Newly elected Republicans around the country are hard at work dealing with the troubles afflicting our nation…access to abortion for women; The “Birthornot.com” couple makes a shocking decision; and surgeons gather from around the globe to address an entirely preventable and treatable childbirth-caused condition called obstetric fistula.

• Anti-choice group Susan B. Anthony List is co-sponsoring the debates between contender for new Chair of the Republican National Committee. SBA List endorsed some of the most extremist anti-choice candidates for Congress in the immediate past campaign season one can fathom. 

• The Wake County Board of Commissioners (North Carolina) apparently lives in an alternate universe where there is no recession, no one is unemployed or losing health benefits. Except their own female members. One of the first acts under the board’s Republican leadership? To revoke insurance coverage of abortion from the county employees’ insurance plan. 

• And in Oklahoma newly-elected, extremist Republican/Tea Party lawmakers are protesting their own party, which now controls the state’s House and Senate, as well as the Governor’s office, for placing jobs and the economy ahead of abortion and immigration.  Who needs a job or a healthy economy when you can just get paid to block access to women’s health and immigrant rights?

• If you need more evidence that Republicans are more concerned with blocking access to individual rights than working to remedy a crumbling economy: Rep. Michelle Bachmann has once again called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood and health care reform on the whole, according to CNSNews.com (a Republican news outlet). Andy Birkey, in the Minnesota Independent, reports that “Much of what Bachmann had to say about abortion in the interview has previously been ruled false by independent fact-checkers.”

• USAID reports on their successful methadone program in Vietnam, which helps to stem the spread of HIV. When heroin addicts are able to access regular methadone treatment, they do not need to engage in behavior which spreads infections like HIV and Hepatitis. 

• Surgeons are gathered in Dakar this week to discuss the best ways to prevent obstetric fistula in developing nations around the world. Fistulas (holes in the birth canal) affect between 50 – 100,000 women/year and, notes the article, and occur during childbirth (usually as a result of a prolonged labor, lack of timely access to care or a lack of proper prenatal care). Most women who suffer from fistulas end up unable to afford the treatment to repair the hole and leak urine for the rest of their lives. The good news? They are entirely preventable with proper care.

• Shocking news! Remember the “Birthornot.com” couple who falsely presented themselves as  wanting public input into whether the woman should continue her pregnancy or have an abortion? Apparently they think it’s hilarious to parody real people’s honest, and sometimes difficult decision making when it comes to family planning, by pretending to put their pregnancy up for a vote! Get it? Me neither. Unsurprisingly, and with the hope that if there’s a god or goddess to which to pray their child will not be as insensitive and clueless as they are, they decided to continue with the pregnancy. Gotta love that USA Today’s headline notes that they “rejected abortion.”