After the failure of abstinence-only education policies, evangelical leaders and institutions have begun to consider promoting preventative measures to combat the country’s rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion. The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) sparked controversy when it accepted a grant from the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, but the organization defended its decision by saying it is concerned about the abortion rate in the evangelical community. And a wider range of evangelical leaders are beginning to concede that contraception is “a valuable tool in the abortion reduction toolkit.”

And the shift to embrace more comprehensive education that includes forms of contraception may actually be part of a larger shift among younger evangelicals, according to BuzzFeed:

A study released in December by the National Association of Evangelicals found that 44% of unmarried 18-29-year-old evangelicals had been sexually active — but the study defined “evangelical” as someone who attends church at least monthly, believes Jesus Christ is the only path to salvation, and believes the Bible “is accurate in all that it teaches,” requirements that may leave out some who still consider themselves part of the group. Another study puts the figure at 80 percent. And a recent poll found that 44% of 18-29-year-old evangelicals favor same-sex marriage, lower than the national figure but much higher than their elders.

Jonathan Merritt, author of A Faith of Our Own: Following Jesus Beyond the Culture Wars, sees a shift from an older ideal of virginity — where “you either had it or you didn’t” — to a new ethic of purity which acknowledges that lapses may happen. And he sees a bigger change afoot: “The last generation was very focused on personal holiness. This generation also focuses on the outward expressions of the faith.”

In addition to evolving opinions about contraception and sex before marriage, the increasing number of young evangelical Christians who support marriage equality lines up with other polls showing that most people who say they are religious, including Catholics and mainline Christians, also back marriage equality.

And this is situated within a larger shift away from stringently abstinence-only policies. Even deeply conservative states like Alabama and Mississippi that have opposed comprehensive sexual health instruction for decades are showing some signs of progress in this area.

During his annual “State of American Business” address on Thursday, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Tom Donohue — who made $4.7 million in 2010 alone — called for lawmakers to tackle America’s long-term budget woes by enacting legislation that would slash entitlement spending on Medicare and Medicaid, the public insurance programs that provide coverage for America’s poor and elderly populations.

At the beginning of his remarks, Donohue asked whether America had “the leaders to put the country first, ahead of their own careers, politics, ideologies and egos” by controlling the growth of entitlements — which, in Donohue’s case, is really a euphemism for cutting health benefits:

Donohue said that restraining entitlement spending and overhauling the tax code would be part of the Chamber’s broader push to expand economic growth and the labor market, an agenda that also touches on energy development, immigration issues, trade and regulations.

The focus on debt and deficits signals something of a shift for the Chamber, which supported President Obama’s stimulus package and has long made job growth a signature issue. But Donohue said Thursday that putting the U.S. on firmer fiscal ground would play a big role in allowing the private sector to do its part to help spur growth. [...]

The Chamber president said that Medicare, Medicaid and other U.S. entitlement programs were “unsustainable” and had come to dominate American spending.

While Donohue and the Chamber were happy to lobby the Obama Administration for pro-growth, deficit-increasing measures such as the stimulus when the economy was in free-fall, Donohue seems to want to pass the burden of austerity onto everyday Americans now that business growth has stabilized. Donohue’s prescription for clear-eyed deficit reduction through entitlement and tax “reform” did not also extend to raising tax rates on corporations or the wealthy, even though corporate profits are currently at an all-time high while corporate taxes have plummeted. Meanwhile, Americans have been forced to cut back on their health care spending as a result of the recent economic downturn.

With his call for entitlement cuts, Donohue joins a long line of business executives and conservative lawmakers striving to balance the budget on the backs of America’s most vulnerable citizens — even though expanding, not contracting, public health care programs is a much more efficient way to reduce total health care costs and average entitlement spending.

Mitt Romney made his desire to defund Planned Parenthood a central part of his pro-life credentials during his failed presidential campaign — but even though Romney didn’t ascend to the White House, attacks on Planned Parenthood aren’t fading away anytime soon. State level efforts to defund the women’s health organization are moving forward in Texas and Oklahoma, and members of the 133th Congress are so eager to introduce national legislation to block federal funds to Planned Parenthood that two Tennessee congresswomen both introduced identical versions of the same bill this week.

As the Huffington Post notes, Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Diane Black (R-TN) both hope to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding for their family planning and preventative health services, and rushed to introduce a bill to do so during the first few days of the legislative session. But perhaps they were a bit too eager, since both bills are actually exactly the same proposal:

Tennessee Reps. Marsha Blackburn (R) and Diane Black (R) separately reintroduced a bill during the first two days of the 2013 legislative session that would prohibit Title X family planning grants from being awarded to any organization that performs abortions. The bill, first introduced by former Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) in the 112th Congress, primarily targets Planned Parenthood, which receives about $340 million a year in Title X funds for non-abortion health and family planning services. Both bills amend Pence’s original bill to include exceptions for rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. [...]

The day after Blackburn circulated her bill, Black introduced the same bill. One of Black’s staffers pointed out to HuffPost that her bill has the same number as Pence’s original bill and said that Pence, the governor-elect of Indiana, had specifically given Black his blessing to carry it on. Black’s bill has 38 cosponsors and endorsements from all the same organizations that Blackburn’s has.

The two legislators are unconcerned about their overlapping legislative agendas; they may simply sign on to co-sponsor each other’s bills. “The fact that there are multiple members interested in this issue proves that Planned Parenthood is not going to be let off the hook. We welcome the attention of all members to the subject,” Blackburn told the Huffington Post. “It helps build momentum.”

The Republican congresswomen believe their double push to block federal grant money from Planned Parenthood clinics is necessary in spite of the Hyde Amendment, a 1976 federal law that already prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding abortion services. The major fuel to anti-abortion advocates’ fire is a recent report noting Planned Parenthood’s activities during its last fiscal year, when the organization received $542 million in taxpayer funding and performed about 334,000 abortions. Anti-choice lawmakers like Blackburn argue that even though those taxpayer dollars don’t directly fund abortion procedures, they still indirectly allow the women’s health group to continue performing abortions because they don’t have to worry about fully funding their other programmatic areas.

Ironically, continued Republican crusades against Planned Parenthood may actually be helping perpetuate the organization’s funding cycle. A post-election poll confirmed that women’s issues, including ensuring secure funding for Planned Parenthood, were a decisive factor in November’s election. Sixty four percent of all voters said they heard something about Romney’s intent to defund Planned Parenthood, and 62 percent disagreed with that position — potentially spurring voters to make increased donations to the organization during the election cycle to lend their support.

After Republicans spent the past three years unsuccessfully opposing health care reform en masse — introducing dozens of failed repeal bills, losing a Supreme Court case, and being defeated in a presidential election — former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) is promoting a last-ditch effort to undermine Obamacare: simply “break the law.”

At a rally in Chicago on Wednesday, the one-term Tea Party congressman encouraged supporters to block health care reform and prospective gun laws in whatever way possible, legally or illegally. DNAinfo Chicago has more:

At his most aggressive, he told dozens of supporters to “defy and or break the law and engage in civil disobedience” if faced with federal health care law restrictions or new gun laws.

He paraphrased Thomas Jefferson in saying, “We may have to shed blood every couple hundred years to preserve our freedoms.”

Walsh’s comments reflect a disturbing recent trend among Republicans desperate to undo health care reform by any means necessary. Lawmakers in two states, Wisconsin and South Carolina, have proposed legislation to arrest any official caught trying to implement Obamacare. In South Carolina, the legislation proposed a possible five-year prison sentence for federal employees or contractors who attempt to enforce the law.

Since being voted out of office in November, Walsh has been openly weighing a run for Illinois governor in 2014.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has been citing inaccurate cost estimates to justify his continued refusal to expand Medicaid under Obamacare — inflating the estimated cost of expanding the program by a staggering 2,500 percent — even though he knows the numbers are wrong.

After the news broke, the governor’s office initially defended their disputed $26 billion cost estimate. But late Wednesday night, Florida released a revised estimate — a much more modest $3 billion. As the Miami Herald points out, the revised figure is more accurate because, unlike the $26 billion number that Scott used to tout, it takes into account the full amount that the federal government will reimburse states for choosing to expand Medicaid:

Why the enormous difference? The new estimate includes the federal matching funds promised in the health care law to pay for the Medicaid expansion. It also exlcudes costs associated with people who are now eligible for Medicaid but for one reason or another have not enrolled. The revised estimate is more in line with costs estimated by outside groups, and could soften attacks that the expansion is too costly for Florida to afford. With some other changes, the estimate climbs to about $5 billion.

Scott had used the eye-popping $26 billion estimate to make a case against the health care law both on Sunday in a Tampa Bay Times editorial and again on Monday following a meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

But the dollar-figure was quickly debunked as based on severely suspect assumptions and was panned by Democrats, health care advocates and even a prominent Republican lawmaker.

Scott is one of the most vocal critics of President Obama’s landmark health reform law, and he has repeatedly refused to accept Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program because he says it’s too expensive.

Now that Scott’s grounds for claiming Florida can’t afford to extend health coverage to its low-income residents have been proven false, perhaps the governor will reconsider his hard line stance. Florida has one of the highest rates of uninsurance in the nation, and expanding Medicaid could provide health care to an additional one million low-income people in the state.

So far, just two Republican governors have agreed to expand their states’ Medicaid programs, while anti-Obamacare leaders like Scott continue to resist doing anything to cooperate with health reform.

A Tulsa-area Planned Parenthood clinic will be forced to close its doors at the end of this month because it can no longer afford to maintain operations after state officials slashed its budget. In October, the Oklahoma State Department of Health decided to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood by ending its contract with the WIC program, essentially stripping the organization of the funds it used to provide health services for low-income women.

Jill June, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, sent an email to the health clinic’s staff to let them know that the Planned Parenthood affiliate will close on February 1:

Six Planned Parenthood employees in Tulsa who worked with WIC clients have already been laid off, according to the email.

The westside center primarily served WIC clients and keeping it open is no longer financially possible, June said.

“It’s extremely important to let our patients know that we will continue to be here for them, in the Tulsa area, no matter what,” she wrote. “This has been a challenging time for all of us. We will continue to do all we can to help the women, men and families who rely on us for care.”

Although state officials claim their decision to sever ties with Planned Parenthood is purely for “business reasons,” the organization maintains that the move is a politicized attack similar to anti-abortion activists’ attempts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas and Arizona. On Christmas Eve, a federal judge denied Planned Parenthood’s request to block state officials from denying WIC funding, ensuring that Oklahoma will be able to move forward with its quest to defund the organization in the new year.

Planned Parenthood has been the largest independent contractor with Oklahoma’s WIC program — which provides food vouchers for low-income mothers and their children — for the past 18 years. The Planned Parenthood affiliates in Oklahoma do not perform abortions; rather, they are available to provide preventative care, family planning services, and referrals for abortion services to their low-income clients.

Ending the WIC contract puts three of the state’s four Planned Parenthood clinics in jeopardy, and some low-income women say they may end up skipping the health services they need if those health clinics remain closed.