The Vermont Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee has taken up a controversial measure that would “allow physicians to prescribe lethal doses [of medication] to those with less than six months to live who request the option.” If the bill were to pass, it would make Vermont only the third state after Oregon and Washington to legalize a so-called “right to die” measure.

The bill has aroused significant passions in both supporters and detractors, with each side claiming that their views represent a more humanitarian approach to public health issues for the terminally ill:

Earlier Tuesday, [the committee] heard from former Gov. Madeleine Kunin, who described watching her brother, former state Sen. Edgar May, die last month.

“He told me, ‘I want to die.’ We were all shocked,” Kunin said, as she addressed committee. “He didn’t want to live an incapacitated life.” [...]

Kunin said her brother didn’t need a lethal dose of medication, as the bill allows. Instead, having suffered from a series of strokes, he voluntarily withdrew his medications and had his feeding tube removed. His doctors and family went along with his wishes, she said. [...]

Edward Mahoney, president of the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Health Care, was in the audience listening as Kunin testified. An opponent of the bill who is also scheduled to address the committee this week, Mahoney said her story was compelling but also shows why such a law is not needed. Her brother’s doctors followed his wishes and made him comfortable, Mahoney said.

Kunin disagreed. “I wouldn’t say we don’t need the law. This was a unique situation,” she said, whereas someone else might be in more pain. “We have to respect the wishes of the dying person.”

The bill is expected to receive a full vote in the Vermont state Senate, and the outcome is likely to be close and unpredictable, as the issue has cut across party lines and regular partisan polarization.

Oregon and Washington’s physician-assisted suicide laws have shown that a very low percentage of the terminally ill actually request or utilize them. That lends some credence to the argument that only Americans in dire need of such procedures would pursue them, and that a lack of access to these provisions encourages self-inflected harm and suicide, which might increase the suffering of the terminally ill.

Still, others argue that “right to die” legislation embodies a race to the bottom. Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly voted down a similar law in the most recent election cycle.

Despite the fact that Roe v. Wade first legalized abortion four decades ago, anti-choice lawmakers have successfully chipped away at abortion rights on a state level. Wonkblog’s Sarah Kliff flagged a helpful visual, compiled by Remapping the Debate, to illustrate the recent flood of anti-abortion laws across the country (click to enlarge, or click here to see the interactive version). Five states have at least 20 different restrictions that obstruct women’s access to reproductive services, and Oregon is the sole state that doesn’t have a single piece of anti-choice legislation on the books:

By January of next year, Obamacare will require Americans to have insurance coverage, either through their employer or through one of the health law’s statewide insurance marketplaces. In order to make that coverage affordable, the law provides progressive insurance subsidies in the form of tax credits for Americans buying coverage on the marketplaces and fines companies that don’t cover their workers. But an existing loophole in the law may leave some American families in a coverage gap — and Congress may not be able to agree on a solution to fix the glitch.

The families in question would be unable to afford family health plan premiums through their employer, while also ineligible to qualify for the subsidies to help them buy an alternative plan on an Obamacare exchange. As Modern Healthcare explains, the loophole has to do with the definition of what is considered “affordable” coverage under the law, which is directly related to the federal subsidies that a family is eligible to receive:

Congress said affordable coverage can’t cost more than 9.5 percent of family income. People with coverage the law considers affordable cannot get subsidies to go into the new insurance markets. The purpose of that restriction was to prevent a stampede away from employer coverage.

Congress went on to say that what counts as affordable is keyed to the cost of self-only coverage offered to an individual worker, not his or her family. A typical workplace plan costs about $5,600 for an individual worker. But the cost of family coverage is nearly three times higher, about $15,700, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

So if the employer isn’t willing to chip in for family premiums — as most big companies already do — some families will be out of luck. They may not be able to afford the full premium on their own, and they’d be locked out of the subsidies in the health care overhaul law.

Ron Pollack, the executive director of the health care advocacy group Families USA, told Modern Healthcare, “This is a very significant problem, and we have urged that it be fixed. It is clear that the only way this can be fixed is through legislation and not the regulatory process.”

Unfortunately, that doesn’t bode well for the American families who fall inside of this coverage gap. While Obama Administration officials have called for a fix, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives has been staunch in its refusal to do anything with Obamacare other than obstruct its funding sources. Some Republicans have gone even further than that, attempting to strip away the law’s federal insurance subsidies to Americans in states that choose not to implement their own exchanges, claiming that a semantic technicality in Obamacare forbids assisting Americans in such states from buying coverage — a move that the Administration has vehemently rejected, since it would financially devastate Americans in half of the country.

The IRS has instituted certain regulations in an attempt to mollify the impact of the loophole on American families, ruling that families that fall into that coverage hole will not be subject to the law’s penalty for not purchasing insurance. All in all, very few Americans will actually be subject to the individual insurance mandate penalty, and 80 percent of those who will have incomes higher than the federal poverty level. Still, that may end up being small comfort for the Americans whose employers choose not to pitch in for family health plans.

Mississippi’s only remaining abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, is struggling to stay open as it is faced with unnecessary, complicated restrictions imposed by the state’s Republican lawmakers. But its owners are staying positive — and they hope to send that positive message to the rest of the Jackson community, now that the clinic building has gotten a new, bright pink facelift:

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization over the weekend painted its one-story structure on the corner of State Street and Fondren Place in a vibrant, cheery hue. It’s in contrast to the dark shadow of legal woes that has plagued its operations since last year, when the state passed a law threatening its closure.

“It’s a woman’s color,” said clinic Owner Diane Derzis. “It says, ‘We’re right here, and we’re not going anywhere.’”

Since the paint job, the clinic has fielded numerous calls and heard dozens of comments from people saying they like it, according to clinic Director Shannon Brewer, who said the public reaction has surprised even clinic staff.

But since the Jackson clinic hasn’t been able to comply with the restrictive regulations — the new rules require the clinic’s doctors to secure hospital admitting privileges, but all seven hospitals in the surrounding area have so far denied them — it may be in trouble soon. On Thursday, the clinic received its first official notice that the state intends to revoke its operating license, although the women’s health organization will be able to remain open while it awaits a state hearing on the matter.

Anti-choice advocates claim they’re simply concerned about making sure clinics are safe. But at a closed-door event with abortion opponents earlier this month, Mississippi’s own governor revealed the GOP’s true intentions behind over-regulating the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. “My goal of course is to shut it down,” Gov. Phil Bryant (R) said. But it’s not going anywhere without a fight.

A state senator in Idaho is expressing her distaste for President Obama’s health care reform law by drawing a comparison between the private insurance companies participating in Obamacare and the “Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps” during the Holocaust.

According to Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll (R), Idaho should refuse to set up a state-run health exchange under Obamacare because, although the federal government is using private insurers for the time being, the Obama administration will eventually “pull the trigger” on those companies to establish a socialistic health care system.

Nuxoll posted her comments on Twitter, as well as included them in an email blast to 120 supporters:

The insurance companies are creating their own tombs. Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange. Based on legislation and the general process that is written toward this legislation, the federal government will want nothing to do with private insurance companies. The feds will have a national system of health insurance and they will eliminate the insurance companies.

When the Idaho Spokesman-Review asked Nuxoll to clarify her comments, she doubled down on them. Nuxoll said she didn’t mean to disrespect any group of people with her analogy, and explained she said it because “I felt badly for the Jews — it wasn’t just Jews, but Jews, and Christians, and Catholics, and priests. My thing was they didn’t know what was going on. The insurance companies are not realizing what’s going to end up in their demise.”

Idaho’s Senate President Pro-Tem, Brent Hill (R), also stood behind Nuxoll. “This is a very emotional issue for a lot of people,” Hill told the Spokesman-Review. “There’s a lot of ‘stuff’ going around, a lot of information, a lot of viewpoints being expressed. As we get closer to making that decision, the rhetoric’s going to get more dramatic.”

While Idaho Gov. Butch Otter (R) is a vocal critic of health care reform, he has agreed to set up a state-run exchange under Obamacare because he has acknowledged it will allow Idaho to retain more control over its own insurance market. The federal government will simply step in and set up exchanges in the states that refuse to do so themselves. Obamacare’s health exchanges, along with the health law’s optional Medicaid expansion, seek to extend health care to an estimated 30 million low-income Americans who are currently uninsured.

2011 and 2012 were both record-breaking years for new abortion restrictions, and abortion opponents are aren’t showing signs of letting up this year. The “personhood” movement to endow zygotes with the full rights of U.S. citizens, effectively outlawing all abortions and even some forms of contraception, has largely been a failure — but that doesn’t mean anti-choice lawmakers are giving up their quest to redefine the medical terms of pregnancy. The push for “fetal heartbeat” bans is the next anti-choice movement to watch.

Fetal heartbeat measures seek to outlaw abortions as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected — which can occur as early as six weeks, before many women even know they’re pregnant — in direct contradiction to Roe v. Wade, which guarantees women’s right to an abortion until the point of viability at about 23 or 24 weeks of pregnancy. Despite the fact that heartbeat bills are much more extreme than the 20-week abortion bans that are already floundering in court for running afoul of Roe v. Wade, anti-choice lawmakers in at least five states are flirting with this type of legislation:

– OHIO: Anti-choice lawmakers in Ohio first advanced a heartbeat bill in 2011. After the measure was stalled in the state senate for over a year, abortion opponents pressured the legislature to take up the issue again during their lame duck session after the 2012 elections. But ultimately, the bill didn’t come up for a vote because the state Senate leader, Tom Niehaus (R-OH), acknowledged it was too controversial even among abortion opponents. Niehaus said he wanted to wait until lawmakers anti-choice community reached consensus on the measure — which means it could be back on the agenda sometime this year.

– MISSISSIPPI: About a week into the new year, GOP lawmakers in Mississippi filed a fetal heartbeat bill virtually identical to the one that failed to make it out of committee during the state’s last legislative session. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) has already made it clear that he would sign such a bill if it ever reaches his desk. At a private anti-abortion event at the beginning of January, the governor confirmed that he supports banning abortion as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected. “It would tell that mother, ‘Your child has a heartbeat,’” Bryant said.

– WYOMING: About two weeks ago, state Rep. Kendell Kroeker (R) introduced a measure to supersede the medical definition of viability. Current state law says abortions are prohibited after a fetus has “reached viability,” and Kroeker sought to replace those words with “a detectable fetal heartbeat.” The Republican lawmaker said the idea for his heartbeat bill just came to him one day because “it became clear that if a baby had a heartbeat, that seemed simple to me that it’s wrong to kill it.” On Monday, a House panel struck down Kroeker’s bill because it was too medically vague. But if Ohio and Mississippi are any indication, this likely won’t be the last time that fetal heartbeat legislation shows up in Wyoming.

– ARKANSAS: Republicans in Arkansas also hopped on the fetal heartbeat train this week, but they went a step further — state Sen. Jason Rapert’s (R) proposed heartbeat bill would prosecute the doctors who perform abortions after the arbitrary cut-off with a Class D felony, punishable by up to six years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. And thanks to the strong Republican majorities in Arkansas’ legislature, this piece of legislation has a good chance of advancing. It easily passed out of committee on Wednesday and is now headed to the state Senate, where 19 of the chamber’s total 35 members have already signed onto it as co-sponsors.

– NORTH DAKOTA: Like Arkansas, the anti-choice politicians in North Dakota want to prosecute the doctors who perform abortions after a fetal heartbeat can be detected — and their heartbeat ban was part of the “flurry” of anti-abortion bills that lawmakers rushed to introduce around last week’s Roe v. Wade anniversary. A House committee is currently considering the measure, along with an even more radical “personhood” proposal. North Dakota has already imposed some the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the nation, and women’s health advocates in the state warn that the passage of these new bills “would be tantamount to banning abortion” altogether.

Three of the states on this list — Mississippi, Arkansas, and North Dakota — only have a single surgical abortion clinic left in the entire state, which means women already have to overcome significant geographic barriers to obtain an abortion. If women’s window to access legal reproductive services is narrowed by about 17 weeks, as lawmakers attempt to move the cut-off back from 23 weeks of pregnancy to just 6 weeks, many women may not have enough time to make the trip.