Oklahoma already prevents women from using their insurance plans to help cover abortion services, but Republicans aren’t stopping there. One state lawmaker wants to continue stripping insurance coverage for reproductive health services, advancing a measure that would allow employers to refuse to cover birth control for any reason — based solely on the fact that one of his constituents believes it “poisons women’s bodies.”

Under State Sen. Clark Jolley (R)’s measure, “no employer shall be required to provide or pay for any benefit or service related to abortion or contraception through the provision of health insurance to his or her employees.” According to the Tulsa World, Jolley’s inspiration for his bill came from one of his male constituents who is morally opposed to birth control, and wanted to find a small group insurance plan for himself and his family that didn’t include coverage for those services:

Jolley said the measure is the result of a request from a constituent, Dr. Dominic Pedulla, an Oklahoma City cardiologist who describes himself as a natural family planning medical consultant and women’s health researcher. [...]

Women are worse off with contraception because it suppresses and disables who they are, Pedulla said.

“Part of their identity is the potential to be a mother,” Pedulla said. “They are being asked to suppress and radically contradict part of their own identity, and if that wasn’t bad enough, they are being asked to poison their bodies.”

The bill has already cleared a Senate Health committee and now makes it way to Oklahoma’s full Senate. It is unlikely that either Jolley and Pedulla themselves rely on insurance coverage for hormonal contraceptive services — but if the measure becomes law, the two men could limit the health insurance options for the nearly two million women who live in Oklahoma.

Of course, contraception does not actually poison women. The FDA approved the first oral birth control pill in 1960, and that type of contraception is so safe that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends making it available without a prescription, as it is in most other countries around the world. Furthermore, considering that over 99 percent of women of reproductive age have used some form of birth control, the Oklahoma women who rely on insurance coverage for their contraception would likely disagree with Pedulla’s assertion that it “suppresses and radically contradicts part of their own identity.”

In reality, access to affordable birth control is a critical economic issue for women. When women have control over their reproductive choices, it allows them to achieve economic goals like completing their education, becoming financially independent, or keeping a job. But birth control can carry high out-of-pocket costs, and over half of young women say they haven’t used their contraceptive method as directed because of cost prohibitions. Nonetheless, Republican lawmakers have repeatedly pushed measures to allow employers to drop coverage for birth control.

An Oklahoma state Senate committee rejected a measure that “would have repealed a 1987 law that prevents cities and towns from enacting tobacco use restrictions stricter than that of the state” by a 2-6 vote on Monday — drawing sharp rebukes from public health advocates who see the legislation’s failure as a political concession to Big Tobacco, and even drawing the ire of the state’s GOP Gov. Mary Fallin, who has called on lawmakers to pass legislation aimed at curbing Oklahoma’s smoking-related public health care costs.

“This is a victory for tobacco lobbyists and the tobacco industry,” said Alex Weintz, Fallin’s communications director. “It’s a defeat for the state of Oklahoma and anyone who cares about improving our health.”

As OKNews reports, the debate over SB 36 revealed a clear correlation between the state senators’ votes and the amount of money they received from the tobacco lobby:

The debate on the measure turned into a showdown between Sen. Frank Simpson, R-Ardmore, the only senator to sign a pledge to refuse all contributions, meals and gifts from the tobacco industry, and Sen. Rob Johnson, who is listed as the No. 1 recipient on a website that tracks legislators receiving money from tobacco lobbyists.

Johnson, R-Yukon, received about $11,295 in campaign contributions and gifts from those who were identified as tobacco lobbyists since 2006, according to the website tobaccomoney.com, which was started last year by Doug Matheny, the former director of tobacco prevention at the state Health Department. [...]

“From the tobacco companies themselves, I don’t think I’ve received that much comparatively to other interests,” he said. “It has absolutely nothing to do with it. I’ve taken max contributions from somebody and completely have been opposed to an idea they’ve had.”

Johnson and his fellow reform opponents implied that SB 36 would be a burden on businesses, since it would discourage Oklahoma residents from patronizing establishments that don’t allow smoking. But that logic completely ignores the very real — and very significant — costs of the state’s smoking epidemic. National smoking-related medical costs amount to $200 billion in preventable spending every year, and studies have confirmed that states making small investments in smoking cessation policies see massive economic returns. In Oklahoma specifically, where about 5,800 people die each year from smoking, every household pays an estimated $556 annually in state and federal taxes to cover smoking-caused medical costs.

Ultimately, the measure’s defeat is a reminder of the outsized influence that Big Tobacco continues to enjoy. Fallin has vowed to continue her fight to encourage anti-smoking efforts in Oklahoma, and will potentially call for a popular referendum on SB 36 — but if she does, the people of Oklahoma can expect a titanic statewide lobbying campaign by the tobacco industry.

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.

Oklahoma Gov. Marry Fallin (R) has refused to accept Obamacare’s optional expansion of the Medicaid program, denying an estimated 130,000 of her low-income constituents access to health care. And the direct impact of the GOP governor’s decision is evident even within her own extended family.

Fallin’s aunt, 85-year-old Dorthea Copeland, runs a free health clinic in Pottawatomie County, an area of Oklahoma that has an 18 percent poverty rate and a 28 percent uninsurance rate. Copeland’s clinic provides care for the Oklahomans who fall into the coverage gap between earning too little to be able to purchase private insurance and earning too much to qualify for Medicaid assistance — the same group of people who stand to gain coverage under Obamacare’s expansion of the public program.

But since Copeland’s niece has refused to raise the Medicaid program’s eligibility level, the clinic is currently overloaded with low-income patients who don’t currently qualify for government assistance. As Oklahoma Watch reports, Copeland’s volunteer staff — who served over 850 patients last year — are now struggling to keep up with the increasing demand for health services:

On any given Thursday evening, about 20 people pitch in. But it’s not quite enough to keep up with rising demand. On this night, five people will be told they’ll need to wait at least a week to see a doctor.

“It’s getting worse all the time,” says Ty Johnson, who shows up every week to handle patient intake. She bustles about the crowded clinic with a clipboard, calling out names and handing out paperwork. “We’re getting more and more people.”

Not everyone makes the cut. To qualify, patients must be Pottawatomie County residents, must have no other form of insurance coverage and must fall below income caps that are considerably lower than those contained in the Obama expansion plan.

“There is just more need than we can handle,” says Stephanie Scrutchins, who determines eligibility.

Under Oklahoma’s current law, families can’t get Medicaid coverage unless they have dependent children and their annual income falls below $6,996 for a family of four — one of the lowest eligibility thresholds in the nation. The health law seeks to expand the program to include families of four earning up to $30,656 each year. But Fallin says it would be too costly to add additional low-income residents to her state’s Medicaid rolls, despite the fact that outside reports estimate expanding Medicaid would actually save Oklahoma nearly $48 million per year.

When Oklahoma Watch asked Copeland what she thought about her niece’s decision to reject the Medicaid expansion, she didn’t comment. “You know, I don’t get into politics,” she said. “I just run my little business here. Hopefully, we’ll do all that we can for the people that come in. Right now I’m looking at all the returns I’ve got for next Thursday night, wondering how in the world we’ll get them done.”

Oklahoma State Rep. Mike Reynolds (R) has already unsuccessfully attempted to pass a far-right “personhood” bill to endow embryos with “all the rights, privileges and immunities” of other U.S. citizens. That bill failed without coming up for a vote in April, but Reynolds is ready to try again in the new legislative session.

According to the Tulsa World, the state lawmaker has authored a new bill that is “virtually identical” to last year’s failed personhood measure, which women’s health advocates warned could actually result in outlawing some forms of contraception and invitro fertilization:

The bill states that life begins at conception — which is already part of state law — and that “unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being,” and that Oklahoma law “shall be interpreted and construed to acknowledge on behalf of the unborn child at every stage of development all the rights, privileges, and immunities available to other persons, citizens, and residents of this state.”

Pregnant women are exempt from prosecution for “indirectly harming her unborn child” and miscarriages.

Personhood measures are so extreme that they don’t even have the full support of the anti-choice community. A similar proposal in Virginia faced strong opposition from Republicans during the last session, and personhood initiatives across the country have failed to gain traction over the past year.

In addition to the failure of Reynold’s first anti-abortion bill, Oklahoma’s personhood movement was dealt another blow last year when the Supreme Court confirmed that defining an embryo as a citizen is “clearly unconstitutional.”

Nonetheless, far-right lawmakers like Reynolds are pressing on in their quest to redefine personhood to include zygotes. And the radical anti-choice agenda is looking for inroads on a national level, too — Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is among the Congressmembers supporting a fetal personhood bill this year.

A Tulsa-area Planned Parenthood clinic will be forced to close its doors at the end of this month because it can no longer afford to maintain operations after state officials slashed its budget. In October, the Oklahoma State Department of Health decided to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood by ending its contract with the WIC program, essentially stripping the organization of the funds it used to provide health services for low-income women.

Jill June, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, sent an email to the health clinic’s staff to let them know that the Planned Parenthood affiliate will close on February 1:

Six Planned Parenthood employees in Tulsa who worked with WIC clients have already been laid off, according to the email.

The westside center primarily served WIC clients and keeping it open is no longer financially possible, June said.

“It’s extremely important to let our patients know that we will continue to be here for them, in the Tulsa area, no matter what,” she wrote. “This has been a challenging time for all of us. We will continue to do all we can to help the women, men and families who rely on us for care.”

Although state officials claim their decision to sever ties with Planned Parenthood is purely for “business reasons,” the organization maintains that the move is a politicized attack similar to anti-abortion activists’ attempts to strip funding from Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas and Arizona. On Christmas Eve, a federal judge denied Planned Parenthood’s request to block state officials from denying WIC funding, ensuring that Oklahoma will be able to move forward with its quest to defund the organization in the new year.

Planned Parenthood has been the largest independent contractor with Oklahoma’s WIC program — which provides food vouchers for low-income mothers and their children — for the past 18 years. The Planned Parenthood affiliates in Oklahoma do not perform abortions; rather, they are available to provide preventative care, family planning services, and referrals for abortion services to their low-income clients.

Ending the WIC contract puts three of the state’s four Planned Parenthood clinics in jeopardy, and some low-income women say they may end up skipping the health services they need if those health clinics remain closed.