Oklahoma residents are still recovering from this past week’s devastating tornadoes, which killed over 20 people and likely incurred billions of dollars in damages in Moore and Shawnee. But their elected officials are currently focusing on some other priorities that fall outside of disaster relief. On Wednesday, Oklahoma state senators approved a bill that would strip funding from the state’s Planned Parenthood clinics.

As the Huffington Post reports, Senate Bill 900 doesn’t actually specifically mention the name of the national women’s health organization. But, since the legislation would reallocate the state’s family planning funds to public providers and hospitals, Planned Parenthood — which is a private organization — would effectively lose the funding that used to go toward those services.

The bill passed on Wednesday by a 33 to 8 vote, and now heads to the House. At least one Republican in the House told the Huffington Post that he plans to vote against it. “To defund a program like Planned Parenthood would be a mistake. They perform a valuable service as far as breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, parenting classes, many things that benefit our state that we’re sorely in need of,” State Rep. Doug Cox (R) explained.

This is hardly the first time that Oklahoma has indirectly attacked Planned Parenthood’s funding. Last year, the state’s Department of Health decided to end its WIC contract with Oklahoma’s Planned Parenthood affiliate — effectively cutting off the state funding that the organization relied on to provide health services to low-income women in the Tulsa area. Planned Parenthood tried to block Oklahoma officials from arbitrarily ending the 18-year contract, but their request was denied by a federal judge. As a result, Planned Parenthood was forced to lay off staff and shut down one of its Tulsa health clinics.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the only attack on women’s health that Oklahoma lawmakers have advanced recently. In February, a state senator attempted to push through a bill that would have allowed employers to deny birth control coverage to their workers for any reason. Anti-choice legislators in Oklahoma have also repeatedly pushed “personhood” measures to endow embryos with the full rights of U.S. citizens, which would outlaw all abortions and some forms of birth control.

For more than a year, Texas lawmakers have been on a crusade against Planned Parenthood that has resulted in deep cuts to family planning services that thousands of women rely on. But, particularly after the state’s health department projected a sharp rise in unintended births as a direct result of the budget cuts, Texas Republicans are finally starting to regret that move. In an attempt to appease the voters who have attacked them for undermining low-income women’s preventative health resources, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are now quietly working to restore the family planning funding they slashed.

As the Texas Tribune reports, the Democrats and Republicans in the state have struck an uneasy balance. Democrats have promised to stop fighting to restore state funding to Planned Parenthood, while Republicans have pledged to stop imposing additional barriers to women’s health care access:

“The major difference is we’re not fighting about it, we’re just doing what’s right for women and the state,” state Rep. Sarah Davis, R-West University Place, said last month at a Texas Tribune symposium on health care.

There has not been a drawn-out public debate on abortion or women’s health in either chamber this legislative session. None of the 24 abortion-related bills filed have reached the House or Senate floor. And Davis, the only Republican member of the House Women’s Health Caucus, brokered a bipartisan “grand bargain,” as lawmakers refer to it, to prevent amendments to the House budget bill that could have jeopardized an agreement to restore women’s health dollars.

For some Republicans, this bargain hinged on the ballot box: Davis said several of her colleagues faced blistering attacks after last session’s family planning cuts — an effort, in part, to drive Planned Parenthood out of business — shuttered clinics in their districts that were not affiliated with abortion providers.

Davis told the Texas Tribune that she is committed to providing adequate resources for family planning services for low-income women, and the best way to get that done is to “remove emotion” from the legislative process. According to Davis, the recent arguments about abortion and Planned Parenthood that fueled the legislature’s decision to slash those resources “did not advance the ball,” but rather “threw family planning into a tailspin.”

She’s right. Since the state cut its family planning budget by two-thirds, 53 family planning clinics have been forced to close their doors and an estimated 144,000 fewer women have received preventative health care. So now, in the state’s tentative 2014-15 budget, lawmakers are considering devoting even more money for women’s health services than the state was allocating to that area before the 2011 budget cuts.

But, in order to get Republicans on board, that funding is still being strictly designated to clinics that don’t provide abortion services. Texas legislators may be coming around on some aspects of women’s health, but fights over abortion continue to simmer under the surface. Gov. Rick Perry (R) — who has maintained that outlawing all abortion is his ultimate “goal” — has thrown his weight behind a 20-week abortion ban, and lawmakers are considering a measure that could force some abortion clinics in the state to close. Although lawmakers are finally realizing that low-income women have the right to accessible birth control and family planning counseling, they’re not concerned about those same women’s access to affordable abortion care.

On Friday morning, President Obama addressed a crowd of about 1,000 women’s health advocates at Planned Parenthood’s annual gala. Obama is the first sitting president to address the national organization.

In his speech, Obama touted his landmark health reform law, which has expanded affordable reproductive services for women by requiring insurers to cover birth control without a co-pay and has helped the president’s health policies remain popular particularly with female voters. He also expressed his gratitude for the important family planning services that Planned Parenthood provides. Obama pointed out that the organization is under serious attack across the country, and noted that when Republicans talk about cutting Planned Parenthood’s funding, “they’re talking about telling women: ‘you’re on your own.’ ”

But Obama promised to fight against the war that the right wing is currently waging against reproductive rights in general and Planned Parenthood specifically. “There’s nothing conservative about the govt injecting itself into decisions made between a woman and her doctor,” the president said to loud cheers from the crowd. “As long as we have to fight to protect a woman’s health decisions…you’ll have a President who will be right there with you.”

Post-election polling has demonstrated that the vast majority of Americans don’t support defunding Planned Parenthood, a position that helped boost Obama’s popularity among voters during his second presidential campaign. Women’s health issues were a decisive factor in Obama’s re-election. In advance of the November election, 64 percent of all voters said they heard something about Mitt Romney’s intent to strip funding from the national organization, and 62 percent disagreed with that position.

In a statement in advance of Obama’s address, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards noted that the president has been celebrated as a staunch supporter of reproductive freedom throughout his time in office. “President Obama has done more than any president in history for women’s health and rights,” Richards said.

Obama was initially slated to give the keynote address on Thursday night. He ended up pushing it back so he could travel to Texas to attend the dedication for the new George W. Bush Library and a memorial service for the victims of the recent explosion at a West, TX fertilizer plant. When news broke that he was canceling his Thursday appearance, right-wing outlets jumped on the news as supposed evidence that Obama was wary to connect himself to Planned Parenthood during the ongoing murder trial of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortion doctor accused of murdering live babies in his illegal clinic. When the White House made it clear that the president would simply appear at the organization’s gala on the following day, conservative outlets still suggested his appearance might be inappropriate in light of the high-profile murder trial, which abortion opponents have attempted to construe as evidence that abortion clinics need to be better regulated.

Ohio’s anti-choice lawmakers are hoping the third time will be the charm in their crusade to strip funding from Planned Parenthood affiliates. The legislature is currently reviving an effort to “re-prioritize” family planning funding in the state, which would serve to slash about $2 million dollars from the 32 Planned Parenthood clinics currently operating in the state. This type of legislation has already been debated in the legislature twice over the past year.

Abortion opponents in the state are seeking to revise Gov. John Kasich’s (R) new budget bill to reallocate Planned Parenthood’s funding to so-called “crisis pregnancy centers,” or CPCs. The executive director of Ohio Right to Life, John Coats, has described CPCs as “well-equipped and deserving institutions that support healthier lives and not death,” suggesting that Ohioans would be better served by choosing those organizations over Planned Parenthood.

But CPCs are simply front groups for the right-wing agenda, and they don’t actually provide the same range of health services as Planned Parenthood’s clinics do. CPCs often don’t employ medical professionals, and don’t provide abortion services or abortion referrals. In fact, they actually offer misleading medical information in an attempt to coerce women out of their decision to terminate a pregnancy.

Planned Parenthood supporters in the state are fighting back. On Thursday and Friday, women’s health advocates testified before the Ohio House Finance and Appropriations Committee. Accusing lawmakers of “playing politics” with health care, women spoke about their own experiences receiving preventative care at Planned Parenthood clinics, urging politicians to stop targeting the national women’s health organization.

Unfortunately, Ohio is not alone. Even though family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood provide essential services to low-income women — often serving as those women’s primary care provider — they’re under attack in states across the country. Republican lawmakers continue to advance measures to strip funding from family planning resources. In states like Texas, where those efforts have successfully moved through the legislature, the diminished family planning funding has led to serious consequences — resulting in fewer health clinics, fewer women able to access the care they need, and a greater number of unplanned births.

The Virginia Board of Health voted 11-2 on Friday “to require abortion clinics to meet strict, hospital-style building codes” that many women’s health advocates say will put abortion providers out of business and prevent women from accessing essential medical services.

Pending final approval by conservative state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) and Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) — which is almost definite — Virginia will join other GOP-led states such as North Dakota, Mississippi, and Alabama in imposing stringent regulations meant to arbitrarily shut down abortion clinics.

The regulations — part of a nationwide anti-choice campaign to adopt so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP, laws — would require clinics that provide abortions to meet the same standards as outpatient hospital facilities, forcing many clinics to choose between expensive and medically unnecessary renovations such as widening halls and doorways or shutting down entirely. While the health board originally wished to grandfather existing clinics from having to comply with the new rules, Cuccinelli threatened to make its members foot the bill for any litigation that resulted from the law.

Friday’s vote represents the latest skirmish in an ongoing conservative war on abortion clinics. In the past three months, states have proposed an astonishing 694 provisions restricting or rolling back women’s reproductive rights. Efforts to shutter local abortion clinics disproportionately impact low-income women and significantly increase the incidence unintended pregnancies.

Abortion opponents in Arkansas are currently focused on targeting Planned Parenthood, apparently unconcerned about the fact that their crusade could actually have much broader consequences in areas unrelated to abortion care. On Tuesday, the state Senate voted to strip funding from the women’s health organization, advancing a measure that would effectively kill a comprehensive sex education program that Planned Parenthood currently provides for Arkansas’ public high school students.

Opponents of the measure point out that rather than eliminating abortion services, Republicans are actually targeting state grants that are awarded to Planned Parenthood specifically to fund its sexual health programming. “They’re worried about a few thousand dollars for a group trying to teach young people in this school district in Little Rock about HIV/AIDS and how to prevent it. And it’s just wrong,” one constituent, Eric Camp, pointed out during Tuesday’s debate.

Darrell Seward, a health teacher at one of Little Rock’s public high schools, told the Huffington Post that eliminating the sex ed program would have negative consequences for his students. Seward issued a challenge to state lawmakers to attend one of the classes, learn more about the curriculum, and see whether they continue to object so strongly to it:

Planned Parenthood does not receive any family planning money from the state, but the bill will end a state-funded HIV and STI prevention program that Planned Parenthood administers in Arkansas public high schools. Darrell Seward, the assistant football coach and health education teacher at Little Rock Central High School, said the program is invaluable to his students.

“I would challenge any legislator or politician in the state of Arkansas or higher to set foot in my classroom and listen to the curriculum and walk out and say it’s a bad program,” he told The Huffington Post in a phone interview. “This program has been one of the most well-received programs that our students have ever been engaged in. I am a Republican, but this is one issue I feel very strongly about, because I see the benefit for our kids.” [...]

“My question would be, if it’s not Planned Parenthood, why not?” he said. “Why shouldn’t they deliver this content? I just really cannot understand why any politician would do what they’re doing with this program when they’ve never actually seen it in play.”

Arkansas has some of the highest rates of teen pregnancy and HIV infection in the nation. State law does not currently require the public schools in Arkansas to provide sex ed courses that adhere to any kind of standards for medical accuracy.

So far this year, Arkansas’ anti-abortion state lawmakers have been singularly focused on restricting access to reproductive care. The state has already passed some of the most stringent abortion laws in the country, including an unconstitutional 12-week ban that likely faces an imminent court challenge. Planned Parenthood officials point out that if the GOP-controlled legislature is concerned about effective methods to lower the abortion rate, they might want to reconsider attacking one of the few sexual health resources available to young people in the state. Nevertheless, that logic hasn’t dissuaded abortion opponents from pursuing similar initiatives in North Dakota and Texas.

On Wednesday, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus published an editorial lambasting the mainstream media for “covering up” Planned Parenthood’s “support for infanticide.” According to Priebus, the national women’s health organization — in addition to providing contraceptive services, STD testing, cancer screenings, and reproductive care for millions of women across the country — is also in the business of murdering live babies. He claims that a recent committee hearing in Florida proves that Planned Parenthood officials support “the right to post-birth abortion.”

What’s “post-birth abortion”? What exactly happened in Florida? And how did this controversy explode in the right-wing media?

To understand the root of the current smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, it’s important to understand the context of the committee hearing that Priebus is referencing. That hearing was a debate over HB 1129, a politically-motivated piece of legislation seeking to ensure that any infant born alive “during or immediately after an attempted abortion” is entitled to all of the same rights “as any other child born alive in course of natural birth.” The “Infant Born Alive” measure rests upon the fundamentally flawed assumption that this type of situation is a real risk for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. In fact, Florida does not perform abortions after the fetus has reached viability, so the situation that HB 1129 intends to address is incredibly unlikely.

And the original version of the legislation went even further. In this hypothetical medical situation, where an infant is “born alive” after an incredibly late-term induced abortion, the woman would have also been stripped of all parental rights. The Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates opposed HB 1129 because of this particular provision, which they believe is simply intended to intimidate and shame women. Planned Parenthood officials pointed out that the implicit assumption is that women who choose abortion can’t possibly be fit to care for a child — and that’s not something that should be codified into state law.

Last week, a lobbyist representing Planned Parenthood, Alisa LaPolt Snow, testified about the organization’s opposition to that aspect of HB 1129. During the hearing, she was questioned by a panel of anti-abortion state lawmakers who demanded that she respond to questions about this highly unlikely hypothetical situation. According to sources from the organization, the Republican lawmaker who sponsored HB 1129 repeatedly insinuated that women who choose abortions cannot be trusted, defending the provision revoking parental rights because “there is at least suspicion that that biological mother may not have the best interest of that born infant in mind.” When posed with a hypothetical scenario in which “a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion,” Snow attempted to make the point that legislators don’t need to get in the middle of medical situations. “We believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” Snow said.

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So far this session, Arkansas Republicans have already pushed through some of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country. But state lawmakers aren’t finished with their attacks on reproductive rights. Now, the Arkansas legislature is attempting to strip funding from Planned Parenthood — and, intent on attacking the women’s health organization, Republicans are advancing a measure that could also have much broader consequences in the state.

The move to cut off public funding to Planned Parenthood would prevent the organization from continuing to provide sex education and STD prevention resources in Little Rock-area schools. And, since it would also target any organization that might refer women to Planned Parenthood for their reproductive care, it could also jeopardize the money that helps fund domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers in the state:

But Planned Parenthood officials warned that the measure would have unintended consequences by cutting off money to any person or entity referring a woman to an abortion provider. The proposal could end research grants to doctors or stop funding to domestic violence shelters if they refer women to abortion providers, the group warned.

The group noted that the bill also would bar the state from awarding grants to “affiliates” of abortion providers, a move that could affect anyone who contracts with Planned Parenthood or entities that provide abortion referrals.

“The Arkansas Legislature is once again putting politics ahead of the health and well-being of Arkansans,” Planned Parenthood of the Heartland President and CEO Jill June said in a statement released by the group. “Planned Parenthood is being singled out for political reasons, and the health of families in our state is being jeopardized along the way.”

The Republican party has had a complicated history with effectively addressing issues of domestic abuse and sexual assault. Last year’s election season came to be defined by GOP candidates making offensive comments about rape, and whether or not anti-choice Republicans would be willing to ensure abortion access for rape victims has become a particularly contentious debate. The GOP caucus has actually received multiple PR trainings to help lawmakers better talk about rape, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans from advancing policies — like this effort to defund Planned Parenthood — that actually undermine initiatives to address sexual violence.

Unfortunately, Arkansas Republicans aren’t the only lawmakers who are so focused on targeting Planned Parenthood that they end up threatening other areas of women’s health and safety. Across the country, GOP attacks on the women’s health organization are leading to fewer sexual education programs, fewer preventative resources like contraception and family planning counseling, and fewer publicly-funded health clinics. And in Arizona, Republicans pushing to defund Planned Parenthood may actually end up jeopardizing the entire state’s Medicaid expansion to extend health coverage to additional low-income people.

In states across the country, women rely on publicly-funded family planning clinics — such as their local Planned Parenthood affiliates — for their primary care needs. In fact, according to the Guttmacher Institute, women choose to go to family planning clinics even when other health care providers are available in their community, largely because some women feel like those clinics can better meet their reproductive needs. Over 40 percent of the women who seek out health services at family planning clinics are solely relying on that provider, and haven’t received any other type of care over the previous year:

But those type of clinics are under attack. Often specifically with the hopes of preventing those funds from being awarded to Planned Parenthood, which has become a symbol in the GOP’s ongoing crusade against reproductive health, Republicans lawmakers have waged a war against family planning funding over the past several years:

Needless to say, eliminating funding for family planning programs has stark consequences for the women who rely on publicly-funded clinics. That dynamic is perhaps most evident in Texas, where GOP officials have successfully slashed Title X funds and excluded Planned Parenthood from their state-level Medicaid program. Now, Texas is funding 176 fewer health clinics than it did in 2011 — forcing thousands of low-income women to find new doctors. Texas’ health department estimates that the cuts will result in 24,000 additional unplanned births in between 2014 and 2015.

Even though the majority of Americans don’t agree with Republicans’ quest to defund Planned Parenthood, abortion opponents across the country continue to find ways to target the women’s health organization — even at the expense of their own constituents. Republican lawmakers in Montana seem to be intent on joining the national trend, advancing a state budget that would strip over $4 million in Title X funding from Planned Parenthood and other community health clinics.

The state lawmakers leading the charge claim they want to prevent taxpayer money from going to Planned Parenthood because that funding will indirectly subsidize abortions. Of course, if Republicans are hoping to prevent abortions, eliminating family planning resources will have exactly the opposite effect. The state’s health department is warning that if the new budget goes into effect, it will lead to a 62 percent increase in unintended pregnancies and a 114 percent rise in abortions:

the Montana House unanimously passed a state budget that excludes these funds — some $4.5 million — accounting for 30 percent of the budgets for 20 community clinics and five Planned Parenthood Clinics in the state.

These clinics rely on Title X funding for reproductive and preventative health services, including cancer and sexually transmitted disease screening, STD treatment, contraception and health counseling. [...]

Without family planning services provided by Title X-funded clinics, the number of abortions in Montana would go up by 114 percent, while the number of unintended pregnancies will rise by 62 percent, according to the Montana Department of Health and Human Services.

The same situation is currently unfolding in Texas — where cuts to family planning services are projected to lead to an additional 24,000 unplanned births between 2014 and 2015, costing taxpayers an estimated $273 million in medical expenses and Medicaid coverage. Those numbers have convinced some of Texas’ GOP lawmakers to reconsider their push to eliminate preventative health resources, and Republicans may attempt to restore some of the funding this session.

The lawmakers in Montana may have a similar wake-up call. Although the state budget has already passed the House, there’s been a massive outcry to try to pressure the state Senate to reinstate the family planning funds in the final version of the legislation. According to the Associated Press, State Sen. David Wanzenreid (D) has already received more than 800 emails from constituents demanding that the Title X funding be reinstated.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time the Montana GOP has pushed to undermine preventative health services that could actually help prevent unintended pregnancies and abortions. Republicans are also attempting to place limits on sex education policies that “they believe are teaching bad morals” in public schools.