In an interview on Thursday with conservative magazine Newsmax, Tea Party standard-bearer and so-called ‘savior’ of the Republican party Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed that he will become a cosponsor of the “Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.” The bill is a concerted effort to prevent girls in dangerous family situations from going across state lines to receive abortions.

Familiarly known as “the Grandmother Incarceration Act,” CIANA bills have come up in Congress several times in recent years. Nearly every iteration of the legislation would prevent even a victim of rape or incest from getting a ride to an abortion clinic beyond state lines from her grandmother or older sibling, if she is under the age of 18. Instead, the girl would be forced to inform her parents or legal guardian, and be required to have them present.

While the bill has not yet been introduced, previous versions of the text would even apply the requirements to girls who require a medically necessary, potentially lifesaving abortion.

The fact that Rubio will serve as a co-sponsor on the legislation reveals a lot about the supposed new face of the Republican party. The policy, like many of Rubio’s policy choices, is actually an old trick from the Grand Old Party, not some new approach to Republican ideals. And it falls in line with Rubio’s party’s, and the Senator’s own, recent anti-woman efforts:

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: Rubio voted against the Violence Against Women Act because it allocated money to rape victims.

MINIMUM WAGE: He won’t support a minimum wage, despite its huge benefits for women.

BIRTH CONTROL: The senator introduced a bill that would have prevented millions of women from accessing birth control.

PAY EQUITY: He called a bill to promote pay equity between men and women “nothing but an effort to help trial lawyers.”

With his post-State of the Union rebuttal, Rubio signed up to be the face of a Republican party that is working hard to win over women and people of color, the groups that cost Republicans the election last time around. But with Rubio’s history of anti-woman policies, and now his renewed commitment to co-sponsor more of the same, he may just on the vanguard of a new Republican path back to the same Republican problems.

Just this week, the CDC released new data pointing to the United States’ “ongoing, severe epidemic” of sexually transmitted infections, which incur the country an estimate $16 billion each year in medical costs. That public health crisis is partly fueled by the lack of comprehensive, medically accurate sexual health instruction in classrooms across the country — but some lawmakers are seeking to change that with a sex ed bill that would overhaul the outdated health classes in America’s public schools.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and 32 other Democratic politicians re-introduced the “Real Education for Healthy Youth Act” on Thursday, legislation that would “expand comprehensive sex education programs in schools and ensure that federal funds are spent on effective, age-appropriate, medically accurate programs.”

“The bill does a lot of important things — it’s a big bill,” Sarah Audelo, the Domestic Policy Director for Advocates for Youth, explained to ThinkProgress. “There’s a lot to be covered, and a lot of resources that young people need that they’re not currently getting.” In particular, the legislation would ensure that federal funding is allocated only to the sexual health programs that include inclusive language about LGBT issues, don’t rely on outdated gender stereotypes, and impart accurate information about HIV.

Right now, sexual education standards vary widely across states. Just 12 states mandate that sexual health curricula must be medically accurate — which means that young people across the country are receiving false information about birth control’s effectiveness, the right way to prevent STDs, and the way that HIV is transmitted.

“Ultimately, we have a long way to go when it comes to sex ed,” Audelo pointed out. “The United States has some of the worst sexual health outcomes in the developed world, and we can’t blame young people for their poor decisions when we don’t teach them how to make the right choices for their bodies.”

And there is concrete evidence to back up Audelo’s claims. The states that push abstinence-only education programs in their public schools — which don’t trust teens enough to teach them facts about their bodies — have the highest rates of teen pregnancies, while adolescents who actually receive instruction about prevention methods are 60 percent less likely to get someone else pregnant or get pregnant themselves. Nevertheless, right-wing politicians continue to do exactly what Audelo cautions against — and blame teenagers themselves for failed abstinence-only policies.

CNN and other news networks missed an ideal opportunity this week to highlight the actual public health risk that poor sanitation conditions pose to millions of people around the world.

The insane amount of time CNN spent over the last several days capturing footage and breathlessly reporting on the travails of the passengers aboard a disabled cruise ship — over 700 minutes worth — has already been mocked mercilessly. The main focus of the anchors’ concern were the atrocious sanitary conditions that had developed once a fire took out the ship’s engines. At one point described as a “floating petri dish,” the ship was completely unable to process sewage, leading to leaks throughout the halls of the vessel and passengers sleeping above deck to escape the smell.

For all of the laughs the seeming absurdity of the coverage has generated, it belies an actual crisis that people live through every day across the globe. As of 2011, 2.6 billion people around the world lacked access to adequate sanitation globally according to the World Health Organization. That leads to defecation in areas where it can flow into water sources, which in turn opens the door to exposure to water-born diseases like diarrhea, cholera, dysentery, typhoid, and hepatitis A.

One the Millennium Development Goals by the United Nations in 20000 — specifically Goal 7, Target 10 — calls for the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking-water and basic sanitation to be cut in half by 2015. Unfortunately, that goal isn’t close to being achieved, according to a March 2012 report’s warning:

The report highlights, however, that the world is still far from meeting the MDG target for sanitation, and is unlikely to do so by 2015. Only 63% of the world now have improved sanitation access, a figure projected to increase only to 67% by 2015, well below the 75% aim in the MDGs. [...] In rural areas in least developed countries, 97 out of every 100 people do not have piped water and 14% of the population drinks surface water – for example, from rivers, ponds, or lakes.

Bill Gates, through his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, has been working to help even those odds. Last year, Gates held what was dubbed the Reinvent the Toilet Fair, soliciting designs for low-cost toilets that don’t require water or a sewage system to function and cost no more than five cents a day to operate. The winning design was solar-powered and generates hydrogen gas and electricity, which the Foundation hopes to have operational in a community by 2015.

For now, though, gallons of raw sewage flow into the Ganges river in India every day and millions of people die on the African continent for lack of sanitation. In choosing to focus on the plight of those people who live through the conditions that those on Carnival “cruise from hell” experienced every day, CNN missed a prime opportunity to reveal to their viewers a set of living conditions they’d never dreamed still existed.

Public health advocates have decided to take their fight against American obesity straight to one of its major sources, calling on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to pass rules encouraging soda and food makers to limit the amount of sweeteners used in their products, the New York Times reports.

As U.S. obesity rates remain sky-high, public health advocates have been tackling the epidemic from all sides. But as Dr. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest told the New York Times, curbing excess sugar consumption could go a long way towards getting Americans on a healthier track:

“Just to assure you that sugars are not toxins, I use a teaspoon of sugar in my tea every day and I’m sure it’s not poison,” Dr. Jacobson said. “It’s the overconsumption that is par for the course in the U.S. that we’re concerned about.”

The center is also asking the agency to set voluntary limits on sweeteners in packaged goods, like cereals and snacks, and to mount an educational campaign to help consumers reduce added sugars in their diet.

“This is on solid legal ground,” Dr. Jacobson said. “It’s just a question of whether the F.D.A. will act or what it will take to get the F.D.A. to act.”

Public health officials in the cities that signed the petition [encouraging the FDA to act] said they did so out of concerns that obesity was contributing to rising rates of health problems like high blood pressure, diabetes and even gout, all of which are increasing among the populations they serve.

While the FDA’s efforts to curb obesity — particularly childhood obesity — have centered on encouraging healthy school lunches and posting caloric information on vending machines, a rule encouraging producers to limit fatty substances in their products might be more effective. That way, the Americans who would like to indulge in sugary treats could still do so, but without causing as much harm to their bodies.

Some public health advocates have called for more extreme measures, such as provisions that are in place in some European countries that tax sugary products at a higher rate. However, as Aaron Carroll of the Incidental Economist points out, such measures tend to be politically difficult and lead to mediocre improvements in public health. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I) has successfully lobbied major food companies to reduce the sodium content in their products — the FDA could encourage them to take similar and more widespread action when it comes to sugar.

Texas Republicans have introduced a measure to impose unnecessary, overly restrictive regulations on the state’s abortion clinics — a move that could ultimately force more than 60 clinics to close, as RH Reality Check reports.

Even though the state senators pushing for the legislation claim it will “force abortion clinics in Texas to put women’s health first,” it actually represents an effort to jeopardize women’s reproductive health by cutting off their access to the medical care they need. Legal abortion services are already incredibly safe medical procedures, and the new guidelines for the state’s clinics will simply force dozens of facilities to close their doors for no good reason:

The modifications required for compliance with ambulatory surgical center standards would require clinics to make significant structural changes, like widened hallways and modifications to air flow patterns, that one abortion provider told RH Reality Check are “unwarranted” in terms of improving the health and safety of abortion patients.

“There’s no basis in medicine that requires the higher level of sophistication of the physical plant and regulations that go with an ambulatory surgical center,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder of the Whole Woman’s Health group of reproductive health clinics, oversees five clinics in Texas, one of which is an ambulatory surgical center.

“Abortion is a procedure, it’s not a surgery,” said Hagstrom Miller. “There’s no incision made.”

Texas is simply following in the footsteps of anti-abortion activists across the country who attempt to indirectly limit women’s access to reproductive health care by targeting abortion providers — similar legislation in Mississippi, North Dakota, and Alabama threatens to leave the women in those states without a single abortion clinic.

In fact, 92 percent of Texas women already live in counties without an abortion clinic — and if their GOP lawmakers successfully push through this measure, that figure would rise even further. But that’s hardly the only barrier to reproductive care that women in the Lone Star state face. Texas Republicans have already defunded Planned Parenthood clinics, and they’re also seeking to further restrict the abortion pill.

Even though Obamacare’s birth control rule helps expand access to affordable contraception, ongoing right-wing attacks on reproductive services still threaten to prevent women from accessing the birth control they need. Particularly since the U.S. still uses an outdated system of tying birth control prescriptions to annual check-ups — rather than joining most other countries around the world and making contraception available over the counter — some women run into roadblocks as they attempt to fill their prescriptions. But some Democratic lawmakers are hoping to change that with new legislation aimed at standardizing pharmacies’ procedures for dispensing birth control.

Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) are spearheading the “Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act,” the same bill they have attempted to get through previous legislative sessions. The politicians reintroduced their measure on Thursday, explaining that they hope to strengthen the birth control provision in the health care reform law by ensuring that pharmacists cannot obstruct women’s access to contraception:

“This legislation would prevent a pharmacy from interfering in the personal medical decisions made by a patient and her doctor,” Sen. Lautenberg said. “Birth control is basic health care for women and Obamacare has removed financial hurdles for millions of women; we can’t allow other obstacles to be placed in their way. By guaranteeing that women can access birth control at every pharmacy in the country, we can ensure that women are never denied the right to make responsible decisions about their reproductive health.” [...]

The Access to Birth Control (ABC) Act strikes a balance between the rights of individual pharmacists who might have personal objections to contraception and the rights of women to receive their medication. The bill protects the right of individual pharmacists to refuse to fill a prescription, but also ensures that pharmacies will fill all prescriptions, even if a different pharmacist has to do it. In addition, if the requested product is not in stock, but the pharmacy stocks other forms of contraception, the bill mandates that the pharmacy help the woman obtain the medication without delay by the method of her preference: order, referral, or a transferred prescription.

Some pharmacies have recently taken it upon themselves to update their contraception policies to ensure their employees won’t let their own attitudes about birth control prevent them from fulfilling their jobs. But, considering the fact that the National Women’s Law Center has tracked issues with pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions in at least 24 states across the country, the industry’s self-regulation isn’t enough.

Just seven states currently mandate that pharmacies must fill women’s birth control prescriptions — and on the other hand, some states like Kansas and Illinois actually allow pharmacists to deny contraception from women simply because of their own personal beliefs. The ABC Act would implement a national policy across all states to ensure that, in pharmacies ranging from national chains to local mom-and-pop stores, women will never have to worry about getting the reproductive services they need when they need them.

At the Wisconsin Right to Life Legislative Conference this week, the state’s top Republican lawmakers assured attendees that they will do everything in their power to enact a forced ultrasound bill, which would mandate an invasive transvaginal probe for some women seeking first-trimester abortions. “This bill is a priority,” Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) said. “It is long overdue.”

At the same conference, the executive director of Wisconsin Right to Life, Barbara Lyons, claimed that the “Woman’s Right to Know her Unborn Child Act” doesn’t actually intend to mandate a transvaginal ultrasound. But, as the Capital Times reports, regardless of the anti-abortion community’s intentions, the fact of the matter is that requiring an ultrasound before an abortion will necessitate that at least some women undergo the invasive, medically unnecessary procedure:

Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, is the former public policy director for Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. She says requiring an ultrasound to be performed before all abortions would mean an invasive procedure for women who are less than 12 weeks pregnant.

At that stage in a pregnancy, she said, the uterus may be blocked by the pelvis, preventing a traditional ultrasound from picking up the image. Thus, a vaginal ultrasound would need to be performed in order to provide an image for a medical professional to discuss with a woman.

Lyons warned conference attendees that “critics will say a vaginal ultrasound is the equivalent of rape.” She added that “the bill does not require this form of ultrasound.”

But Taylor said complying with the bill, if it is passed, might necessitate vaginal ultrasounds in some cases.

Wisconsin’s current law already requires women to undergo a counseling session with their doctor 24 hours before having an abortion, under the false pretense that the women who seek to terminate a pregnancy must not be confident about their decision. Doctors already provide those women with information about ultrasound services. But under the new forced ultrasound measure, women would be forced to undergo an ultrasound — and potentially a transvaginal probe, depending on how far along in her pregnancy she is — without her consent.

Lyons is rightfully concerned about women’s health advocates construing the bill as “the equivalent of rape.” At the height of the War on Women last spring, Virginia Republicans incited a firestorm when they pushed a similar transvaginal ultrasound bill, and reproductive rights groups decried the legislation as “state sponsored rape.” But that hasn’t stopped anti-choice lawmakers from continuing to push legislation that would require invasive ultrasound procedures. Just last week, Michigan lawmakers proposed their own version of the legislation, although the state’s top Republicans were forced to clarify that they would “not pass a bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds” after controversy erupted.

However, no matter how Wisconsin’s anti-choice activists attempt to construe their motives, the insidious implications of their ultrasound bill are clear. “It is not up to the men, or the women for that matter, in the Legislature to be telling doctors they must do certain things…especially uncomfortable, invasive procedures before a woman can undergo a legal procedure,” Taylor told the Capital Times. “People should be outraged that this is how lawmakers are spending their time.”