This week in the War on Women

Bad and ugly:

Bill O'Reilly is, yup, still an asshole. And a moron:

Commenting on the Institute of Medicine's recommendation that contraception should be considered a preventative service and co-pays for contraception should be eliminated, Bill O'Reilly claimed: "Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex. They're not going to use birth control anyway."
A House panel voted to reinstitute the Global Gag rule. Because surely this will create jobs, right?
Amanda Marcotte and Jesse Taylor explain how states could ban abortion, even with Roe v. Wade on the books:

For decades, the debate over abortion rights has centered on a single court decision, Roe v. Wade, and the possibility of its overturn. Overturning Roe has become the holy grail of the antichoice movement, and many states have “trigger laws” on the books that would ban abortion immediately should the Supreme Court overturn Roe. Unfortunately for antichoicers, the justices resist overturning precedent; more importantly, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote on any abortion case before the court, upheld Roe on the basis of precedent in 1992. However, the recent surge in state legislation against abortion demonstrates that antichoice activists have figured out a new strategy: eliminating legal abortion without directly overturning Roe. [...]
Many state legislatures appear to be doing just that, writing legislation which Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, describes as “part of an ongoing effort around the country to choke off women’s access to abortion by any means necessary—either by forcing doctors out of practice, banning procedures outright or demeaning women.” The mildest version of this strategy, already passed into law by states such as Indiana and Nebraska, is to use bogus science to justify banning abortions after twenty weeks, on the fictional grounds that fetuses can feel pain at that gestational age. These bans borrow the logic of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, where the court suggested that scientific advances that keep premature babies alive at younger gestational ages could justify banning abortion at earlier in the pregnancy. Antichoice legislators have pounced on this logic, making bogus scientific claims that fetuses can feel pain to pull the line back well before viability.

The zealots' war in Kansas to make women's health illegal is costing the taxpayers an awful lot of money:

At a time when the state is slashing spending, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt is hiring outside legal guns to defend state efforts to regulate abortion.
Schmidt has enlisted two law firms that will be paid up to $300 an hour to defend two lawsuits, one brought by two Kansas City area abortion providers and another filed by Planned Parenthood.

In case you missed it, Operation Rescue is patting itself on the back for pursuing a completely bogus investigation of Planned Parenthood. 'Cause nothing says "pro-life" like terrorizing and harassing women's health care providers.

The good news:

This is a step in the right direction:

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) have introduced a bill entitled the “Stop Deceptive Advertising in Women’s Services Act” (SDAWS), which would crack down on clinics (so-called crisis pregnancy centers) which falsely advertise themselves as a honest providers of information and services for women facing unintended and untenable pregnancies. Such clinics don't provide either abortion or contraceptive services; instead they dispense medically-inaccurate and deceptive information about both abortion and birth control and often use intense pressure to get women to carry to term regardless of an individual woman's circumstances or wishes. [...]
Introduction of the bill comes on the heels of a court decision this week granting an injunction halting implementation of a New York City law requiring CPCs to post signs disclosing the limited nature of their services, making sure women know for example what services and qualifications a particular center does and does not offer, and whether they have qualified medical staff on board.

The Institute of Medicine recommends that health insurers cover, with no co-pays, a range of preventative care for women, including birth control. Health and Human Services is likely to implement these recommendations. This is great news—and a no-brainer.
You know that idiotic new ad campaign encouraging men to buy milk to help fend off those crazy PMSing bitches at home? Apparently, the got milk folks got the message and have pulled down the website.
Girls kicked ass at Google's first science fair:

More than 10,000 students from 91 countries entered the science fair, which was Google’s first. The entries, submitted over the Web, were winnowed down to 60 semifinalists and then 15 finalists who presented their findings to judges at Google’s Silicon Valley headquarters last week.
Ms. Bose’s research was named best in the age 17-18 category and best of show over all. Her prize includes $50,000 for future college studies, a 10-day trip to the Galapagos Islands and a separate trip to visit the CERN particle physics laboratory in Switzerland.

Girls swept all three age categories in the competition, a contrast to generations past when women were largely excluded from the science world.

“Personally I think that’s amazing, because throughout my entire life, I’ve heard science is a field where men go into,” Ms. Bose said. “It just starts to show you that women are stepping up in science, and I’m excited that I was able to represent maybe just a little bit of that.”

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