Louisiana’s legislature is now considering a similar bill to preempt local efforts at requiring paid leave for workers, as Half in Ten and the National Partnership for Women and Families noted:

S.B. 521, legislation that would take away Louisianans’ right to enact local paid sick days policies, is about to be voted on by the House — one of the last steps to enactment. Currently, more than 600,000 workers in Louisiana don’t have paid sick days, and if this bill becomes law, cities and parishes would lose the chance ever to put common-sense paid sick days standards in place…Louisiana already prohibits municipalities from setting their own minimum wage and can’t afford another anti-worker policy.

Just a few cities in the country — Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Seattle — along with the state of Connecticut require that workers receive paid sick leave. The United States is all alone in the industrialized world in not requiring some form of paid leave as a matter of national policy. Each year, the U.S. economy loses $180 billion in productivity due to sick employees attending work and infecting other workers.

A photo of the damage

The organization, Women With A Vision, was likely singled out because it offers AIDS prevention help, HIV testing, and substance abuse assistance to sex workers, transgender women, poor women, and women of color. The clinic also does community outreach and education on those issues. Like two incidents in Georgia last week, no one was injured in the fire, but the clinic lost a good share of its resources.

The fire burned female and male condoms, HIV education posters, and suits donated for women to wear to job interviews. In a letter on their website, the group discusses the losses, and calls for donations from anyone who can help:

Thanks to the fast response of all of our supporters across the country, many of you have already heard that our office was broken into last night and set on fire. The worst damage was concentrated in our community organizing and outreach office where we store all of the resources we use to educate our community. We lost everything. We do not have an office to operate out of right now. Most of our office equipment and all of our educational resources were destroyed. Because of the targeted nature, we can only assume that this was intentional.

We are shaken to be sure, and deeply worried about how we will provide for our members while we are rebuilding. But the work will continue. This cannot and will not stop us from speaking out for people who do not have a voice.

Watch the director’s reaction to the fire:

Women’s health clinics in Georgia have been on heightened alert since the attacks there, and the FBI is investigating those fires. The New Orleans fire department is still looking into the fires at Women With A Vision, but witnesses reported seeing a man run from the building where the fire was set.

Officials tell the AP that the number of disability claims is increasing because of better treatment for battlefield wounds and more outreach from the Department of Veterans Affairs. And doctors are seeing different types of ailments, including traumatic brain injuries and PTSD:

More of the new veterans are women, accounting for 12 percent of those who have sought care through the VA. Women also served in greater numbers in these wars than in the past. Some female veterans are claiming PTSD due to military sexual trauma — a new challenge from a disability rating standpoint, Hickey said.

The new veterans have different types of injuries than previous veterans did. That’s partly because improvised bombs have been the main weapon and because body armor and improved battlefield care allowed many of them to survive wounds that in past wars proved fatal.

“They’re being kept alive at unprecedented rates,” said Dr. David Cifu, the VA’s medical rehabilitation chief. More than 95 percent of troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan have survived.

But the VA’s outmoded system can’t keep up with the backlog of claims. More than 560,000 veterans currently have delayed disability claims that are more than 125 days old. And as the volume continues to grow and cost of health care for veterans increases, Harvard economist Linda Bilmes estimates that the health care and disability costs of the recent wars will cost the nation $600 billion to $900 billion. Despite the mounting claims, the VA is streamlining its process to more effectively take care of veterans because its mission “is to take care of whatever the population is,” Allison Hickey, the VA’s undersecretary for benefits, told the AP. “We want them to have what their entitlement is.”

In an interview with ThinkProgress, West pointed to three popular provisions of the health care law that he would like to see preserved: allowing parents to keep children on their health insurance plans until 26, ensuring that people with pre-existing conditions aren’t denied insurance, and closing Medicare’s prescription drug donut hole:

KEYES: Say we repeal [Obamacare] tomorrow. Do you think that will then precipitate a drop in insurance premiums?

WEST: Well you’ve got to replace it. You’ve got to replace it with something. If people want to keep their kid on their insurance at 26, fine. We’ve got to make sure no American gets turned back for pre-existing conditions, that’s fine. Keep the donut hole closed, that’s fine. But what I just talked to you about, maybe 20, 25 pages of legislation.

Watch it:

The problem with West’s reasoning is that the pre-existing condition ban can’t function without an individual mandate or some other mechanism for bringing healthy people into the health care system. Without the individual responsibility provision, a death spiral begins whereby only sick people buy insurance and it soon becomes unaffordable for everybody. As the American Prospect’s Pat Caldwell writes, “the preexisting condition ban and the individual mandate are inseparably tied to one another.”

Still, West’s embrace of a few key parts of the Obamacare law puts him to the left of many of his Republican colleagues. As Politico reports, infighting has now broken out among Republicans between hard-liners who favor full repeal and lawmakers like West, who like some parts of the law. Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who is perhaps the man most responsible for Republicans coalescing around the full repeal effort, has long maintained that every piece of Obamacare needs to be scrapped, including the donut hole coverage. “There will always be those who slip through the cracks,” King explained last year.

West isn’t the only Republican who Congress who voted last year to fully repeal Obamacare but now wants to protect some of the health care law’s popular provisions. Salon notes that Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) defended the provision allowing children up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance.

The health department spokeswoman said there was no connection between the interview and Bouquin’s resignation, but Bouquin suspects otherwise because she said Gov. Susana Martinez (R-NM) favors abstinence-only sex education. “On the day I was asked to leave, I said the word condom three times on the news,” she told the Santa Fe New Mexican.

The governor’s office and health department denied any involvement in Bouquin’s resignation. Martinez’s spokesman Scott Darnell said in a statement that “the governor is a proponent of taking a balanced and multi-pronged approach to controlling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases; there is nothing in Dr. Bouquin’s interview that would conflict with that approach

New Mexico has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

It would create a mechanism for states to request federal funds after establishing their own health insurance programs…. It would, for the first time, create a system under which a Medicare-for-all program could be rolled out on a state-by-state basis. In California’s case, it would make coverage available to the roughly 7 million people now lacking health insurance.

“This is a huge deal,” said Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica advocacy group. “This is a lifeline for people who want to create a Medicare system at the state level.”

The bill could warm the hearts of liberals who expressed frustration with the Affordable Care Act’s more moderate approach of building on the existing health care system and should also satisfy GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor has sought to differentiate his 2006 health reform from Obamacare by rejecting a federal prescription for reform and promising to “pursue policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens.”

The ACA creates state flexibility by granting waivers to states that meet certain coverage standards and a bipartisan group of lawmakers has offered legislation expanding the provision by allowing states with innovative health care solutions to opt out of certain provisions beginning in 2014. Romney, meanwhile, has pledged to build on the ACA’s flexibility and grant states to the ability to opt out of the law entirely.

McDermott’s measure would go even further and encourage states to repurpose federal funds to build a universal single-payer health system of their own. If Republicans are truly interested in states rights, they will back it in mass.

Intrauterine device (IUD)

The study finds that the pill is significantly less effective at preventing pregnancy than long-lasting contraceptive methods such as the intrauterine device (IUD), building on earlier research that has drawn the same conclusion. In fact, women using IUDs or implants were a staggering 20 times less likely to get pregnant than women who used shorter contraceptive methods like the pill.

Yet few women in the U.S. currently use this type of contraception because IUDs are often very expensive — with co-pays costing hundreds of dollars — and rarely covered by insurance plans. As the study’s lead author, Dr. Brooke Winner, told Reuters:

Nationally, only about 5 percent are using long-lasting methods like IUDs and implants. We know one of the barriers to why they’re not using them more frequently is up-front costs. If [more] women were using these products nationally, there would be a very significant drop in unintended pregnancies, which would have far-reaching effects.

Although the birth control pill is the most commonly used contraceptive in the U.S., its effectiveness diminishes when women miss any of their daily pills or struggle to fill their monthly prescriptions on time. So if IUDs are significantly more effective at preventing pregnancy than the pill, doctors ought to be encouraging more women to use them. As another one of the study’s authors points out, “If there were a drug for cancer, heart disease or diabetes that was 20 times more effective we would recommend it first.”

Fortunately, President Obama’s new birth control regulation that expands access to birth control may help both doctors and women address this issue. Because the new policy would eliminate co-pays for contraceptives, IUDs would become a viable option for the women who currently can’t afford them — and, as the Guttmacher Institute has documented, removing cost barriers to contraceptive services greatly increases the number of women who choose to use the most effective methods.

Supporters of the amendment, sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), said removing the restriction is a matter of fairness for military women:

Supporters argue that it would simply provide parity between civilians insured by the government and uniformed service members. [...]

“This is about equity,” Shaheen said. “Civilian women who depend on the federal government for health insurance — whether they are postal workers or Medicaid recipients — have the right to access affordable abortion care if they are sexually assaulted. It is only fair that the thousands of brave women in uniform fighting to protect our freedoms are treated the same.”

Shaheen’s provision would mirror the Hyde Amendment, which allows Medicaid funding for abortions in cases of rape and incest, so women with military-provided insurance plans would have the same health care options as civilian women with government health care plans.

And because nearly one in three women will be sexually assaulted while serving in the military, Shaheen’s amendment expands access to necessary services so that women do not have to pay out of pocket if they seek abortion care after being rape.

Now that the committee has approved the measure — with three Republicans voting for it — it heads to the Senate floor. When Shaheen introduced this amendment last year, anti-choice senators blocked it from being considered.

The Catholic Church, however, excommunicated those who helped rescue her.

In 2009, a 9 year old in Brazil had to have an emergency abortion after her mother brought her to the hospital for complaining about severe stomach pains and discovered the girl was four months pregnant. But after the procedure, instead of embracing the victim and offering to help the family, the Catholic Church excommunicated the doctor who performed the abortion and the girl’s mother.

The Church did not excommunicate the rapist:

The controversy represents a PR nightmare for the Vatican. The unnamed girl’s mother and doctors were excommunicated for agreeing to Wednesday’s emergency abortion yet the Church has not taken formal steps against the stepfather, who is in custody. Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, the conservative regional archbishop for Pernambuco where the girl was rushed to hospital, has said that the man would not be thrown out of the Church, because although he had allegedly committed “a heinous crime”, the Church took the view that “the abortion, the elimination of an innocent life, was more serious”.

The case has set off fierce debate in Brazil, where abortion is permitted only in cases of rape or medical emergency. Brazil is one of the most populous Catholic countries, but conservative attitudes in rural areas are strongly at odds with the relatively progressive public view of abortion in major cities.

While the circumstances are much more grave in this example, the same conflict of beliefs is now happening the United States: While 82 percent of Catholics support birth control use, the Catholic Church is suing to have it removed from required health care plans.

This case shows the extent to which some far-right leaders in the Catholic Church will go to fight against what they charge as morally reprehensible — even if the vast majority of their adherents don’t agree, or consider the charges flipped.

In comparison, Canada and Norway offer generous benefits that can be shared between the father and mother, France offers about four months, and even Mexico and Pakistan are among the nations offer 12 weeks paid leave for mothers.

American women are offered 12 weeks of unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act, which exempts companies with fewer than 50 paid employees, but in 2011, only 11 percent of private sector workers and 17 percent of public workers reported that they had access to paid maternity leave through their employer. And for first-time mothers, only about half can take paid leave when they give birth.

At the same time that working women in the U.S. lack a benefit widely available across the globe, almost 50 percent of families had two working parents in 2010, and 26 percent of households were headed by single parents. Without guaranteed paid maternity leave, many of these working women face significant financial hardship by having to choose between their paycheck and their families.

Women are forced to put their careers and financial future at risk simply because they want to have children. During their pregnancy, they face being fired unfairly or not being able to properly care for themselves. They should not have to worry about making ends meet without paid maternity leave on top of that.

Adam Peck contributed to this report.

The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as “Obamacare.” This landmark piece of legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama drastically reforms the way health insurance works in our country. Below, we outline 10 reasons why women in America have so much riding on the Supreme Court’s decision:

1. Obamacare guarantees coverage of preventive services with no cost sharing. Preventive care promotes health and saves money. Yet many preventive care services are out of women’s reach due to high co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance. More than 50 percent of women have delayed seeking medical care due to cost, and one-third of women report forgoing basic necessities to pay for health care. But under the health reform law, insurers are now required to cover recommended preventive services such as mammograms, Pap smears, and well-baby care without cost sharing. More than 45 million women have already taken advantage of these services. And starting this August more services, including contraception, gestational diabetes screening, and breastfeeding supports, will be added to the list of preventive care that must be covered at no additional cost.

2. Maternity care will be required in new insurance plans. Coverage for maternity care—health care that only women need—is routinely excluded in the individual insurance market. Only 12 percent of plans sold in the individual market even offer maternity coverage, which is frequently inadequate because of waiting periods or deductibles that can be as high as the cost of the birth itself. But once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014, about 8.7 million women will have guaranteed access to maternity care in all new individual and small group plans.

3. Women will no longer be denied insurance coverage for gender-related reasons. In today’s insurance market, it is common for insurers to refuse to cover women because of gender-based “pre-existing conditions,” such as having had a Cesarean section or being the victim of domestic violence or sexual assault. Thankfully, this practice will be outlawed under Obamacare in 2014. In the meantime, adults with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months can purchase affordable coverage through temporary Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans.

4. Women will no longer be charged more for their insurance coverage just for being women. Under a practice known as “gender rating,” insurers currently charge women higher premiums than men for identical health benefits. As a result, women now pay $1 billion more than men each year for the same health plans in the individual market. As of 2014, however, under the Affordable Care Act, gender rating will become illegal in all new individual and small group plans.

5. Women have more control over their health care. Already, women no longer need a referral to see their obstetrician-gynecologist thanks to Obamacare. And they get to choose their primary care physician and their child’s pediatrician from their plan’s list of participating providers.

6. Women will gain better access to affordable health insurance. Starting in 2014 women and their families, as well as small businesses, will receive tax credits on an income-based sliding scale to help purchase insurance coverage. This will help individuals who earn up to $43,000 per year and up to $92,200 for families of four. Also in 2014 up to 10.3 million women will gain insurance coverage when Medicaid expands its income eligibility to include people with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level—less than $15,000 for individuals and about $31,809 for a family of four in 2011. The health law also eliminates Medicaid’s categorical requirements, so that low-income women who meet the income requirements can be enrolled even if they have no children and are not pregnant.

7. Insurance companies can no longer place limits on the amount of money they’ll spend on covered medical expenses. Women are more likely than men to suffer from a chronic condition, and an unforeseen medical emergency or a chronic illness can cause an insured person to rapidly reach a coverage cap in their insurance plan, leaving enrollees to fend for themselves, sometimes with thousands of dollars in unpaid medical bills. But under Obamacare lifetime coverage caps have been eliminated and annual limits are being phased out. Approximately 39.5 million women have already benefited from the ban on lifetime caps.

8. Women and their families benefit from critical consumer protections in Obamacare. Because women use health care services at higher rates on behalf of themselves and their families, ensuring just insurance practices is of critical importance. The Affordable Care Act has already eliminated the practice of “rescission,” when an insurance policy ends the moment a beneficiary gets sick. The health law also requires insurers to spend at least 80 percent of premiums on actually providing health care, as opposed to administrative costs, or pay enrollees a rebate. Policyholders and employers will receive approximately $1.3 billion in premium rebates this year alone.

9. Women in marginalized communities are seeing reforms that respond to their needs. Women of color, lesbian and bisexual women, and transgender people are disproportionately uninsured and subject to higher rates of health disparities. Obamacare is making critical strides in providing vulnerable women with quality health care through increased access to insurance coverage, increased funding for community health centers, promoting health literacy and cultural competency, prohibiting discrimination in the health insurance market, and improving data collection. For instance, already an estimated 5.5 million African Americans, 6.1 million Latinos, 2.7 million Asians, and 0.3 million Native Americans, many of them women, have received preventive service coverage with no cost sharing under the health reform law.

10. Mothers have peace of mind, knowing that their children have health insurance. Obamacare prohibits insurers from denying coverage to children under age 19 because of pre-existing conditions. And adult children can now stay on a parent’s plan up to age 26, an especially helpful provision in this tough economy, where finding a job with benefits is challenging. Young women in particular report delaying needed health care because of high costs. To date, 2.5 million young adults have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

Obamacare is a lifeline for women and their families. Women cannot afford to go back to a world where they pay more for less health care coverage, are denied preventive and essential health care services, and are treated like pre-existing conditions. A ruling that strikes down this important law would not only undo decades of precedent, it would have a devastating effect on the health and well-being of millions of women. Women have gained too much from Obamacare to lose it now.

– People with Medicare have saved a total of $3.5 billion on prescription drugs thanks to the health care law
– In the first four months of 2012 alone, more than 416,000 with Medicare people saved an average of $724 on prescription drugs thanks to the health care law
– From January through April, 12.1 million people in traditional Medicare received at least one free preventive service thanks to the health care law

Fire fighters respond to Wednesday's clinic fire. (Source: wsbtv.com)

Clinic workers believe the fire started on the third floor. They said two unknown men went upstairs and left shortly afterward, minutes before the fire was discovered.

“We have patients here. They’re under anesthesia. This could have been life-threatening,” employee Angela Buckner told Channel 2’s Ross Cavitt.

On Sunday, a fire was reported at another clinic in Gwinnett County. In addition to the recent fires, women’s health clinics reported break-ins and stolen computer equipment in March after the Georgia legislature approved a restrictive bill preventing abortions after 20 weeks. Clinic workers said the thefts were attempts to intimidate doctors who perform abortions and fought against the bill. “They’re treating us like terrorists,” Richard Zane, whose Atlanta Women’s Health Center was burglarized, told a local Patch site.

Gov. Nathan Deal signed the 20-week ban, which has no exemption for cases of rape or incest, into law earlier this month.

D.C. protesters knocking on Rep. Franks' office door

One by one, about 50 protesters knocked on the door of Franks’ office, and then spoke a few words about a problem in the city that they think “Mayor Franks” should address if he’s going to be writing laws that affect D.C. residents.

“My issue today is Metro — full funding for Metro,” said Jon Ozment, a 56-year-old D.C. resident. “As a constituent here, I use Metro all the time, my children use it, and it’s really disgraceful the condition they’ve allowed Metro to get to.”

“I have to say I’m very disappointed today,” he added. “I really wanted to meet my representative, Mr. Franks. He’s supposed to be representing us and I did take some time to come in here today, so I hope he takes these concerns into account.”

During the subcommittee hearing last week, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) criticized Franks for blocking Del. Eleanor Norton (D) — D.C.’s only congressional representative — from testifying against the measure. The ban itself is based on the contested theory that a fetus can feel pain 20 weeks after gestation and mirrors prohibitions in seven states.

Wednesday’s protest was organized by Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington DC and DC Vote.

In light of this fact, the rules’ opponents have wisely pivoted to a 1993 law known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which imposes additional restrictions on the federal government above and beyond what’s actually required by the Constitution. Indeed, the several conservative Catholic groups challenging the birth control rules in court cite RFRA in their very first claim against the rules.

RFRA was enacted very much due to a backlash against Justice Scalia’s opinion in Smith. That case involved a relatively obscure Native American religion whose members wanted to ingest the illegal drug peyote during one of the faith’s sacred rituals — Scalia’s opinion said they were not exempt from this law because the ban on peyote applies evenly to all persons regardless of whether they believe the drug has a sacred purpose or not. RFRA’s supporters, including some very prominent progressives, feared that Scalia’s decision would fall heavily on minority religions because they lacked the political power to stand up for themselves in the legislature. Lawmakers who support a ban on sacramental wine, for example, would soon run afoul of their many (and often, powerful) Christian constituents. But lawmakers who want to ban drugs used in relatively uncommon faiths would experience no such backlash.

For this reason, the conservative Catholics’ suit is a bit unusual since they are not the kind of minority faith that many of RFRA’s supporters sought to protect. The Catholic bishops who are driving this effort are politically powerful, so powerful, in fact, that top political leaders like Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) have rallied to their cause. Nevertheless, there’s nothing in the language of RFRA itself which prevents powerful religious groups from invoking it. Under RFRA, the federal government cannot “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the law that does so:

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest

Even assuming that the birth control rules “substantially burden” conservative Catholics, however, there are strong arguments that the rules survive RFRA’s test. In Roberts v. United States Jaycees, the Supreme Court established the government has a “compelling interest in eradicating discrimination against its female citizens,” and extending access to birth control clearly advances this goal. As the California Supreme Court explained when it upheld a very similar birth control law in 2004, “women during their reproductive years spent as much as 68 percent more than men in out-of-pocket health care costs, due in part to the cost of prescription contraceptives and the various costs of unintended pregnancies.” Expanding access to contraception targets this problem directly.

The more difficult question is whether the Obama Administration’s rules use the “least restrictive means” of achieving its goal — meaning that there is no way to accomplish the same goal without placing the same burden on religious exercise. In the California suit, the plaintiffs claimed that California could have simply created an entitlement program that provides contraception, rather than enacting a law that led to religious employers paying health insurance premiums that covered some women’s birth control. The Obama Administration’s opponents make a similar argument now, that conservative Catholic employers object that a portion of their premium payments would go to contraception, while an entitlement program would not raise this problem.

This is only half true, however. While it is true that conservative Catholics would not have to pay premiums that cover birth control if the government created an entitlement program, conservative Catholics would still pay taxes that fund that entitlement program. It’s not at all clear why one places a different burden on the rules’ religious objectors than the other.

So there are strong arguments in favor of the birth control rules — strong enough, in fact, that one of the most Republican courts in the country upheld a very similar California law just eight years ago. Of course, that was before the Roberts Court indicated they might embrace an utterly meritless case against the Affordable Care Act, so there is always a risk that partisanship will trump law if this case reaches the Supreme Court. Assuming the justices are in the mood to follow the law, however, the administration has a strong argument to offer against the RFRA challenge.

Although Catholic Church leaders have transformed contraception into a culture war issue over the past few months, their position does not have the backing of the majority of Catholic adherents, especially when compared to the American public as a whole. The poll demonstrates that Catholic support for birth control is a mere 8 points below the 90 percent of non-Catholic Americans who have no moral objections to birth control:

The Obama administration has already amended its contraception regulation to provide accommodations for employers and insurers who object to covering birth control for religious reasons. A third-party insurer may pay for the birth control, ensuring no additional cost to either the employee seeking coverage nor the religious institution. Nonetheless, prominent Catholic figures such as Cardinal Timothy Dolan have referred to the contraception rule as a method of “strangling” religious freedom.

Joey Cosmillo via The Orlando Sentinel

Joey Cosmillo almost died as a one year old after he fell in a pool, but was rescued and survived another five years with extensive medical assistance. Then two years ago, Florida lawmakers slashed health care funding for low-income people in favor of corporate tax cuts, and Cosmillo fell victim to the cuts.

According to his grandmother, the family struggled to pay Joey’s mounting medical bills, and the state assistance that used to help them wasn’t an option anymore:

Joey received 24-hour nursing care at home until state cutbacks two years ago gradually began taking that away. Long-term care of near-drowning victims can cost $180,000 a year and more than $4.5 million over their lifetimes, according to thepoolsafetyresource.com

“Our family went broke trying to take care of him,” his grandmother said. [...] Joey’s mother Angela and his grandfather Richard “Rich” Cosmillo shared night care duties at their side-by-side apartments in Maitland. [...]

On Sunday night, Joey died at home. The next day, his grandfather was hospitalized.

“It was one of those horrible times when we didn’t have nursing all weekend,” his grandmother said. “We don’t know what happened.”

While Joey’s family suffered, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) gave corporations hundred of millions of dollars in tax breaks. Scott called his budget “fun” and “exciting,” and said that “jobs are going to grow like crazy” in Florida. But Florida unemployment remains among the highest in the country.