Last week, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan likened abortion to murder and announced a new initiative by his conservative Islamic-inspired government to change restrictions on abortions in Turkey. Legislators from Erdoğan’s party then quickly proposed a law that would end abortions after 4 weeks of pregnancy, except for in an emergency. Since 1983, Turkish women were allowed 10 weeks of pregnancy to get an abortion.

The reaction to the announcements came swiftly. Yesterday in Istanbul, thousands rallied to protect abortion rights for women. As part of its coverage, the British Guardian newspaper posted this video:

Earlier in the week, the website Bianet jumped into a campaign — called “Benim Kararım,” or “my decision.” The campaign called for women to assert their rights and for men to show solidarity by getting people to send in pictures of themselves either holding signs or writing on their bodies that women’s abortion rights are none of the government’s business using one of these slogans:

For women: “My Body, My Decision“, “This Is My Issue”

For men: “Woman’s Body, Woman’s Decision“, “My Wife’s Body, My Wife’s Decision”, “My Daughter’s Body, My Daughter’s Decision”, “My Girlfriend’s Body, My Girlfriend’s Decision”, “This is Women’s Issue”, “My Sister’s Decision”, “My Mother’s Decision”

Responses have been overwhelming. Çiçek Tahaoğlu, the women’s news editor at Bianet, said that the total number of entries hadn’t been tabulated, but at least one thousand had come in. Scores are now posted online in Bianet pages, at the website benimkararim.org.

Asked about the campaign’s prospects of beating back the proposed law, Tahaoğlu told ThinkProgress by e-mail:

That’s our hope to preserve our right to abortion and we believe that the campaign will succeed. But I should say that we don’t only want to keep the laws as they stand, we want to make them better for us. We also want the government to stop doing politics over our bodies.

Many commentators do see political overtones. They think that, beset with instability and calls to action on Turkey’s border with Syria and a broad war being waged against militant Turkish groups, Erdoğan seized upon the abortion issue as a distraction. Turkey-based writer Andrew Finkel, writing in the New York Times, noted the bizarre comparison Erdoğan made in his remarks between Cesarean section births, which also limit birthrates, and the errant military attack on smugglers in Uludere thought by the government to be separatists militants. Finkel noted:

Turkey liberalized abortion in 1983 in response to high rates of illegal terminations and maternal mortality. If more women start dying again because they are forced to seek illegal abortions, then Erdogan’s odd analogy to the massacre at Uludere may turn out to be more apt than it should.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), reportedly a frontrunner in Mitt Romney’s running mate selection process, last week during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations hoped that he wouldn’t make news as calling for war with Iran. “I don’t want to come across as some sort of saber-rattling person,” Rubio said, claiming, “I am in line with what the administration has said.” The Florida Republican later added that he doesn’t “want the headlines from here to be, you know, Rubio says let’s hit them now.”

Moments later though, Rubio said Americans need to starting thinking about it:

RICHARD STENGEL (Moderator): But you would — just to be straight about it — but you would sanction a strike before you would tolerate a nuclear Iran?

RUBIO: Yes and I think that we need to begin to prepare people for that. See, I think that the — not just the people of the country, but the people of the world appreciate when their leaders walk them through this process and explain this is what we’re working on, and more importantly, these are the stakes of a nuclear Iran.

Watch the clip:

However, there’s one potential problem with this scenario: an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities may not prevent the Islamic Republic from deciding to build, and eventually acquire, nuclear weapons. “A strike could accelerate the procurement of the bomb. An attack isn’t enough to stop the project,” Meir Dagan, Israel’s former top intelligence chief said last week. The former head of Israel’s internal security service also shares this view. Dagan has also said that an attack would only delay Iran’s nuclear program, not end it, a view that is also shared by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

This major caveat means that Rubio’s stance doesn’t quite line up with the Obama administration’s Iran policy, as he said it does. The Obama administration views a potential Iranian nuclear weapon as a serious threat and has said that it keeps all options on the table in trying to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons — including military force. However, U.S. officials have said that diplomacy is the “best and most permanent way” to resolve the crisis.

At the very least, Rubio is somewhat correct in that he’s not doing so much saber rattling on Iran as some of his Republican colleagues. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) reportedly predicted this weekend that he is sure there will be a military strike on Iran later this summer in what he called “an air and sea campaign from hell.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has been vigorously campaigning against the military spending sequester, $600 billion in cuts triggered after Congress failed to agree on a debt reduction plan. The New York Times reported that Graham — on a tour against the sequester in his home state — is even willing to defy a pledge against tax hikes organized by anti-tax advocate and conservative power-broker Grover Norquist. The Times reported:

Mr. Graham said the sentiment for raising revenues by closing tax loopholes or imposing higher fees on items like federal oil leases is expanding in his party.

Asked about the “no new taxes” pledge almost all Republicans have signed, he shrugged: “I’ve crossed the Rubicon on that.”

House Republicans have issued dire warning about sequester’s military cuts and flip flopped on last August’s debt deal, even seeking to shift the cuts to domestic programs that benefit the poor.

But recently, the position Graham espoused on his South Carolina tour gained traction among other Republicans keen on preserving high defense spending. Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), the House Armed Services chair who forcefully opposes any military cuts, said this winter he would support tax hikes to avoid sequestration.

Democrats have been pushing the tack for a while. In March, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) pointed out that a “vote to extend the Bush tax cuts in their entirety would, in essence, be the vote to lock in sequestration” by cutting down on revenue to offset government debt. The Times report today pointed out that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is unlikely to allow sequestration to be averted without a debt reduction package that includes increased government revenue. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) was more blunt speaking to the Times, noting that the Republicans that supported last August’s Budget Control Act — 28 in the Senate and 174 in the House — were given the choice of automatically-triggered military spending cuts or tax increases. Van Hollen said:

The consistent pattern here is they have chosen to defend special interest tax breaks over defense spending. They made that choice.

Grover Norquist, for his part, was already miffed this weekend because of Republicans dropping out of his pledge, seeking to contrast their fickle adherence to his diktats with GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s vocal support. He hasn’t reacted yet to Graham’s defection from the anti-tax pledge, but one imagines he won’t take it sitting down.