Emily Douglas | The Nation

Precious little time during last night’s vice-presidential debate was devoted to an issue the Republicans have been hellbent on politicizing since they took control of the House in 2010. That, of course, was the niggling question of whether Romney and Ryan would work to further restrict access to abortion and contraception—or outlaw it altogether—if they win on November 6. Romney’s long career of flip-flopping on this issue has hit some kind of time-lapse photography in recent weeks, with his flips and flops coming fast and furiously: in Des Moines on Tuesday, he told an audience “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.” Perhaps he should alert his running mate, who’s a co-sponsor of no less than thirty-eight abortion-restriction bills. (Romney’s staff walked back his statement the next morning.)

Debate #2 was a good time to clear this up, since Jim Lehrer failed to raise the issue in last week’s Obama/Romney match-up. And, with about ten minutes left in the debate, moderator Martha Raddatz finally did. But many of us watching at home, the question she asked left a lot to be desired:

RADDATZ: I want to move on, and I want to return home for these last few questions. This debate is, indeed, historic. We have two Catholic candidates, first time, on a stage such as this. And I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion. Please talk about how you came to that decision. Talk about how your religion played a part in that. And, please, this is such an emotional issue for so many people in this country…

As seen on Facebook.

The Guttmacher Institute today released a nationally representative study, the first of its kind, finding that most women seeking abortions had experienced at least one “disruptive event” in the year prior to their abortion. Such “social shocks,” as study author Ann Moore called them, include moving multiple times, being unemployed, separating from a partner, falling behind on rent or a mortgage or having a partner incarcerated, among others. Physical or sexual abuse is another kind of “disruptive event,” one that seven percent of women obtaining abortions reported. “Women with abusive partners are substantially over-represented among abortion patients,” the study concluded. Perhaps surprising to some, more than half of the women surveyed reported using a contraceptive method in the month before they become pregnant.

The study comes as a needed reality check after Missouri Republican Senate candidate Todd Akin’s ridiculous remarks about the likelihood of pregnancy after “legitimate rape.” As this and other studies suggest, rape and sexual coercion play a role in a significant number of pregnancies. The link found in the Guttmacher study between intimate partner violence and unintended pregnancy in particular calls out for further examination, said Moore. “There are direct ways that violent partners, and nonviolent partners, can interfere with a women’s ability to prevent unintended pregnancy. There’s also a relation between the instability that comes with being in a violent relationship.” Two years ago, Lynn Harris reported on a crop of studies that identified a phenomenon researchers called “reproductive coercion” among teens in abusive relationships, “in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.” Birth control sabotage also showed up in the Guttmacher study released today, with six respondents of forty-nine saying their partners had undermined their efforts to prevent pregnancy, for example by tampering with contraceptives. Researcher Elizabeth Miller has called for more study into whether “pregnancy ambivalence”—the term researchers use to describe sexually active women who don’t want to get pregnant but aren’t trying to prevent it—is really “male-partner influence on women’s reproductive health and autonomy.”

There’s been a lot of over-thinking it about poor Julia, the composite character created by the Obama campaign team. In my book, she’s a success despite the backlash, because, in keeping the focus all about policy, the infographic of her life got even her detractors to spell out the popular stuff that they’re against. Ross Douthat, usually a master of obfuscation, is forced to tick off the injustices:

The list of Obama-bestowed benefits includes Head Start when Julia’s a tyke, tax credits and Pell grants to carry her through college and low-interest loan repayment afterward, guaranteed birth control when she’s a 20-something and government-sponsored loans when she wants to start a business, all of it culminating in a stress-free retirement underwritten by Medicare and Social Security.

Nebraska’s state legislature, one of the more inventive when it comes to finding ways to restrict access to reproductive healthcare, is poised to override Governor Dave Heineman’s veto of a bill that would extend prenatal care to undocumented immigrants. Heineman, who is strenuously anti-choice, is apparently equally strenuously anti-immigrant. But other Republicans and anti-choicers in the state evidently are not: the legislation is endorsed by the Republican speaker of the legislature, Mike Flood, who has sponsored legislation to ban late-term abortions, as well as a number of other anti-choice lawmakers, and by Nebraska Right to Life and the Nebraska Catholic Conference.

The bill would restore coverage for prenatal services to pregnant women who are ineligible for Medicaid for reasons other than income (those are largely undocumented women, though not solely). Nebraska provided that care until two years ago, when the federal government said it could no longer use Medicaid funds to do so. The state could have preserved funding simply by switching its funding stream to SCHIP, but declined to do so. Sixteen other states provide such coverage to undocumented women, but no neighboring states do; Governor Heineman claims that the legislation would turn Nebraska into a “a magnet for illegal aliens.”

If the bill has made enemies of friends, it has also made for allies of usual opponents, including Right to Life and the pro-immigration reform, pro-universal health care group Nebraska Appleseed Center for Law in the Public Interest. Jennifer Carter, director of public policy at the Appleseed Center, told me “This is first time we’ve had a common focus that I can recall” but “there’s been a lot of common ground on it from the perspective of protecting the health of unborn children. it’s foundational: you have to start with good prenatal care.” The local Planned Parenthood affiliate, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, supports the bill and has mobilized “friendly senators and our supporters” but has mostly stayed out of the coalition’s way. “Particularly in Nebraska, there is some politics that enters in whenever Planned Parenthood shows up. In this instance, we don’t want politics to get intermixed with what’s right for a women and her healthcare,” says Kyle Carlson, director of legal and public policy at Planned Parenthood of the Heartland.