Just two days after the opening of the South Wind Women’s Center, a medical clinic in George Tiller’s former office space that was set up to handle the full range of women’s reproductive health needs (including abortion), the state legislature of Brownbackistan approved a sweeping anti-abortion, anti-women, anti-science bill. Once Brownback signs the bill — and he WILL sign it — doctors will be forced to present women with medically inaccurate information. Tax laws were changed to make abortions more financially onerous, and the rightwing Theocons of the legislature have enshrined fetal personhood into state law with a “life begins at conception” provision.

And before you folks outside of Brownbackistan simply laugh at the goings-on in Topeka, ponder this: Sam Brownback IS going to run for president in 2016, and he’ll have both fiscal and social conservatives solidly behind him for what he’s been able to push through the state legislature. Today he’s in Topeka, but make no mistake: he wants to live in that nice little white house in DC.

Sarah Erdreich’s Generation Roe is a crisp, well-written, thorough exploration of abortion through the reality of women’s lives. Erdreich dives into everything from “abortion-recovery counseling” and “crisis pregnancy centers,” to the infamous race baiting anti-choice “black children are an endangered species” billboards. Generation Roe tells the stories of people who work in the field of reproductive health despite threats of violence and Erdreich explores how the stigma placed on abortion fuels those threats. In Generation Roe, Sarah Erdreich also outlines the legislative battlefields across the country and delves into mistakes and missteps pro-choice activists have made along the way.

Anti-choice activist Jill Stanek recently published online the name and photo of a woman who passed away following a late abortion at the Maryland clinic of Dr. Leroy Carhart. The name and picture of the woman, I’ll call her Marie, along with information about her job, marriage, and pregnancy were soon all over the internet. Protesters plastered Marie’s picture on signs and marched outside Dr. Carhart’s clinic and held a “vigil” outside the emergency room where she was treated. Internet commentators characterized Marie’s husband, parents, and sister, who traveled with her from out-of-state for the three-day procedure, as everything from bad Catholics to killers.

Rep. Sean Duffy is a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, but you might remember him better from his days on Real World: Boston. Last week at a town hall, Rep. Duffy was asked whether he believed trans-vaginal ultrasounds should be mandatory for abortions, an issue that is currently up for debate in his home state of Wisconsin, as well as in Indiana.

A bill mandating trans-vaginal ultrasounds was previously considered in Virginia, but ultimately defeated. Rep. Duffy responded by saying that he didn’t know anything about the legislation, but couldn’t comment on legislating a medical procedure that has been discussed at length in the news lately, other than to say that he “probably agrees” with it. But he doesn’t really know because, he says, “I haven’t had one.”

Valentine’s Day is a day when we are supposed to remind those we care about that we love them. But it is also V-Day, a day where people around the world share stories of physical and sexual violence against women in order to remind the world that we care about women and will not tolerate rape, battery, and abuse. This year marks the 15th Anniversary of V-day and the 40th Anniversary of Roe V. Wade. So I thought it would be appropriate to draw a connection between the silenced stories of the 1 in 3 women worldwide who have experienced physical and sexual violence and the silenced stories of 1 in 3 women in the United States who will have an abortion in their lifetime.

Saturday at the Texas Capitol, thousands (by mainstream media estimates) gathered to celebrate the war on women’s rights. Many had been bused in from around the state to reinforce the numbers in the notoriously liberal capitol city. Standing against them were a tiny group, Austin’s newly formed “Feminist Vigilante Gang.”

It has been 40 years since the Supreme Court handed down the Roe V. Wade decision and support for it among the American people has never been higher, according to a new NBC/WSJ poll.

An overwhelming majority of Americans don’t want to see the Roe V. Wade overturned by the Supreme Court, according to a new Pew Research poll. The poll found only 29 percent want to see the historic abortion decision overturned, while 63 percent want it to remain.

Do you believe that the government should stay out of your private sex life? Let me guess… What I love about How Sex Became a Civil Liberty, by Leigh Ann Wheeler, is how she forces us to reexamine our assumptions.

Wheeler, a historian at Binghamton University and the co-editor of the Journal of Women’s History, sets out to unearth the history of a phenomenon most of us probably see as natural—that we possess, in Wheeler’s apt phrase, “sexual civil liberties.”

Texas’ Gov. Rick Perry has thrown his support behind a potential 20-week abortion ban in the state, but his office told RH Reality Check that he’ll leave it up to legislators to determine the appropriate punishment for women who get later-term abortions.