Abortion

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) on Wednesday called family planning an "essential human right” and urged the world's nations to help meet the needs of 222 million women in developing countries.

In its annual report on the state of the world's population, the fund said spending an extra $4.1 billion a year to make family planning available to everyone would reduce costs for maternal and newborn healthcare by $11.3 billion annually. 

It would also help combat poverty, exclusion, poor health and gender inequality, the report said.

Catholics won't stop fighting the Obama administration's contraception mandate, Cardinal Timothy Dolan reportedly said Tuesday.

The Associated Press reported that Dolan, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the church will not comply with the mandate and will continue challenging it in court.

Churches and houses of worship are exempt from the administration's policy requiring employers to include contraception in their employees' healthcare plans. The White House has also made a more nuanced "accommodation" for religious-affiliated employers, such as Catholic hospitals and universities.

Voters in Florida defeated a measure that would amend the state constitution to limit abortion rights and bar public funds from supporting the procedure.

Forty-four percent of voters backed Amendment 6, according to The Associated Press — far less than the 60 percent needed for its enactment.

The measure would have prevented state employees from using their healthcare coverage for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the woman's life is threatened. It would also have made privacy rights in Florida no more expansive that they are federally, a development that could have paved the way for further abortion restrictions in the state.

Former Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) told voters in the crucial swing state of Ohio Monday that Roe v. Wade is not in danger of being overturned.

Coleman, a surrogate for Mitt Romney, is Jewish and opposes abortion rights. He made his comment during a town hall with Jewish voters in Beachwood, a suburb of Cleveland.

"The reality is that choice is an issue for a lot of people, an important issue. President Bush was president eight years; Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed. He had two Supreme Court picks; Roe v. Wade wasn’t reversed. It's not going to be reversed," Coleman said. 

A Republican running against Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) has said he would not vote to change abortion law should he win.

"Social issues and abortion isn't the focus of this campaign," said candidate Michael Baumgartner, according to seattlepi.com. "You wouldn't see me voting to change any abortion laws at the federal level."

The justices left in place a lower court ruling that found a personhood measure would violate the Constitution.

Social conservatives' push to use state laws to cut funding to Planned Parenthood isn't working. The exception may be Texas.

The nationwide effort to cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood suffered another legal defeat Tuesday.

A federal appeals court blocked Indiana from implementing a new law designed to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood. The law aims to deny Medicaid funding to any entity that provides abortions — as Planned Parenthood does.

But the organization says Indiana's law, which paved the way for similar efforts in other Republican-led states, threaten women's access to the myriad other healthcare services Planned Parenthood provides.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) unearthed old complaints that President Obama ignored the law on abortion and Jerusalem in a catalog of examples in which he says the president overstepped his constitutional authority.

Cantor released his report on “The Imperial Presidency” on Tuesday as a closing indictment of all that Republicans think is wrong with Obama's leadership. Among the 40 or so examples are two instances of foreign policies included under the heading “ignoring the plain letter of the law and failing to faithfully execute the law.”

In his report, Cantor accuses the State Department of funding a group that advocated for abortion rights overseas as part of the $18 million the administration spent to help Kenya reform its constitution in 2010, in violation of the Siljander Amendment. The Government Accountability Office in a report last year found that the U.S. Agency for International Development provided funding to a group that made recommendations about fetal rights and abortion to the entity charged with drafting the constitution and faulted the State Department for not having “clear guidance” for compliance with the law.

Vast majorities of Americans support access to contraception, according to a new poll commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

The survey found widespread support for the thrust of President Obama's contraception mandate, which a recent Gallup poll indicated is a winning issue with female voters. American adults also overwhelmingly believe that lawmakers who oppose abortion should support contraception, according to Monday's poll.

Seventy percent of those surveyed said insurance companies should provide contraception without charging a copay or deductible — as they'll have to under the White House's new mandate.