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.

A coalition of sexual violence prevention and women’s equality organizations are joining forces to pressure Facebook to take a stand against any messages that “trivialize or glorify” violence against women, which they say the company should recognize as gender-based hate speech. The activist groups — led by Women, Action & the Media, the Everyday Sexism Project, and author Soraya Chemaly — are asking Facebook to commit to removing this type of content from its platform. And until it does, they’re telling companies to pull their advertising from the site.

In an open letter to the organization, the groups point out that Facebook’s content moderators already police some images of women. In fact, images of mastectomies, breastfeeding mothers, and other non-sexualized depictions of women’s bodies are often removed from the site after being incorrectly labeled as pornographic. On the other hand, however, images and forums that make light of abusing and raping women are allowed to remain on the social media platform under the “humor” section of their content guidelines.

“It appears that Facebook considers violence against women to be less offensive than non-violent images of women’s bodies, and that the only acceptable representation of women’s nudity are those in which women appear as sex objects or the victims of abuse,” the groups’ open letter reads. “Your common practice of allowing this content by appending a [humor] disclaimer to said content literally treats violence targeting women as a joke.”

Facebook currently allows pages on its site called “Fly Kicking Sluts in the Uterus,” “Violently Raping Your Friend Just for Laughs,” “This is why Indian girls are raped,” and “Punching your girlfriend in the face cuz you’re Chris Brown.” The social media site also permits pictures of battered women who are bleeding, bruised, tied up, or drugged alongside captions like “This bitch didn’t know when to shut up.” Women, Action & the Media has collected several additional graphic examples here (trigger warning).

Facebook has previously cracked down on other types of hate speech, like Islamophobic and homophobic content. Considering the fact that intimate partner violence is one of the leading causes of death for women around the world, the coalition of women’s activists want the company to treat gender-based hate speech with the same seriousness. “Your refusal to similarly address gender-based hate speech marginalizes girls and women, sidelines our experiences and concerns, and contributes to violence against them,” the open letter explains.

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On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit permanently struck down Arizona’s “fetal pain” law that would have criminalized abortion services after 20 weeks of pregnancy. The panel of judges determined that the 20-week ban is unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade, which guarantees the right to legal abortion until the point of viability at about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Reproductive Rights, who filed the lawsuit against the 20-week ban, praised the judges’ decision. “We’re glad the court has reaffirmed that states cannot place unlawful burdens on a woman’s right to access safe reproductive health care,” Talcott Camp, the deputy director of ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. Nancy Northrup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, called the decision a “huge victory in the fight to protect women’s fundamental reproductive rights,” and noted that the Ninth Circuit’s decision should send a clear message to the other states that are attempting to limit abortion access before the point of viability.

Indeed, Arizona’s “fetal pain” measure — based on the scientifically-disputed notion that fetuses can feel pain after 20 weeks — is just one of several similar pieces of legislation to land in court. 20-week bans in Idaho and Georgia have also been blocked under the same constitutional logic. Arizona’s own law has actually been blocked since August, when the appeals court issued a temporary injunction right before the law was scheduled to take effect.

Imposing fetal pain measures is a popular anti-choice tactic to effectively chip away at Roe and narrow the window in which women may access legal abortion. Bans on late-term abortions are an especially big anti-choice priority right now, as abortion opponents attempt to capitalize on the high-profile case of illegal abortion provider Kermit Gosnell to misconstrue all later abortions as dangerous procedures. Just this week, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks (R), who has repeatedly attempted to impose a 20-week abortion ban on the District of Columbia, announced his intention to amend his legislation to push for a nationwide restriction.

When Arizona first passed its fetal pain law, it represented the most stringent abortion ban in the nation. Since the state defined gestation differently than other states, calculating from the moment of the woman’s missed period, the law could have potentially cut off legal abortion services at just 18 weeks of pregnancy. However, since Arizona first passed that piece of legislation last March, states have moved the goalposts even further. Arkansas banned abortions after 12 weeks, and North Dakota placed the cut-off at just six weeks of pregnancy.

On Monday, ThinkProgress reported that a 2009 bill introduced by Virginia state Sen. Mark Obenshain (R) would have required women to report an instance of “fetal death” to the police within 24 hours if it did not occur in the presence of a doctor. The implication behind that type of measure is, of course, that law enforcement should double check to make sure that the women experienced a miscarriage rather than induced an illegal abortion. Obenshain, who is now the state’s Republican nominee for attorney general, ended up striking the proposed legislation after concerns about the undue burden it might place on women who miscarry.

But even though that bill didn’t become law back in 2009, there are still some situations in the state in which miscarriages are treated as potential crimes. In fact, the Virginian-Pilot reported on Tuesday that two women have been charged with “producing an illegal abortion” after one of them gave birth to a pre-term baby who died shortly after birth. Witnesses allege that they overhead the two women planning to buy drugs intended to end the pregnancy:

Jessica Renee Carpenter, 20, and her friend Rachael Anne Lowe, 27, each were charged with one count of producing an illegal abortion, which carries a sentence of two to 10 years. Each also was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit a felony.

According to a search warrant affidavit, Carpenter was 25 weeks pregnant — near the end of her second trimester — when she went to Bon Secours DePaul Medical Center in labor April 11. The baby died about 20 minutes after he was born.

Norfolk Child Protective Services received an anonymous call reporting that Carpenter had intended to end her pregnancy. Police interviewed three friends of both women, who said Carpenter and Lowe wanted to end Carpenter’s pregnancy and that they heard them talking about buying items from a drugstore that she could ingest to do it, according to the affidavit. [...]

Carpenter has a ninth-grade education and was unemployed, according to court records. Lowe previously worked at the Tidewater Women’s Health Clinic in Norfolk, which performs abortions for pregnant women up to 14 weeks after their last menstrual period.

Under Virginia law, second-trimester abortions must be performed in a licensed hospital facility in the presence of a physician. Obviously, it’s important to crack down on illegal abortion providers who aren’t providing women with safe care, and — unlike Obenshain’s proposed bill — that’s likely the sole intent behind the state’s current law. But, if the allegations against the two Virginia women are true, the law will have the added effect of prosecuting a woman who made the choice to terminate her own pregnancy. The Virginia-Pilot notes that the only other “illegal abortion” charge on the books was back in 2007, when a man slipped abortion-inducing drugs into his girlfriend’s drink that caused her to have a miscarriage — an act that was obviously done without the woman’s consent.

Even if Carpenter’s miscarriage was self-induced, her case brings up questions about the criminalization of elective abortion procedures across the country. The mounting pile of state-level restrictions intended to restrict women’s access to abortion mean that some desperate women can’t get the reproductive care they need without making themselves into a suspect in the eyes of the law. That’s particularly true under late-term abortion bans, an increasingly popular anti-choice tactic to narrow the window in which women may obtain a legal abortion. If abortion is criminalized at 20 or 18 or even just six weeks of pregnancy, every woman’s miscarriage after that point could be a potential piece of evidence.

And of course, if Carpenter really did take drugs to induce an illegal abortion, it’s worth considering what might have led an undereducated, unemployed, desperate woman like Carpenter to make the choice she did. Perhaps she didn’t have the money for a legal abortion earlier in her pregnancy. Maybe she was too ashamed to make an appointment at a women’s health clinic. She might not have had any support from her friends and family, and she might have felt like she didn’t have any other options.

Not content with attempting to impose his anti-abortion agenda upon the women who live in the nation’s capital, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) now intends to push for a nationwide bill to criminalize abortions after 20 weeks. Franks, who invoked the illegal abortion provider Kermit Gosnell to justify his decision to re-introduce a 20-week abortion ban in DC, now says that Gosnell’s crimes have compelled him to amend his bill so it applies to women across the country.

The Arizona congressmember announced his decision to expand his bill on Friday. In a statement, Franks compared Gosnell — who has been convicted of killing of three infants that were born alive following botched illegal, unsanitary abortion procedures — to all late-term abortion procedures. “Had Kermit Gosnell dismembered these babies before they had traveled down the birth canal only moments earlier, he would have, in many places nationwide, been performing an entirely legal procedure,” Franks said.

However, that’s a gross mischaracterization of the state of legal abortion services throughout the country. Abortion opponents have repeatedly attempted to twist the facts surrounding Gosnell’s high-profile murder trial to make it appear as if his crimes are rampant throughout legal abortion clinics. But that’s simply not the case. The Philadelphia-area abortion doctor was guilty of much more than simply breaking Pennsylvania’s law that criminalizes abortion after 24 weeks of pregnancy; he was also able to offer discounted prices for his services because he didn’t employ medical professionals or adhere to safety standards. Gosnell’s “house of horrors” isn’t analogous to the way that legal, sanitary late-term abortion clinics provide care to the women who need it.

Furthermore, it’s misleading to pretend that Franks’ quest to cut off legal abortion care at just 20 weeks represents a push to ban late-term abortions. In fact, 20-week abortion bans are a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade‘s guarantee of legal abortion rights until the point of viability, which is generally accepted to occur around 24 weeks of pregnancy. That’s why, after a handful of states recently enacted 20-week bans, several of them landed in court.

DC Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) has fought against Franks’ 20-week abortion ban every time he’s proposed it. She maintains that imposing abortion bans on the District of Columbia is a “stealth way” for abortion opponents to discreetly challenge Roe, since DC doesn’t have any representation in Congress. Now that the bill will apply to the rest of the nation, she remains committed to working to defeat it. “With the help of women nationwide, we defeated the D.C. abortion ban bill on the House floor last Congress. Now that the Franks bill will expressly target all U.S. women, we can expect an even stronger national response to this attack on women’s health,” Holmes Norton said in a statement.

Ironically, pushing to restrict women’s access to abortion isn’t actually an effective policy solution to prevent future Kermit Gosnells. If Franks and his anti-choice colleagues wanted to ensure that desperate women in other states don’t have to resort to illegal providers like Gosnell, they should actually be working to make abortion services more affordable and accessible to low-income women.

At the end of last week, three Democratic legislators renewed their efforts to protect women from right-wing crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), anti-abortion front groups that often use misleading advertising to market themselves as women’s health clinics. Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) have reintroduced the “Stop Deceptive Advertising For Women’s Services Act,” which would hold those facilities accountable for any deceptive marketing tactics that falsely advertise abortion services they don’t actually provide. The measure encourages the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to crack down on the facilities that falsely advertise abortion services that don’t actually exist, while the organizations that are already accurately depicting their services wouldn’t be penalized.

Crisis pregnancy centers have a long history of preying on vulnerable women with medical misinformation. CPCs present themselves as a valid alternative to women’s health clinics, hoping to lure in women who want more information about their reproductive options, but they actually use conservative propaganda to dissuade women from choosing an abortion. And CPCs like to locate themselves close to reproductive health facilities — often moving in right next door — specifically to confuse patients who may be seeking an abortion.

“Deception has no place when a woman is seeking information about her health or a pregnancy,” Maloney said in a statement introducing the new CPC legislation. “While I will defend crisis centers’ First Amendment rights even though I disagree with their view of abortion, those that practice bait-and-switch should be held accountable so that pregnant women are not deceived at an extremely vulnerable time in their lives.”

Nevertheless, CPCs across the country have largely escaped accountability by citing those First Amendment rights. In cities that have attempted to prevent crisis pregnancy centers from lying to women, CPCs have typically been able to overturn those ordinances by arguing that any additional regulation stifles their freedom of speech. But there has been some slow progress lately. Last year, a judge in San Francisco ruled that CPCs don’t deserve constitutional protections for their misleading advertisements. And lawmakers in Oregon are currently advancing a measure that would require the CPCs in that state to explicitly disclose accurate information about the medical services they offer.

So far, the federal bill to crack down on CPCs has won the support of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We know these crisis pregnancy centers lie to women in the moment they most need accurate information to decide the future of their pregnancy and their lives,” Ilyse Hogue, NARAL’s president, said in response to the bill’s introduction. “We’re thrilled that Sen. Menendez is taking action to hold these fake ‘clinics’ accountable.”

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Shortly after informing the board of directors of her breast cancer, former CEO of Tuesday Morning was ousted as the head of the furniture retail company last June. Kathleen Mason, who served as CEO for 12 years, has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming she was discriminated against.

The Wall Street Journal reports this may be an unprecedented lawsuit among cases over alleged discrimination:

While employee suits over alleged discrimination are common, it is rare for one to come from a former CEO. Ms. Mason’s lawsuit, filed on Thursday in county court in Dallas, claims the board wrongfully dismissed her because “it regarded her as being disabled” after she informed some fellow directors about her diagnosis.

Mason, 64 years old, said that she informed board members of her cancer in March and she was asked to resign in mid-May. The board eventually released a letter criticizing Mason hours before she was fired that read, “[she] led an extraordinary destruction of shareholder value.” The company denies her allegations, noting the company’s stock fell nearly 60 percent before she was fired.

Though the law is very clear that gender and health discrimination is illegal, women in the workplace still regularly face repercussions over getting pregnant, taking birth control, or contracting diseases that affect predominantly women. And based on the strong reactions to Angelina Jolie’s recent news that she had a preventative double mastectomy to reduce her risk of breast cancer, it’s clear that the stigma over health issues that affect a woman’s anatomy still exists.

It is unclear whether Mason experienced her own discrimination, but the issue is hardly a women-only issue. Examples abound where employees have lost their jobs over perceived weakness after they developed cancer or recovered from surgery.

This month, the political fight over emergency contraception has intensified, as the Obama administration continues to resist making the morning after pill available to women of all ages over the counter. After a federal judge ordered the FDA to remove all age restrictions on emergency contraception, the administration disagreed, maintaining that girls under 15 years old should still be required be obtain a prescription to purchase the contraceptive method — a position that baffles medical experts.

At the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists’ recent annual meeting, MedPage Today asked women’s health experts what they thought of the ongoing fight over Plan B. Multiple medical experts went on record to say that they don’t understand why emergency contraception has been such a contentious issue, and they don’t support restricting it for younger teens:

– Owen Montgomery, MD: “I would much rather have a 13- to 14-year-old girl who needs emergency contraception have access to it than come to my office with an unwanted pregnancy… In our clinics in the university, we see lots and lots of teenagers. And many of these young ladies have no access to good parental role models, and they need access to emergency contraception when they need access. And they can’t wait for permission from a judge, or someone else of authority.”

– Alison Edelman, MD, MPH, of Oregon Health & Science University: “Emergency contraception is a really, really important part of our toolkit for contraception. It helps women who have emergencies, i.e., they aren’t using contraception at the time of sexual activity or they had a misstep with their contraception, like a condom break or slip.”

– Barbara S. Levy, MD, ACOG’s vice president for health policy: “There’s failure of other methods. There are rapes. There are other things that occur. Women need to be able to access emergency contraception and have the knowledge and understanding of how to use it, so we can prevent unwanted pregnancies and unintended pregnancies that happen, because life happens.”

– Laurie J. McKenzie, MD, of both the University of Texas and Baylor College of Medicine: “I find it very interesting that there are these concessions that are being made in terms of age limitation … There are more deaths associated with Tylenol overdose than there are with oral contraceptive overdoses or potential overdose with Plan B. There have never, to my knowledge, been any overdoses with hormonal contraception.”

– Eve Espey, MD, MPH, of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque: “Plan B should be over the counter… All emergency contraceptives should be over the counter with no age restrictions.”

Indeed, there’s no scientific basis for imposing an age limit on Plan B. Multiple medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have expressed support for making emergency contraception easily accessible to women of all ages.

Earlier this year, Arkansas Republicans overrode their governor to enact one of the harshest abortion restrictions in the nation, a 12-week ban that would criminalize one out of every 10 abortions in the state. But reproductive rights advocates are fighting back, taking the state to court and ultimately winning an injunction that will prevent the harsh law from going into effect.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Arkansas all joined forces to file a lawsuit against the extreme abortion ban, which oversteps Roe v. Wade‘s constitutional right to legal abortion services until about 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. On Friday afternoon, a federal judge ruled that the 12-week ban — which was set to take effect in August — cannot be enforced while that legal challenge is still pending.

Nancy Northrup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, praised U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright’s decision to grant the injunction against the law. “Today’s decision ensures that the women of Arkansas will remain protected from this blatant unconstitutional assault on their health and fundamental reproductive rights,” Northrup said in a statement. “Such an extreme ban on abortion would have immediate and devastating consequences for women in Arkansas, especially those who could not afford to travel out of state to access reproductive health care.”

Wright’s decision to block the 12-week ban comes just days after her decision to dismiss Arkansas’ request to drop the lawsuit. Wright sided against the state on Wednesday, ruling that the reproductive rights groups may continue with their legal challenge.

Arkansas’ stringent abortion ban is topped only by a new law in North Dakota, which would cut off legal access to abortion services after just six weeks — before many women even realize they’re pregnant. Both laws are “heartbeat” measures, which seek to criminalize abortion after the fetus’ heartbeat can first be detected — a random cut-off that isn’t based in any scientific definition of viability.