffering with a disability. But ultimately, his story is emblematic of a government health care program that still hasn’t received the attention it should from lawmakers — even in a time of unprecedented reform.

Friday marks exactly one year since the Health and Human Services Department overruled the FDA to restrict access to emergency contraception for women under the age of 17, disregarding the FDA’s recommendation that Plan B — which medical research shows is actually safer than aspirin — should be available to women of all ages. When HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius rejected the FDA’s guidelines on emergency contraception last year, some Democratic lawmakers suggested that decision was politically motivated rather than scientifically based.

Now, with the presidential election behind them, women’s health advocates are renewing their pressure on the Obama administration to reverse that policy:

“We are asking Secretary Sebelius to go back and take another look at the science, the medical evidence … and see if there’s a way to come to agreement to make this product more easily available to the women who need it,” says Kirsten Moore, president and CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project. [...]

Moreover, Moore says, she thinks the election shows that there would be no political price to be paid by the administration for making what advocates say is the science-based decision.

“If there was concern that doing the right thing by emergency contraception was going to get people into trouble,” she says, “I think that question’s been asked and answered politically.”

Under the current federal guidelines, women younger than 17 years old must obtain a prescription from their doctor before being able to purchase Plan B. And the age restrictions have further complicated the stigma around emergency contraception, so even those over the age of 17 run into roadblocks when they attempt to legally purchase Plan B over the counter. Pharmacists often falsely tell women they may not purchase emergency contraception without a prescription, or incorrectly deny Plan B to men, or simply refuse to dispense emergency contraception for their own personal reasons.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has criticized the Obama administration’s age restrictions for posing a significant hurdle to the young women who need access to emergency contraception in a timely manner, especially since Plan B is the most effective when it’s taken within 24 hours of sexual contact. And the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recently recommended that all forms of birth control should be easily accessible over the counter, since women more regularly take effective forms of birth control when they don’t face any roadblocks to accessing them.

Kirsten Moore also believes the voters who reelected President Obama sent a strong message to his administration about their position on these issues — and Obama now has an obligation to follow through for them. “The voters said very clearly this past November that when it comes to women’s health, they think that prevention is a good thing; providing contraception is a good thing; reducing barriers to access, whether it be cost, is a good thing,” she explained to NPR. “And they supported a candidate who clearly made that a part of his message.”