After Gov. Chris Christie (R) slashed $7.5 million from women’s health programs in 2010 — mainly to prevent the money from going to Planned Parenthood — several health clinics in the state were forced to close. Now, New Jersey lawmakers are pushing to restore state funding for those family planning clinics, pointing out that many women rely on them for their primary care.

“I know the governor has found the money — at least $12 million — for a special election in October,” state Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D) pointed out, referring to an expensive special election to replace the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D) that the governor decided to hold just a few weeks before the regular general election. “So I think the women of New Jersey deserve to have their family planning centers open and operating.”

This week, a Senate budget committee approved two measures to help address the shortage of women’s health resources in New Jersey. One measure would restore the $7.5 million back to struggling family planning centers, and the other would extend Medicaid coverage for family planning services to additional low-income women. The senators who spearheaded the measures noted that Christie’s budget cuts have forced six women’s health clinics to close. Family planning providers saw 33,000 fewer patients in 2012 compared to 2009, nearly a 25 percent drop.

“Clinics where many of the state’s most needy women receive basic health care services such as mammograms, gynecological exams and blood-pressure screenings have had to shutter their doors — and those clinics that have been able to remain open have had to reduce their operating hours, limiting low-income women’s access to these facilities,” state Sen. Linda Greenstein (D), another sponsor of one of the measures, explained.

New Jersey Democrats have been fighting to restore the women’s health funding for the past three years, and have so far been unsuccessful. Last year, the governor vetoed similar bills that would have bolstered family planning resources in the state. Christie has maintained that it’s important to prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving state funding because the national women’s health organization provides abortion care.

But other states have foreshadowed the negative effects of slashing family planning funds simply to target Planned Parenthood. In Texas, where anti-abortion lawmakers made huge cuts to women’s health programs and kicked Planned Parenthood out of the state’s Medicaid program, thousands of women have lost access to essential preventative health care. An estimated 200,000 low-income women in Texas have already lost or could soon lose access to birth control, and the state’s health department has projected a sharp rise in unintended births.

Following the 2006 introduction of a vaccine against cancer-causing human papillomavirus, rates of HPV in teen girls have plummeted to nearly half, a new study found on Wednesday.

The Journal of Infectious Diseases reports that HPV infection in girls ages 14 to 19 dropped from 11.5 percent for the years 2003-2006 to 5.1 percent for 2007-2010. Since HPV can lead to cervical cancer, the results also could herald a drop in cancer rates for girls in this age range, too.

The study illustrates a great advancement in public health, but it also underlines the consequences for those huge numbers of women and girls who are still not getting their vaccinations; in 2011, only 35 percent of girls ages 13-17 received all three shots in the vaccination series, and only 30 percent of women ages 19-26 had received the vaccine.

Fear-mongering and conspiracy theories over the side effects of the HPV vaccine are a major reason that inoculation rates are so low. While the Centers for Disease control have deemed the shots safe, and especially effective for young girls, 16 percent of parents report not letting their children get the shots for fear of side effects. In fact, incidents of cancer from HPV are rising in the U.S., and the CDC says rates of inoculation are “unacceptably low.”

These dangerous theories are fueled by conservatives like Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), who campaigned on her insistence that HPV vaccines cause “mental retardation.” Bachmann also got her fellow presidential contender Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) to backpeddal his support for his state’s legislation that required Texan girls to get the vaccine. Another Republican Governor, South Carolina’s Gov. Nikki Haley, vetoed a bill that would have made HPV vaccines free of cost to girls in her state.

The Texas Senate approved SB 5, a measure that would tighten restrictions on abortion clinics, late on Tuesday night. The legislation now heads to the GOP-dominated House. If SB 5 becomes law, the vast majority of the abortion clinics in the Lone Star state will be forced to close their doors — potentially dropping the state’s abortion providers down from 47 to just five.

Texas’ legislative session is actually already over. But lawmakers are currently considering SB 5 because Gov. Rick Perry (R) forced a vote on the anti-abortion bill in a special session. SB 5 combines several different pieces of anti-abortion legislation that failed to advance during the regular session into one omnibus bill.

In a lengthy debate over the legislation on the Senate floor, state Sen. Kirk Watson (D) pointed out the anti-choice provisions in SB 5 lost traction during the regular session because, under the two-thirds rules, the Senate didn’t have enough votes to consider the legislation. But Texas’ Lieutenant Governor suspended that rule for the special session, giving lawmakers a better chance of being able to rush through SB 5. “It’s wrong to try to resurrect them now through a loophole,” Watson sad. “If this is going to be our new process — using the special session to ram through any partisan red meat that fails in the regular session — it makes a mockery of the traditions that so many on this floor brag about.”

Lawmakers dropped the provision in SB 5 that would have criminalized abortions after 20 weeks. But the legislation still seeks to impose unnecessary, burdensome requirements on abortion clinics throughout Texas. Clinics would be required to obtain admitting privileges from local hospitals, make costly updates to their buildings, and administer the abortion pill with a doctor present. Similar laws have forced health clinics in other states to either shut down or stop offering abortion services.

“This bill will reshape the abortion landscape in Texas,” Elizabeth Nash, a state policy analyst at the Guttmacher Institute, told Bloomberg News. “This would make it much more difficult for women to have access to women’s health care, because longer distances mean more time off for work and more challenges in arranging child care.”

During the general session, lawmakers reached a tentative truce on women’s issues, and Republicans even agreed to work to restore some family planning cuts that were approved last year. But that hasn’t proved to be the case for the special session, which goes until June 25. SB 5 is expected to pass the House, where 95 of 150 members are Republicans.

Personhood Ohio, a far-right group attempting to outlaw all abortions by defining life as beginning at conception, is still attempting to get a “personhood” amendment on the state ballot after falling short last year. And the leader of the group, Patrick Johnston, is trying out a few creative fundraising efforts to raise money for Personhood Ohio’s outreach efforts.

In a recent email blast, Johnston asked his fellow Ohioans to help support his personhood cause by buying some assault weapons from his personal collection. “I’m selling some of my favorite things — some powerful rifles and ammo,” the Personhood Ohio director wrote.

“I’m a firm believer that the Second Amendment protects the future of freedom, but not as much as justice for the preborn,” Johnston’s email continued. “The shedding of innocent blood will bring God’s wrath on the land — and then you can wave freedom goodbye. So protecting Ohio’s children is more important than securing your right to keep and bear arms.”

Johnston put three of his own firearms, as well as 2,550 rounds of ammo, up for auction on his Facebook page. The Ohio-based blog Plunderbund reports that Johnston’s guns all use the same kind of ammunition as an AK 47. Two of them include high capacity magazines and one has a drum that holds 100 rounds. In the past, Johnston has attempted to raise money by offering to enter people into a raffle to win $5,000 if they signed onto a personhood petition.

The personhood movement is struggling in states other than Ohio, too. Personhood advocates’ push to endow zygotes with the rights of U.S. citizens hasn’t won support from other Republicans or other anti-abortion groups. The Supreme Court has confirmed that personhood is “clearly unconstitutional,” and it’s failed to take hold in conservative states like Oklahoma and Mississippi. The one notable exception is North Dakota, where the state legislature passed a personhood amendment that will be on the ballot in 2014.

Johnston construes it as “justice for the preborn,” but legal abortion services is a constitutional right just like gun ownership — although a woman’s ability to exercise that right currently varies widely depending on the state where she lives. Across the country, there are more waiting periods to get an abortion than there are to get a gun. And even outside of waiting period requirements, the other types of anti-abortion restrictions that have been enacted on the state level have ensured that it’s much harder to get an abortion than it is to purchase a firearm.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives will vote on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, a measure spearheaded by Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) that would cut off legal access to abortion services at 20 weeks after fertilization. It represents the most restrictive abortion bill to come to a vote in either chamber over the past decade. Here’s what you need to know about this attack on women’s reproductive rights — and how it fits into a broader, coordinated nationwide campaign to slowly chip away at abortion access:

It’s based on the scientifically-disputed theory that fetuses can feel pain before the third trimester of pregnancy.

So-called “fetal pain” measures are based on junk science that represents a minority position among medical professionals. Most doctors don’t believe that fetuses can feel pain until much later in pregnancy, after the point of viability (generally considered to be around 24 weeks), and scientific research has repeatedly confirmed this position. Nevertheless, abortion opponents have successfully stoked emotional outrage surrounding later-term abortion — particularly following the high-profile murder trial of illegal abortion provider Kermit Gosnell — by twisting the facts to make it appear that these abortions are always barbaric procedures.

It has sparked more controversy over Republicans’ attitudes toward rape.

The original version of Franks’ legislation did not include an exception for victims of rape or incest. Defending the lack of an exception in these cases, the Arizona congressman last week claimed that “the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” Franks is just the latest Republican to make an offensive comment about rape victims, and his comments inspired comparisons to former Rep. Todd Akin’s (R-MO) infamous assertion that women don’t often get pregnant from “legitimate rape” because the body “has ways of shutting that whole thing down.” Following the controversy that erupted from his statements, Franks revised the legislation at the last minute to include an exemption for survivors of rape and incest — but only if rape victims first report the sexual crime to the police, and if incest victims are minors.

Abortions after 20 weeks are already extremely rare, and the women who need them are usually in the most desperate of circumstances.

Although Franks claimed he didn’t need to legislate rape victims’ reproductive rights because the instances of pregnancies resulting from rape are “very low,” the instances of abortions after 20 weeks are actually much lower than that. Pregnancy results from rape an estimated 5 percent of the time, while abortions after 20 weeks represent just 1.5 percent of all abortions. The women who seek out this type of later abortion procedure tend to fall into one of two categories: the economically disadvantaged women who need to delay abortion until they can save up the money for it, and the women who discover serious fetal health issues only after their pregnancy has advanced. Criminalizing abortion after 20 weeks will force some women to give birth to fetuses with no brain function — or other types of fatal anomalies — and watch their children suffer outside of the womb during their short lives.

The national legislation initially started out as an abortion restriction for the women who live in Washington, DC.

Franks has repeatedly attempted to impose his anti-abortion agenda on the women living in the nation’s capitol. Because the District of Columbia does not have its own representation in Congress, lawmakers from other areas often use it as their legislative playground. Franks’ fetal pain measure failed last year, but that didn’t stop him from re-introducing it — and eventually expanding it to apply to women in every state. The Republican lawmaker said that Gosnell’s crimes compelled him to restrict abortion access not just for DC women, but for women across the entire country.

Read more

As a map from the Huffington Post details, there are currently more states that impose a waiting period on women seeking an abortion than states that impose a waiting period on people seeking to buy a gun. And there isn’t much overlap between those policies, so the majority of states that require women to wait at least 24 hours before obtaining legal abortion services don’t require people to wait any time at all before purchasing a firearm:

A recent study found that imposing waiting periods on abortion care leads to “excessive emotional hardships” for women seeking to terminate a pregnancy. Requiring women to wait a 24-hour period forces them to make two trips to a health clinic, which can prove to be too difficult for the women who don’t have time to take off of work, money to pay for childcare, or means of transportation.

Of course, although waiting periods provide a direct comparison to gun policy, that’s not the only type of anti-choice law that limits access to abortion care. Republican-dominated states also impose restrictions on abortion providers that force health clinics to close their doors, require doctors to tell women scientifically inaccurate information about abortion risks, force women to look at images of their fetus on an ultrasound before being allowed to proceed with an abortion, prevent women from using their own insurance coverage to pay for abortion care, require women to seek out “counseling” at right-wing crisis pregnancy centers that attempt to dissuade them from choosing abortion, or ban the procedure altogether before the cut-off defined under Roe v. Wade.

In fact, as state lawmakers introduce increasingly stringent restrictions on women’s health, 2013 is shaping up to be the worst year in recent history for reproductive freedom. Jennifer Davlen, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Reproductive Freedom Project, explains that the mounting pile of state-level abortion regulations are part of a national strategy to attack abortion access from all angles. “The purpose of these laws has always been to stack these restrictions one on top of the other,” Davlen explained on a call with reporters last week. “The goal is making the wall so high that it will be impossible for women to get the care they need.”

Read more

Over the past two weeks, Wisconsin Republicans have fast-tracked several anti-abortion measures they hope to squeeze in before this year’s legislative session ends. Gov. Scott Walker (R) has already thrown his support behind some of the abortion restrictions — but the same isn’t true for any of the major medical associations in the state.

As the Capital Times notes, Wisconsin’s proposed abortion restrictions — which include a bill that would shut down abortion clinics and mandate potentially invasive ultrasound procedures, a bill to prevent abortions based on gender, and a bill to prevent insurance coverage of abortion in Obamacare’s health insurance marketplaces — don’t have the backing of leading doctors’ groups. The Wisconsin Medical Society, the Wisconsin Association of Local Health Departments and Boards, the Wisconsin Academy of Family Physicians, the Wisconsin Hospital Association, and the Wisconsin Public Health Association have all declined to endorse the measures.

Susan Armacost, the legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, told the Capital Times that the doctors and medical leaders who haven’t announced their support for the abortion restrictions are being “short-sighted.”

“We would remind the medical community that abortion is unlike any other medical procedure. Its only goal is to destroy a human life,” Armacost said. “I would think if they stopped to think about this, they would realize it is not like setting a broken wrist or taking out appendix.”

Aramcost’s comments reflect the anti-abortion community’s push to segregate abortion services from the rest of women’s health care, an indirect method of restricting women’s access to reproductive health services. That tactic that has been largely successful, as many states lack adequate numbers of abortion providers now that mounting piles of restrictions have made it too difficult to practice abortion care.

But the professional medical community stands in opposition to this characterization of women’s health. Earlier this month, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a national organization representing thousands of women’s health experts, came out against state-level abortion restrictions that interfere in their work. And as anti-abortion legislation has gotten more extreme over the past several years, increasing numbers of nonpartisan medical associations have chosen to wade into politics by expressing their opposition to abortion bills.

In April, Virginia’s Board of Health approved new regulations intended to force abortion clinics to shut down. It’s already working: later that month, a 40-year-old abortion clinic in the state announced that it would be closing its doors. But now, women’s health advocates are fighting back.

The Falls Church Healthcare Center has filed the first lawsuit challenging the burdensome clinic restrictions. In its suit, the clinic points out that there’s no good reason to hold abortion providers to medically unnecessary standards that will force them to make expensive renovations, like widening their buildings’ doorways. The Falls Church organization says that the new, tighter regulations will require it to spend $2 million on renovating its century-old clinic building.

“We are committed to providing women’s healthcare to the under-served population in northern Virginia,” Rosemary Codding, the center’s director, told the Times Dispatch. “They’re taking away the rights of these women, and I have to stand up for them.”

The organization’s lawsuit also alleges that Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R), who is currently Virginia’s GOP candidate for governor, fed the state’s supposedly nonpartisan health board false information about the regulations. Falls Church Healthcare Center believes that the anti-choice lawmaker told board members that they didn’t have the legal authority to exempt existing clinics from the new law, even though that’s not the case. Other reports have suggested that Cuccinelli essentially threatened board members into approving the new rules.

Leveling burdensome regulations on abortion providers, with the ultimate goal of forcing clinics to shut down when they’re unable to comply, is a popular anti-choice tactic to indirectly attack women’s reproductive rights. Medical professionals agree that these type of laws — known as the Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers, or TRAP — aren’t actually necessary to ensure women’s safety. “We’ve been re-inspected twice, and we have a license to operate through 2014,” Codding said, pointing out that the Falls Church clinic is already providing safe care to women and doesn’t need to make costly updates to its facility.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a national doctors’ group representing thousands of OB-GYNs across the country, recently issued an official statement criticizing TRAP laws for “imposing a political agenda on medical practice.”

Myriad Genetics, the biotech company whose patents on naturally-occurring human genes were invalidated on Thursday by the Supreme Court, saw its public stock tumble as competitors announced that they would be offering cheaper alternatives to Myriad’s BRCAnalysis cancer test.

While Myriad’s stock initially rose as investors took comfort in the Supreme Court’s concurrent ruling that companies could still patent synthetic or man-made DNA, it quickly fell back down to earth as competitors announced their intentions to make cheaper cancer tests:

Women who have mutations on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes are at significantly higher lifetime risk for developing breast and ovarian cancers. Since Myriad had a patent on those genes for the last 17 years, the company held a complete monopoly on the genetic testing market for the cancers. Myriad’s so-called BRCAnalysis runs anywhere from $500 for the simplest gene analysis to $4000 for the most extensive ones.

Those prices prove prohibitively expensive for many women, since there are significant insurance coverage gaps for genetic testing. But the Supreme Court’s decision allows companies other than Myriad to enter the marketplace and lower prices — and just hours after the ruling, several had already announced their intention to do so.

Modern Healthcare reports that Ambry Genetics blasted out an email to genetic counselors across the United States in which they promised a far cheaper BRCA test. The company says that its most expensive and detailed BRCA analysis will only cost $2200 — about half of what Myriad charges.

Other biotech firms such as Quest Diagnostics and GeneDx also said they would be getting into the cancer testing business as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s decision. While those companies haven’t announced their rates, industry observers expect prices to be lower than Myriad’s BRCAnalysis.

“For genetic counselors, the thought of patenting some type of human molecule just goes against common sense to us … We saw the effects on patients, where the costs of most genetic tests have fallen in recent years, but this test increased in cost,” said Rebecca Nagy, president of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, in an interview with Modern Healthcare.

Across the country, states’ legislative sessions are drawing to a close. Over the past several months, lawmakers have been busy enacting over 300 provisions to restrict reproductive freedom — but in some states, they’re not done yet. Even though state legislators are running out of time in the 2013 session, the following states are fast-tracking anti-abortion measures they hope to push through before adjourning:

1. WISCONSIN: Abortion opponents in Wisconsin have successfully pushed through SB 206, a measure introduced at the beginning of June, in a matter of weeks. SB 206 would require women to undergo a potentially invasive ultrasound procedure and force one of the state’s last abortion clinics to close its doors. Women’s health advocates have accused the state legislature of rushing through the bill too quickly so its opponents won’t have enough time to mobilize against it. On Wednesday, in the midst of a contentious debate over SB 206 on the Senate floor, Republicans cut off the debate and forced a vote on the legislation — even among Democratic lawmakers’ protests that the discussion wasn’t over. It passed, and now heads to Gov. Scott Walker (R), who has already promised to sign it.

2. TEXAS: The legislative session in the Lone Star state has already ended, but that doesn’t mean Texas women are safe from assaults on their reproductive rights. Gov. Rick Perry (R) has called a special session to give lawmakers a chance to consider legislation that hasn’t been able to advance yet, after anti-choice lawmakers pressured him to give them a chance to keep trying to push through abortion restrictions. This year, Democrats successfully blocked at least 24 anti-abortion bills introduced during the regular session. But they may not be able to do so in the current special session, which is operating under different rules that allow for less debate. Now, Republican lawmakers may be able to successfully advance SB 5, a sweeping anti-choice measure that would criminalize abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, shut down 80 percent of the state’s abortion clinics, and limit women’s access to the abortion pill.

3. OHIO: Lawmakers in Ohio are currently engaged in budget negotiations — and abortion opponents have attached amendments to the proposed budget that would defund Planned Parenthood, shut down abortion clinics, and redirect state funding to right-wing “crisis pregnancy centers” that mislead women about their reproductive options. Earlier this week, a coalition of Ohio Republicans also introduced a separate abortion bill that combines several egregious attacks on women’s health into one measure. HB 200 would — among other things — mandate invasive ultrasounds and require women to cover the additional cost of the procedure, force women to wait 48 hours before accessing abortion services, and require doctors to tell their patients about a widely debunked link between abortion and breast cancer.

4. NORTH CAROLINA: At the end of May, the North Carolina legislature approved new abortion restrictions — including a measure preventing women from using their own insurance plans to cover abortion care — right before a deadline that non-budget bills must meet in order to stay alive in the next session. But even though the legislative focus has now turned to the state budget, that hasn’t stopped Republicans from continuing to push anti-abortion measures. Lawmakers have tacked on a budget amendment to allocate health care funds to crisis pregnancy centers, despite the fact that they don’t actually offer the full range of women’s health services, like contraception or abortion referrals. The new budget priorities, which also include tax breaks for the wealthy and cuts for other social service programs, have sparked mass protests at the state capitol building this week.