Planned Parenthood of the Heartland deserves a medal for seeking to address the geographic (and often economic) disparity in access to abortion in a smart and safe way.

Written by Kathleen Reeves for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Graphic billboards go up in Texas, anti-choice legislators still trying to defund Planned Parenthood, ACOG opposes Amendment 62 in Colorado, and clinics challenge Louisiana law.

Written by Robin Marty for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

The movie 12^th and Delaware was set in Florida, but fake clinics are rife everywhere. NARAL Pro-Choice California Foundation’s investigation, Unmasking Fake Clinics, reveals what happens to women in crisis pregnancy centers in California. 

Written by Alexa Cole for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

The radical right’s position of “no exceptions” for abortion is consistent with the view that women are chattel, their rights unimportant, and their bodies objects to be controlled by men and the state.

Written by Amanda Marcotte for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Most women who have second trimester abortions do so out of necessity – not choice.

Written by Steph Harold for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

This week the Obama Administration placed a total ban on abortion coverage in Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plans even though nothing in the law requires such action.

Written by Jessica Arons for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Weekly Pulse: The Religious Right vs. Birth Control

by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Does health care reform’s promise of preventive care extend to free birth control? Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services have 18 months to decide whether to require insurers to provide oral contraceptives, IUDs, and other prescription birth control with no co-pay. With pro-choice Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at the helm, HHS is expected to say yes.

[Update: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that birth control will not be on the White House's preliminary list of free preventive services, to be issued today. However, as Miriam Perez of feministing explains, HHS will ultimately have the final word. Observers, including Dana Goldstein who covers reproductive rights for the Daily Beast, are optimistic that the pro-choice side will carry the day at HHS.]

President Obama has been in office for over a year, so why does President Bush’s last minute “provider conscience law” still exist?

Written by Megan Carpentier for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

A bill passed this spring in Nebraska, the Orwellian-named “Women’s Health Protection Act,” does nothing to protect women’s health, but instead flouts medical practice and standards of care to achieve an anti-choice end. 

Written by Carol Joffe for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.

Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings kicked off on Monday. Her nomination has been met by glum resignation on the left and indifference on the right, as Adam Serwer notes in the American Prospect. Kagan is hoping to replace the Supreme Court’s most prominent liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, who stepped down earlier this week. Progressives are counting on Kagan to shore up the pro-choice faction on the court.