Thirty-year-old New Zealand mother of eight Natasha Harris was not a casual Coca-Cola drinker: She drank more than two gallons of the soda per day, taking in more than 11 times the recommended daily sugar consumption and twice the recommended amount of caffeine in what her family calls an addiction, complete with withdrawal symptoms. And according to the coroner investigating her death by cardiac arrest, that addiction contributed to her death:

“I find that, when all of the available evidence is considered, were it not for the consumption of very large quantities of Coke by Natasha Harris, it is unlikely that she would have died when she died and how she died.”

The coroner’s report revealed Harris suffered from a variety of health problems possibly connected to her Coke problem, including a racing heart and “absent teeth.” Coca-Cola Oceania issued a statement condemning the report yesterday:

“The Coroner acknowledged that he could not be certain what caused Ms Harris’ heart attack. Therefore we are disappointed that the Coroner has chosen to focus on the combination of Ms Harris’ excessive consumption of Coca-Cola, together with other health and lifestyle factors, as the probable cause of her death. This is contrary to the evidence that showed the experts could not agree on the most likely cause.”

While Harris’s soda consumption was clearly well outside the norm, research has connected the consumption of sugary drinks like soda to health concerns, particularly obesity. Children in the U.S. consume 7 trillion calories of these drinks per year, and studies show that the least healthy of those products are aggressively marketed to children of color who have been hit hardest by the obesity epidemic.

That marketing works so well that Coca-Cola has launched PR campaigns to divert attention from its role in that epidemic. The food and beverage industry touts “personal responsibility” messaging to emphasize that it’s simply up to people to make healthy choices and consume their products in moderation, as opposed to Harris. But health experts warn that those industries’ misleading marketing tactics mimic Big Tobacco’s.

As part of a voluntary public health initiative led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) to lower the amount of sodium in popular foods, 21 companies — including Butterball, Heinz, Subway, Starbucks, and Kraft Foods — have cut salt content in certain products by as much as 30 percent.

As CBS News reports, the affected products include a variety of foods including hot dogs, cold cuts, cheese singles, sandwiches, and crackers. Bloomberg lauded Kraft in particular for “reducing sodium in its Kraft Singles American Slices by 18 percent” and Subway for eliminating sodium entirely from two of their popular sandwiches.

Bloomberg and public health advocates welcomed the companies’ decisions, noting that Americans consume an excessive amount of sodium, and that the source of the excess is in pre-packaged foods rather than salt manually added to products by consumers:

“These companies have demonstrated their commitment to removing excess sodium from their products and to working with public health authorities toward a shared goal — helping their customers lead longer, healthier lives,” said Bloomberg.

Noting that Americans eat about twice as much salt as they should and citing its link to high blood pressure and resulting diseases, the city set voluntary guidelines in 2010 through the National Salt Reduction Initiative for various restaurant and store-bought foods. Bloomberg said that 80 percent of salt came from prepackaged foods, not people adding salt.

“Consumers can always add salt to food, but they can’t take it out,” NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley said at the time.

Bloomberg has established himself as a leader in battling America’s obesity, diabetes, and smoking-related public health epidemics, enforcing strong public smoking bans and limits on soda sizes in his city.

While some critics have labeled his methods as overbearing, some of the evidence vindicates Bloomberg’s tactics, as cities with stronger nutritional regulatory regimes tend to be healthier and less obese — particularly children in such cities. And the companies’ decisions to voluntarily lower salt content is a welcome change from the tendency of Big Food to market heavily processed products, thereby undermining public health.

Curbing obesity rates in the United States would go a long way toward reducing health care costs and improving general wellness among Americans. Other recent efforts aimed at addressing obesity and public health include initiatives to promote healthy school lunches and Obamacare provisions requiring chain restaurants to conspicuously post caloric information on their menus.

The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization passed through the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, by a vote of 78 to 22. Of those opposing the legislation, all 22 were Republican men. Every female Senator supported the bill.

Among the most notable votes against the bill were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Here’s a look at all 22 opponents of VAWA:

VAWA expired during the previous Congress, and because of Republican opposition to provisions for Native American, undocumented, and LGBT victims of domestic violence, the different versions approved by the House and by the Senate were never reconciled, and the bill died without final passage at the end of 2012.

Since its inception in 1994, VAWA has established a system for helping women in danger. The law created the National Domestic Violence Hotline, made stalking illegal, and helped drive down the number of partner homicides.

Two Senators — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — also offered significant amendments to the VAWA bill. Grassley’s amendment stripped all Native American, LGBT, and undocumented victim protections. It was voted down on Thursday of last week. Cornyn’s, aimed exclusively on the bill’s language relating to tribal lands, failed on Monday.

Last week, eight Senators voted against even moving to debate on the revived legislation, and they are among those who voted against its passage. Four of them did so because their radical interpretation of the constitution precludes federal protection for domestic violence victims.

The version passed by the Senate today will next go to the House for a vote, where it is expected to encounter some difficulties, particularly over the protections of tribal women included in the bill.

As the Senate moves to a final vote on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), today 93 Senators endorsed an amendment to combat human trafficking. While opposing human trafficking is a fairly non-controversial subject, five far-right Republicans broke with the majority of their own caucus and opposed the bipartisan amendment.

The amendment, authored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT), strengthens VAWA by reauthorizing the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. The measure helps law enforcement investigative human trafficking and supports international efforts to stop the practice. Leahy noted that on the anniversary of President Lincoln’s birth, “we continue to fight human trafficking, which can amount to modern day slavery,” making the amendment a fitting tribute. “The United States remains a beacon of hope for so many who face human rights abuses. We know that young women and girls – often just 11, 12, or 13 years old – are being bought and sold. We know that workers are being held and forced into labor against their will. People in this country and millions around the world are counting on us.”

The amendment was opposed by Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Lee also voted against even allowing the Senate to consider the Violence Against Women Act, based on his bizarre belief that the entire bill is unconstitutional.

Prior to his time in the Senate, Johnson famously opposed the bipartisan Wisconsin Child Victims Act, a bill to extend the civil statute of limitations for child sexual abuse crimes. His objection was that it would be bad for business if employers who help cover up the crime could be “severely damaged, possibly destroyed, in a legitimate desire for justice.”

Leahy said of the the Trafficking Victims Protection Act:

This measure strengthens criminal anti-trafficking statutes to ensure that law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to effectively combat all forms of trafficking. It ensures better coordination among federal agencies, between law enforcement and victim service providers, and with foreign countries to work on every facet of this complicated problem. It includes measures to encourage victims to come forward and report this terrible crime, which leads to more prosecutions and help for more victims. We have included accountability measures to ensure that Federal funds are used for their intended purposes, and we have streamlined programs to focus scarce resources on the approaches that have been the most successful. A Senator asserted yesterday that trafficking programs have been wasteful and duplicative. In fact, the programs supported by this amendment have been carefully tracked and shown to be effective. Nonetheless, the amendment reduces authorization levels by almost a third from the levels in the last reauthorization because we are determined to ensure efficiency and respond to concerns. We have made similar efforts to streamline VAWA.

The offices of the five Senators were not immediately available to respond to questions about their rationales for opposing the amendment.

Despite the fact that more than 25 percent of Texas’ population is uninsured, Gov. Rick Perry (R) has rejected Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, a move that will deny health coverage to more than 133,000 low-income Texans. In order to pressure him to change his mind, a diverse coalition of community leaders in Dallas — including state lawmakers, interfaith groups, and hospital officials — has partnered to advocate for the Medicaid expansion, arguing that Texas must accept federal funding to extend insurance to thousands of the state’s impoverished residents.

And their work is paying off. Dallas County officials will adopt a resolution today that encourages state lawmakers to expand Medicaid, after El Paso officials adopted a similar resolution yesterday. The coalition hopes that the momentum in support of the optional Obamacare provision will lead other Texas counties to follow suit:

“We’re doing his across the state. The resolution is our strategy…to put pressure on the governor and the Legislature to pass Medicaid expansion,” said Willie Bennett, lead organizer with the Dallas Area interfaith coalition, which helped write the resolution on Medicaid expansion that Dallas County plans to adopt on Tuesday. He said their organization helped craft a similar resolution that the El Paso County Commissioners Court adopted on Monday, and is working with other major counties to also pass resolutions.

Bolstered by Dallas County’s impending decision, the Texas Organizing Project, an advocacy group that has organized hundreds of Texans to support expanding Medicaid, plans to send coalition members to county meetings in Bexar, Harris and Hidalgo counties on Tuesday to testify in favor of local government officials adopting similar resolutions to support Medicaid expansion.

“Working uninsured [Texans] are leading the fight. These are everyday people who work, some of them six days a week, but can’t afford health insurance,” said Durrel Douglas, a spokesman for the Texas Organizing Project.

Texas’ health care system is ranked as the worst in the nation, and the state’s Medicaid program is currently one of the most restrictive — requiring a family of three to earn less than $5,000 per year, far below the federal poverty line, to qualify for public health insurance.

Officials in some of Texas’ largest counties have been frustrated with their governor’s refusal to cooperate with Obamacare for months. Back in August, some county officials investigated the possibility of pursuing their own Medicaid expansions, even if Perry insisted on withholding federal funds to implement a state-wide expansion. But now that the Obama Administration has clarified that states may not set up partial expansions, they’re once again at the mercy of their stubborn governor.

Nevertheless, the Medicaid advocates in Texas are growing, and they hope to change the tide. The wide range of groups involved in the push for the state’s Medicaid expansion include the Texas Hospital Association, the Texas Medical Association, and an interfaith coalition that includes the Texas Catholic Conference.

Every year, on the anniversary of the landmark Roe v. Wade case, anti-choice conservatives flock to the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C to protest against abortions and demand that the high court reverse its decision.

But overturning Roe v. Wade is no longer the grand prize it once was. Instead, hardliners have their sights set on a far more dangerous goal: so-called “personhood” legislation, restrictive bills or constitutional amendments that would endow zygotes with the full rights of U.S. citizens and equate the performance of an abortion — sometimes, even in cases of rape or incest — to murder. Personhood legislation would outlaw all abortions, some forms of contraception, and even invitro fertilization.

But radical personhood bills have failed to advance very far. In roughly a dozen states, lawmakers and activists fell short in the last year, unable to force personhood amendments onto ballots or past committee hearings in state legislatures — often because the measures are too controversial even within the anti-choice community. But that hasn’t deterred proponents from continuing their push in 2013:

Just over one month into the year, Republicans in more than half a dozen states have either committed to introducing personhood legislation or have done so already. In North Dakota, the state senate has already passed a bill that would place an amendment to the state’s constitution on the next statewide ballot. In Iowa, eight Republican lawmakers have introduced a bill that would jail abortion doctors and women seeking abortions on felony charges.

The powerful companies in the food, drink, and alcohol industries — defined as “unhealthy commodity” companies — are circumventing public health policies by employing the same tactics that Big Tobacco uses, health experts reported on Tuesday. After analyzing the multinational businesses’ marketing strategies, researchers concluded the industry needs tighter outside regulation to prevent it from driving the global epidemic of chronic diseases.

Even though the public health community has attempted to cooperate with “unhealthy commodity” companies, the researchers say that efforts to encourage these industries to self-regulate are failing. Instead, the companies are consolidating power by building financial connections with health agencies and non-governmental organizations — and using that power to lobby politicians to oppose health reforms, much like Big Tobacco exerted control over Washington in the 1950s and 60s:

The researchers said that through the aggressive marketing of ultra-processed food and drink, multinational companies were now major drivers of the world’s growing epidemic of chronic diseases such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.

Writing in The Lancet medical journal, the researchers cited industry documents they said revealed how companies seek to shape health legislation and avoid regulation. [...]

They cited analysis of published research which found systematic bias from industry funding: articles sponsored exclusively by food and drinks companies were between four and eight times more likely to have conclusions that favored the companies than those not sponsored by them.

The researchers — an international team comprised of health experts from countries like Australia, Britian, and Brazil — recommended that food, drinks and tobacco corporations shouldn’t be allowed to have any role in influencing national or international policies on chronic diseases.

This isn’t the first time that comparisons have been drawn between Big Tobacco and Big Food — particularly since both industries’ marketing tactics rely on “personal responsibility” arguments that claim additional regulation isn’t necessary because it’s simply up to American consumers to make healthy choices. Tobacco brands and food companies have also both attempted to avoid scrutiny by repositioning themselves as socially responsible corporations, launching “public health” campaigns and rolling out “safer” products to give the impression that they’re already doing enough to work toward public health goals.

Of course, while it’s possible to eliminate tobacco from society, it’s not possible to eliminate the food or beverage industries — but Dr. David Katz, the co-founder of the Yale Prevention Research Center, explains the parallels are still undeniable. “Frankly we need to learn from the mistakes we made in public health with tobacco. We believed the half measures taken by the companies for far too long,” he told ABC News. “We do want food corporate citizenship. But the bad behavior deserves to be called out.”

In a blow to anti-abortion activists looking to use Planned Parenthood as a political pawn in their crusade against women’s reproductive health rights, a federal judge has overturned an Arizona law signed by Gov. Jan Brewer (R) in May 2012 that prohibits using Medicaid funds for services provided by Planned Parenthood facilities in the state.

Judge Neil Wake ruled that Arizona residents “are entitled to get their services from any qualified medical provider,” and the fact that Planned Parenthood provides some abortion-related services does not disqualify the organization from being a “qualified provider,” as the law claimed it did.

State and federal GOP officials have been tripping over each other to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funding — even though federal dollars can’t be used to cover abortion services, through Planned Parenthood or any other medical provider. Planned Parenthood is actually simply a health care provider for low-income women in the Medicaid program, providing them with preventative screenings and family planning services.

Republican efforts to defund Planned Parenthood have already taken a toll on low-income women in states like Texas, where the war against the provider has sharply curtailed the number of doctors and services available to women, and Oklahoma, where women’s health clinics have been forced to close. But federal courts have consistently ruled that efforts to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood is an overreach, stripping low-income women of essential medical resources.

Wake’s injunction against the Arizona law has already been appealed.