From 1960 to the early 1990s, the rate of violent crime in the U.S. rocketed from 150 to 750 per 100,000 people. Then it dropped just as precipitously, falling below 450 per 100,000 by 2009. A host of theories were been put forward to explain the turnaround: New crime fighting practices, economic booms and slumps, the crack epidemic, legalized abortion leading to fewer unwanted children, prison expansion, gun control, the list goes on. All of them have been knocked down by econometric and statistical analysis, or by the failure of follow-up studies to replicate results. But, as Kevin Drum lays out in a new piece for Mother Jones, the public health risks posed by lead emissions could be the missing link.

Lead emissions from cars increased by a factor of four between the late 1930s and the early 1970s, then plummeted back down with the introduction of unleaded gasoline, the catalytic converter, and stricter regulations. Allow a 23-year time lag to give the lead time to work its way into people’s bodies, and those changes in lead emissions explain 90 percent of the changes in violent crime, according to a 2000 paper by economist Rick Nevin:

Nevin also replicated his study at the international level and found that Canada, Australia, Britain, Finland, Italy, France, New Zealand and West Germany all fit the same pattern.

Since then, other researchers have also demonstrated the connection between crime and lead in six different U.S. cities. In New Orleans, connections emerged on the basis of individual neighborhoods. Lead emissions didn’t drop uniformly across the country — and in the states where lead reductions occurred slowly, there was a slower drop in crime than in the states where lead was reduced more quickly.

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Despite the fact that President Obama’s reelection ensures his landmark health care reform law is here to stay, intransigent Republican governors across the country have been digging in their heels against Obamacare. GOP officials continue to refuse to implement two of the law’s most important provisions — expanding the Medicaid program and setting up state-run health exchange markets — even as deadlines are fast approaching.

But a few Republican leaders are inching toward reform. On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approved the first four Republican-controlled states to run their own health insurance exchanges, the online marketplaces that will allow Americans to purchase insurance starting in 2014. HHS has given New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho the conditional approval to continue working toward setting up their exchanges this year. The Democratic-controlled California, Hawaii, and Vermont also earned HHS approval to move forward.

This brings the list of states working toward health exchanges up to 18. Two additional states, Arkansas and Delaware, will operate partnership exchanges with the federal government.

On the other hand, stubborn Republican governors in states like Florida and Texas have refused to participate in Obamacare, despite the fact that the health exchanges are projected to extend coverage to 25 million Americans by the end of the decade. When the deadline for submitting a state health exchange plan came and went last month, 30 governors decided not to turn one in. States still have until February 15 to choose to follow in Arkansas’ and Delaware’s footsteps and opt for a partnership with the federal government.

And ultimately, the GOP politicians who aren’t putting in any work toward an exchange in order to continue resisting Obamacare are making a purely symbolic statement. The states that refuse to set up their own exchanges simply cede their control to the federal government, which will step in and set up one for them.

The 112th Congress gaveled to a close on Thursday afternoon without passing a relief package for victims of Hurricane Sandy or reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, but Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) isn’t too concerned about finishing what Republicans had left undone. Instead, at 12:00 PM she introduced the very first piece of legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which states are now busily implementing.

House Republicans have unsuccessfully voted 33 times in the last two years to eliminate health care reform and wasted at least 88 hours and $50 million, while failing to pass a single piece of job creation legislation in the last session of Congress.

Dozens of Republicans, including 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, ran against Obamacare, yet the party suffered losses every step along the way. The Supreme Court upheld the law, House repeal efforts went nowhere in the Democratically-controlled Senate, and President Obama has pledged to veto any effort to rescind the measure. Even newly reelected Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was compelled to admit in November that Obamacare is now the law of the land (though he later backed away from his own comments and pledged to do everything in his power to undermine it).

But House Republicans are apparently not quite ready to give up the fight. At this rate, they could be on track to becoming even less productive than the least productive Congress in U.S. history.

About a third of Philadelphia’s public high schools are welcoming students back to class this week with free condom dispensers. The initiative to increase sexual health resources in 22 of the city’s 51 high schools is part of an effort to address high rates of STDs among adolescents.

Reuters reports that more than 400 public schools across the country currently make condoms available to students through a nurse, guidance counselor, or other school personnel. Less than ten percent of schools make condoms directly available to teens without an adult intermediary — in a basket, bowl, or vending machine — as Philadelphia’s schools have started to do.

The 22 schools that have added the dispensers to their nurses’ offices were identified by the city’s Health Department as having the most serious rates of STDs, including HIV:

It’s a pilot designed to address “an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease in adolescents in Philadelphia,” said Donald F. Schwarz, the deputy mayor for health and opportunity. Since April 2011, the city has given away about four million condoms, and now, STD rates are falling.

But, Schwarz pointed out, 25 percent of new HIV infections in Philadelphia are teens, and that’s a major worry.

Some city high schools — the dozen that have “health resource centers” — already dispense free condoms. And the Health Department also provides them at city high schools when they go in to test teens for STDs, as they do every year voluntarily with a parent’s consent.

The pilot is the next logical step, Schwarz said.

Unfortunately, the troubling trend of high numbers of adolescents contracting the HIV virus isn’t specific to Philadelphia. The Centers for Disease Control warns that young Americans between the ages of 13 and 24 contribute to a quarter of the U.S.’s new HIV infections each year, partly because they aren’t getting regularly tested and are unaware they have the virus.

If Philadelphia wants to take additional steps to address the epidemic, public officials also might want to consider updating the sexual health education that students receive. Pennsylvania does mandate HIV education in public schools, but doesn’t require that health curricula meet standards for medical accuracy, and doesn’t mandate that religion cannot influence sexual education materials — which means students may receive inaccurate information about how HIV is contracted and spread, like the public school students in California who were told they can get the virus from kissing and prevent STDs with “plenty of rest.”

The new legislative session is about to begin, and Texas Republicans don’t plan to waste any time in their ongoing quest to limit women’s access to reproductive services.

The Huffington Post reports that state Sen. Dan Patrick (R) is planning to introduce legislation to impose additional barriers for women seeking medically-induced abortions in their first trimester of pregnancy. Even though the abortion-inducing RU-486 pill is FDA-approved and has been used safely around the world since 1981, Patrick claims his bill will take necessary steps to safeguard the women who have medical abortions:

Patrick’s SB 97 would require, among other stipulations, that physicians be required to personally administer all doses of the medication to the pregnant women, even if they occur on multiple days.

The bill also requires physicians to examine the pregnant woman and chart the gestational age and intrauterine location of the pregnancy before administering the drug, as well as execute an emergency plan for unforeseen medical problems that may arise while the woman is on the medication.

Patrick’s bill also requires the pregnant woman’s doctor to schedule a follow-up visit within 14 days of administering the drug whereby the doctor must determine that the pregnancy is terminated. If any drug-related emergencies occur, the bill also requires physicians to report the events within three days to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or face possible disciplinary action through the Texas Medical Board.

Of course, doctors should administer safe and effective medical care to the women they serve. But the addition of so many complicated rules for women who seek abortions within their first 9 weeks of pregnancy — particularly requiring them to visit the doctor’s office potentially up to four different times — simply obstructs women’s access to legal abortion services. In the Guttmacher Institute’s annual report tracking state-level abortion restrictions, researchers noted that imposing limits on medication abortion was one of the most popular methods of attacking women’s reproductive rights in 2012.

Texas legislators are also currently considering a stringent 20-week abortion ban modeled after Arizona’s extreme law, the harshest abortion ban in the nation. Lawmakers will consider how they want to punish the women who seek late-term abortions past the arbitrary cut-off they impose. If the limits on both later-term and first-trimester abortions both pass, Texas women might be stuck. Limiting access to the abortion pill in the first few weeks of pregnancy causes later-term abortion rates to rise because some women are unable to get the medical treatment they need in the first trimester of their pregnancy.

After anti-choice Texas officials spent most of 2012 attempting to defund their state’s Planned Parenthood clinics, they finally succeeded. On January 1, Texas launched its new state-run Women’s Health Program — a network of health care organizations that provide preventative care and family planning to low-income women — without Planned Parenthood.

Since the national women’s health organization used to be the single biggest provider in the program, serving nearly half of the state’s 110,000 low-income women who rely on Medicaid, Texas’ decision to exclude Planned Parenthood will force thousands of women to look for a new doctor in the new year.

And as a local CBS affiliate reports, women like Rotunda McDowell — whose college-aged daughter has been told she can no longer receive the free care at Planned Parenthood clinics that she used to rely on — are confused about what Texas officials’ politicized decision to target Planned Parenthood means for their health care:

“We have so many things we have to deal with–breast cancer, cervical cancer–we have to stay healthy,” says McDowell. “If you don’t have insurance and the money and the means to get the care that you need, what choice do you have, other than do without?” [...]

Still, agency officials say they will not turn clients away who cannot afford to pay, concerned that inconvenienced women will skip life-saving exams rather than search for new doctors.

“It’s a big concern,” says [Planned Parenthood spokesperson] Kelly Hart. “We know that there are not enough providers to make up for the approximately 50,000 patients a year that were seen in Planned Parenthood health centers.”

Hart explained that Planned Parenthood employees are doing everything in their power to make sure their former patients can continue accessing care at their clinics, including using patient assistance funds to cover the difference between what their services cost without insurance coverage and what low-income patients can afford to pay.

And they’re not giving up on the complicated legal battle between Texas and Planned Parenthood. The organization filed for an injunction to force the state to include them in the newly launched Women’s Heath Program, and the court hearing is scheduled for next week.