Do you think the Supreme Court should overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established abortion rights? If you’re like the 53% of Americans polled by Gallup recently, chances are you don’t. In that case, you will be dismayed to learn in Crow After Roe: How “Separate but Equal” Has become the New Standard in Women’s Health and How We can Change That about the many creative ways that anti-abortion activists have undercut the right to abortion in the past forty years.

If you identify more closely with the 29% of Americans who want to overturn Roe v. Wade, you may applaud the clever anti-abortion strategies detailed here.

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.

Last week, Democratic strategist, writer, and rape survivor Zerlina Maxwell went on The Sean Hannity Show and argued that men and boys should be trained not to rape. Maxwell was viciously attacked by conservatives following her appearance. But if there’s any problem with Maxwell’s argument, it’s not that it went too far — it’s that it could have gone even further.

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.

In the wake of Secretary Panetta’s historic decision to eliminate the combat exclusion rule for women, there will be much angst about women lacking the physical strength to perform in combat. The handwringing ignores some key “facts on the ground.”

Assuming that interpretations of the Mayan calendar are wrong and the world won’t end on December 21, the presidential campaign of 2012 is about as close as we’re going to come to end-times mania. Maybe I should say “depressia.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign of lies seemed stuck on an an adjective accelerator, from big to bigger to biggest. Maybe the latter was his claim that President Obama bankrupted Chrysler which was now moving all Jeep jobs to China. Maybe it was that he opposed overturning Roe v. Wade. The accelerator moves to quickly to judge.

There are few personalities in the legal profession that are divisive as Robert Bork. And, while his name has not often come up this election cycle, his legacy with the Supreme Court and possibility that his vision will shape its future deserves to be discussed.

It’s worth noting that, even on this throwaway issue, the binders weren’t Romney’s idea.

The deadline for easily withdrawing from the Missouri Senate race has come and gone, and Akin remains “in it to win it,” defying even a call by the presumptive Vice-Presidential nominee (and a friend from the House Budget Committee, as well as a partner in anti-abortion politics), Paul Ryan. But on his apology tour, Akin actually went further in his comments about abortion and rape, something that should not be overlooked. He actually dug a bigger hole.

Ryan believes the unborn are fully human and must be protected. That’s a deeply radical take with implications for birth control and in vitro fertilization and a whole host of other policies. He believes in forcing women to birth children, as their choice cannot trump the unborn’s life. And on the question of whether women should face murder charges for abortions, he has said, obliquely, is that “If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

Mitt Romney has been all over the place on this question, as with many others, throughout his political career. But his choice of running mate says plenty about who he would seek to appeal to in his Presidency.