One of the first bits of legislative flotsam to resurface was a measure, introduced by Obenshain in 2009, to force women to report miscarriages to the police within 24 hours or face up to a year in jail.

The text of Obenshain's bill:

[SB962] requires that when a fetal death occurs without medical attendance upon the mother at or after the delivery or abortion, the mother or someone acting on her behalf, within 24 hours, report the fetal death, location of the remains, and identity of the mother to the local or state police or sheriff's department of the city or county where the fetal death occurred. The bill also specifies that no one shall remove, destroy, or otherwise dispose of any remains without the express authorization of law-enforcement officials or the medical examiner, and that a violation of this section is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

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An excerpt (emphasis mine):

Just in the last several days, a Bismarck news anchor mistakenly uttered vulgarity on live television. He's been heralded by celebrities from New York to California as some sort of pop icon. His bosses have been called goons because they fired him.

We learned this week that the Pentagon is vetting its guide on religious tolerance with a group that compared Christian evangelism to rape, and advocated that military personnel and colluding chaplains who proselytize should be court-marshalled.

Forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court sanctioned abortion on demand. And we wonder why our culture sees school shootings so often.

Not exactly "This is water," is it?

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The theatrical protest, organized by Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina, wasn't the first time activists have employed a bit of razzle dazzle to draw attention to an issue and get people talking.

Below, a roundup of five protests that show how, sometimes, a little flare can make a big difference.

Mad, Mad Women

As noted above, the North Carolina group made a splash on Tuesday, wearing dapper vintage outfits to make their point that access to birth control is basic health care. The Republican-controlled judicial committee went on to approve the measure, which now heads for a full vote in the General Assembly, but the Mad Women caused a social media stir and brought national attention to a bill that may have otherwise flown under the radar, as Laura Basset reported for the Huffington Post:

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As Salon has previously reported, the woman, identified only as Beatriz, is 23 weeks pregnant with an anencephalic, non-viable fetus. Beatriz's doctors have testified that complications related to her lupus, hypertension and kidney disease could kill her if the pregnancy is not terminated; but because abortion is illegal under all circumstances in El Salvador, Beatriz, and her doctors, could go to prison if she receives the life-saving medical procedure.

In a statement last month, Beatriz pleaded with El Salvador's president Mauricio Funes Cartagena to intervene in the case, saying: "This baby inside me cannot survive. I am ill. I want to live.” On Wednesday, she told the court the same.

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The Red River Women's Clinic argues in the suit that the law could make abortion impossible to access in the state, effectively banning it.

President and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights Nancy Northup, a co-sponsor of the suit, said in a statement on Wednesday that the law is a dangerous barrier to safe abortion care that could jeopardize women's health: "With their relentless campaign to end safe and legal abortion in North Dakota, lawmakers have effectively told the women of their state, 'We don't care about your health, we don't care about your safety, and we sure don't care about your constitutional and human rights.'"

As the Associated Press notes, the requirements mandated by the law, set to take effect on August 1, are almost impossible for the state's last remaining clinic to comply with: "Opponents of the measure say it's impossible for abortion doctors in North Dakota to meet the minimum number of hospital visits required for because the procedure is safe and women rarely need further care."

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According to the New York Times, "if all the proposed religious and secular combinations go through, almost half of the hospital beds in the state ... would be controlled by the Catholic health systems," and would cease to perform abortions, provide comprehensive reproductive and end-of-life care and other medical procedures barred by church doctrine.

As reported by the Times:

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As reported by the Associated Press:

"That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly," [Ginsburg] told a crowd of students. "... My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change."

The ruling is also a disappointment to a degree, Ginsburg said, because it was not argued in weighty terms of advancing women's rights. Rather, the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, centered on the right to privacy and asserted that it extended to a woman's decision on whether to end a pregnancy...

Ginsburg would have rather seen the justices make a narrower decision that struck down only the Texas law that brought the matter before the court. That law allowed abortions only to save a mother's life.

A more restrained judgment would have sent a message while allowing momentum to build at a time when a number of states were expanding abortion rights, she said. She added that it might also have denied opponents the argument that abortion rights resulted from an undemocratic process in the decision by "unelected old men."

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Choice excerpts from Korman's cutting ruling (emphasis mine):

On the administration letting politics get in the way of safe medical care:

On April 5, 2013, I issued an order directing the defendants — the Commissioner of Food and Drugs and the Secretary of Health and Human Services — to grant the Citizen Petition filed by the plaintiffs and make levonorgestrel-based emergency contraceptives available over-the-counter and without point-of-sale or age restrictions. I did so because the Secretary’s action was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent, and because it could not provide a basis to sustain the denial of the Citizen Petition.

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Korman was explaining why, when previously ruling on access to Plan B emergency contraception, he had initially waited for the administration to act on its own and make the drug widely available based on scientific evidence, rather than on politics. "The process had been corrupted by political influence. I remanded because I thought with a new president" things would be different, Korman said. But in 2011, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius overruled, with the president's explicit blessing, the FDA's recommendation to lift all age restrictions, which Korman ruled in March was a decision made in "bad faith" because of the politics around sex and contraception. He ordered the administration to lift all restrictions. Instead, it accepted a manufacturer's petition to make Plan B available over the counter only with photo ID showing the purchaser was at least 15, and the Department of Justice is appealing.

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“It’s not my decision to make,” he told reporters in Mexico City, but said the agency's decision was based on "solid scientific evidence" and was something he was "comfortable with.” The president also told reporters that he was "concerned" by the FDA's original recommendation to allow emergency contraception to be sold over-the-counter without age or point-of-sale restrictions.

Obama's announcement comes just days after the Department of Justice filed an appeal to overturn a federal court order to lift all age restrictions on emergency contraception. U.S. District Court Judge Edward Korman recently ordered the FDA to make the morning-after pill available without a prescription and without point-of-sale or age restrictions, a ruling intended to go into effect on Sunday.

Korman called the the agency's failure to make emergency contraception available without restrictions an "intolerable delay” amounting to an “administration agency filibuster” of women's access to safe contraception.

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The Obama administration's decision to appeal comes despite a recommendation from the Food and Drug Administration to lift age restrictions and other scientific research saying the drug is safe and effective for all ages.

As the New York Times reports:

The appeal reaffirms an election-year decision by Mr. Obama’s administration to block the drug’s maker from selling it without a prescription or consideration of age, and puts the White House back into the politically charged issue of access to emergency contraception...

By appealing the judge’s ruling, Mr. Obama’s Justice Department is essentially renewing the objections that [secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius] — backed by the president — had more than a year ago. In recent weeks, conservative groups had urged the Justice Department to appeal the judge’s ruling so that the contraception would not be available to very young girls.

On Wednesday, a Justice Department official said the appeal would concentrate on the two areas where the department believes the judge overstepped his legal authority. The official also said the White House had not been involved in the decision of whether to appeal Judge Korman’s ruling.

Reproductive rights advocates have criticized the administration's position on emergency contraception as overtly political and having little to do with science or women's health.

“Age barriers to emergency contraception are not supported by science, and they should be eliminated,” Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe had vetoed the extreme measure in March, citing concerns that it violated Roe v. Wade and that subsequent legal challenges would prove "very costly to the taxpayers of our state" as the "costs and fees [of defending an unconstitutional law] can be significant." The Legislature overrode Beebe's veto in March.

The suit seeks a preliminary injunction against the law, which is set to take effect in July.

“This law is one of the most dangerous assaults on women’s health that we’ve seen in decades,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas. “We may not all agree about abortion, but we can all agree that this complex and personal decision should be made by a woman, her family, and her doctor, not politicians.”

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What is gateway sexual activity? Lawmakers borrowed from Ohio criminal code to define it as “any touching of an erogenous zone of another, including without limitation the thigh, genitals, buttock, pubic region, or, if the person is a female, a breast, for the purpose of sexually arousing or gratifying either person.” So, basically, anything upwards of and including second base. If a student receives such an education, a parent can sue for damages and the school could be liable for up to $5,000 in fines.

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The church, a multicolored brick building with stained glass windows that look like rolling waves, is flanked on one side by a domed Greek Orthodox church, and on the other by a field stretching out to a subdivision. Just inside its doors in 2009, 67-year-old Dr. George Tiller, one of the few late-term abortion providers in the United States and an usher at his longtime church, was shot and killed by a man named Scott Roeder.

To abortion rights advocates, the murder was the tragic culmination of a decades-long campaign by abortion opponents who had stalked Dr. Tiller; barraged him with nuisance lawsuits; blockaded and bombed his clinic; shot him in both arms in a previous, failed assassination attempt; and helped inspire Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to begin a nightly television harangue against the doctor he condemned as “Tiller the Killer.”

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Jon Stewart has a field day:

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A state Legislature actually wants to strengthen women's access to abortion -- and it's not even April Fools' Day!

The Reproductive Parity Act passed the Democrat-controlled statehouse in February, with a religious conscience exemption for employers and insurance carriers that oppose abortion. Supporters are optimistic that they will have the votes to pass the measure if it reaches the floor, but Democrats have a very narrow majority in the state Senate and a yes vote could prove tricky.

Democrats have 26 seats to the Republicans' 23, but as the New York Times notes:

The Republican minority was joined in December by two Democrats, creating a bipartisan ruling group. The coalition’s majority leader, Senator Rodney Tom, a Democrat, supports abortion rights, but many of the members of the coalition he leads go the other way. That means that if the bill reaches the floor, passage would require a flip side of the leadership coalition — Democrats leading the yes votes, presumably with Senator Tom back among his old caucus.

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In March, the Arkansas Legislature overrode a veto by Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe to pass a law criminalizing abortion after 12 weeks. Later that month in North Dakota, with the support of Republican Gov. Jack Dalrymple, lawmakers passed a "fetal heartbeat" law that banned the procedure at five to six weeks. Abortion rights and reproductive health advocates contend both laws violate a woman's constitutionally protected right to an abortion as set out by Roe v. Wade, which defines fetal viability between 22 and 24 weeks.

"I think they're going to be blocked immediately by the courts — they are so far outside the clear bounds of what the Supreme Court has said for 40 years," Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, told USA Today.

Lawyers from the center and the American Civil Liberties Union will lead the court challenges, and expect victories that would require both states to pay their attorneys' fees.

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Unfortunately, she may be right.

According to a report from MSNBC, a non-profit conservative litigation group has offered to defend the state ban completely free of charge. Liberty Counsel chairman Mat Stavers extended his organization's pro-bono support through a public statement this week:

Cost should not be a part of Gov. Jack Dalrymple’s decision to sign or veto bills... Liberty Counsel will defend these laws pro bono. No rights are more fundamental than the right to life. Without life, all other rights are irrelevant.

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Women with reliable access to contraception tend to delay and space out when they have babies. And according to a new Guttmacher Institute review of more than 66 studies conducted over three decades, a woman's ability to control her fertility affects much more than just if and when she'll start a family; contraception plays a big a role in the financial, professional and emotional lives of American women, too.

In fact, access to contraception was found to be related to all sorts of positive outcomes in family, mental health, children's well-being and general life satisfaction.

According to Adam Sonfield, lead author of the review:

The scientific evidence strongly confirms what has long been obvious to women. Contraceptive use, and the ensuing ability to decide whether and when to have children, is linked to a host of benefits for themselves, the quality of their relationships, and the well-being of their children.

But, he went on to say, access to birth control remains uneven and unequal in the United States, which means that women who are economically disadvantaged or otherwise marginalized don't share in these benefits. Recommendations from Sonfield and the literature call for policies that ground "unintended pregnancy prevention efforts... in broader antipoverty and social justice efforts."

Read the research for a more in-depth analysis, but here's the short version: Women controlling their own fertility is a really, really good thing for the world.

Major takeaways from the review, according to the Institute:

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