Abortion

GOP candidate Herman Cain said on Sunday's "Face the Nation" that Planned Parenthood was created to "kill black babies," a claim that's been debunked as a "ridiculous, cynical play on the race card" by PolitiFact in the past.

State efforts to give "personhood" rights to fetuses ignore their mothers, Feministing.com founder Jessica Valenti writes in The Washington Post.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that all adolescents be screened for alcohol, tobacco and other drug use at every office visit, MedPage Today reports.

The New York Times' Gina Kolata writes about the shift away from routine cancer screening.

The White House is losing another top woman aide, with Planned Parenthood announcing Thursday that it has hired Dana Singiser, special assistant to the president for legislative affairs, to serve as the reproductive rights organization's vice president for public policy and government relations.

Singiser had been with the president since his 2008 campaign, and was a key part in the team that shepherded his healthcare reform law through Congress.

“Dana Singiser is a highly respected advocate. We’re thrilled to have someone of Dana’s experience and caliber be a part of our team as we focus on expanding access to health care and making the new health care reform law a tangible reality for women across the country,” said Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards in a statement.

New laws in North Carolina would direct taxpayer funds to anti-abortion centers that have been faulted for providing "false or misleading information" about health issues and for proselytizing to non-Christians, the Charlotte Observer reports.

The demise of the healthcare law's long-term-care CLASS Act program leaves a gaping hole, The Associated Press reports.

Federal officials are considering immunizing children against anthrax, The Washington Post reports.

Amgen has set aside $780 million to resolve civil and criminal investigations into whether the world's largest biotechnology company engaged in improper sales of drugs, Bloomberg reports.

A new study links BPA exposure in the womb to behavior problems in toddler girls, The Washington Post reports.

Groups opposed to abortion rights are pressuring the Senate to act on a bill passed by the House last week that would prohibit health insurers from offering abortion coverage if any of their customers receives federal subsidies.

In a new message to supporters, Americans United for Life (AUL) cautioned that passage of the Protect Life Act is less likely in the Senate. The memo also drew attention to Democratic senators' effort to derail a House investigation into Planned Parenthood.

"Among the majority voting in the House were 15 Democrats who understood that taxpayers do not support a health care law when it funds abortion," AUL President and CEO Charmaine Yoest wrote in the memo. "It is now up to the Senate to defend the rights of taxpayers who do not want to be forced to subsidize abortion."

Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Thursday to block ballot initiatives in Nevada that would limit access to abortion and other services.

The ballot initiatives state generally that they would protect the rights of all people, including unborn children. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU say the measures would cut off women's access to abortion as well as a host of other services to which women have a legal right.

The groups said the vaguely worded ballot initiatives, if passed, could deny women access to birth control, as well as standard treatment for miscarriages and in vitro fertilization.

“The initiatives are designed to undermine a woman’s access to basic health services,” Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel of the ACLU of Nevada, said in a statement. “What’s more, they also violate the basic requirement of the initiative process — not to mislead the voter. The initiatives are so confusing that voters may not realize they are being asked to ban vital health services."

The House on Thursday passed another anti-abortion-rights bill over Democrats’ complaints that the bill has nothing to do with jobs.

The bill, dubbed the Protect Life Act, passed 251-172. Two Republicans voted no and 15 Democrats voted yes.

Republicans linked the bill to the fiery abortion debate that surrounded the healthcare reform law. President Obama signed an executive order stating that the law’s subsidies for insurance coverage cannot be used to cover abortion, but the GOP said that prohibition doesn’t have the force of law and needs to be codified with the Protect Life Act.

“Obamacare should be repealed, but in the meantime, let’s take this moment to say yes to life,” Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) said.

Democrats said on the House floor that the bill would go much further than the amendments, sponsored by then-Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), that the House adopted when passing healthcare reform.

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The culture wars flare up again as the House takes up legislation that would bar healthcare plans that cover abortion from receiving any subsidies under the healthcare reform law.

By law, abortion coverage is already segregated from other coverage offered by subsidized health plans so that taxpayer funding can't pay for the abortion portion, but critics say money is fungible; Rep. Joe Pitts's (R-Pa.) bill would simply bar plans that cover abortion from receiving any subsidies. The law makes an exemption in cases of rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother.

Abortion-rights supporters are particularly outraged over a provision of the bill they say could allow federally funded hospitals to refuse to provide abortions, even when the life of the mother could be in danger. The Obama administration has said the president would veto the bill.

Abortion-rights advocates plan to deliver petitions with more than 130,000 signatures Thursday opposing a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood.

The group CREDO Action plans to deliver the petitions to Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), the chairman of the Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee. Stearns, along with other GOP leaders on the committee, recently launched an investigation into Planned Parenthood.

Stearns requested a slew of data from Planned Parenthood, ranging from financial information to policies for reporting illegal activity.

“Anti-choice members of Congress are using this investigation to launch yet another attack on Planned Parenthood,” said Becky Bond, political director of CREDO Action.   “If they can't defund the organization, they want to tie up its staff and resources in a politically motivated investigation. This is an unfair and unjust political assault, and we can't let them win.”

House Democrats have also blasted Stearns' investigation. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on Energy and Commerce, called it an inappropriate use of the panel's oversight authority.

The anti-abortion-rights group Susan B. Anthony List and anti-same-sex marriage group National Organization for Marriage released their presidential campaign scorecards Friday morning ahead of the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit.

All the GOP presidential candidates — with the exception of former Utah governor Jon Huntsman — are scheduled to appear at the event in Washington, D.C., on either Friday and Saturday.

All of the candidates except Herman Cain and Mitt Romney signed the SBA List's pro-life pledge, while all of the candidates besides Cain, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul signed NOM's pledge to defend traditional marriage.

The candidates with unblemished records on both issues, according to the groups, are Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and Michele Bachmann, the three candidates who, along with Cain, are most seriously vying for the support of social conservatives.

NOM's president said he believes his group's issue will play a large role in the campaign.

"Given the fact that all of the main presidential candidates have signed our marriage pledge, which is a very strong pledge, clearly this election 2012, social issues are going to be very important," he told The Hill on the eve of the vote's release. "There's been an attempt to downplay them in much of the media."

Perry has strugggled somewhat with that group since his campaign launched because of mandate as governor of Texas that teenage girls get a vaccine against a sexually transmitted disease known to cause cervical cancer. He needs to have a strong performance Friday at the summit in order to woo some of the movement's leaders towards his campaign.

Download the scorecards here.

Josh Lederman contributed.

Ron Paul on Thursday slammed President Obama’s move to mandate that healthcare plans include birth control in a list of preventive services that would be covered as free, saying in a news release that the president made a “mockery” of the concerns of Christian conservatives.

“I am deeply troubled by the flippancy with which President Obama recently discussed regulations that are alarming and troublesome for many Americans,” said Rep. Paul (R-Texas). “Not all Americans are comfortable with the Obama administration’s decision to mandate coverage of birth control and morning-after pills, and the considerations of these people, many of them Christian conservatives, are worthy of careful consideration — not mockery.”

Late last month, a coalition of Catholic colleges and universities asked the administration to repeal the decision, or create an exemption for religiously affiliated healthcare providers. Though the bill includes an exception for “religious institutions that offer insurance to their employees,” Catholic groups have said that the provision does not allow enough leeway.