The senator has yet to announce a date, but with the health reform debate likely to occupy the upper chamber for most of December, scheduling the hearing this year would be a tricky proposition.

Last week, 22 senators representing both sides of the aisle had written to Harkin and Sen. Michael Enzi (Wyo.), the senior Republican on the HELP panel, urging the committee to examine the new mammogram guidelines, which recommend that women get screenings less frequently and later in life — an overhaul of existing protocols.

In the House, Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who heads the Energy and Commerce health subcommittee, has already announced his intention to hold a December hearing on the new mammogram recommendations. From a scheduling standpoint, Pallone has the advantage: the House has already passed its version of the health reform bill.

“These recommendations, which have been widely criticized by patients and doctors alike, could prove devastating for women at risk of breast cancer,” the lawmakers wrote to Sens. Tom Harkin (D- Iowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.), the leaders of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Breast cancer screenings and advances in technology have reduced the mortality rate of patients who develop this devastating disease, but early detection of breast cancer is absolutely critical. To alter these recommendations, and to contradict the advice provided by countless doctors, will only serve to cause confusion and alter the behavior of patients, may (sic) of whom may be at a high risk of contracting breast cancer.

Spearheaded by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the Nov. 20 letter was also signed by GOP Sens. Olympia Snowe (Maine), David Vitter (La.), Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Jim Risch (Idaho), Jim Inhofe (Okla.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas), John Ensign (Nev.), Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Pat Roberts (Ks.) and John Barrasso (Wyo.); the Democratic co-signers were Sens. Barbara Mikulski (Md.), Ben Cardin (Md.),  Barbara Boxer (Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Arlen Specter (Pa.), Charles Schumer (N.Y.), Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.).

No word yet about Harkin’s plans, but Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce health subpanel, has already said that he’ll hold a hearing on the topic early next month.

Ahead, on my right, I saw the Alaska Right to Life (RTL) booth, where a poster caught my eye, taking my breath away. It featured the sweetest baby girl swathed in pink, pretend angel wings fastened to her soft shoulders.

“That’s you, baby,” I whispered to Piper, as I have every year since she smiled for the picture as an infant. She popped another cloud of cotton candy into her mouth and looked nonchalant: Still the pro-life poster child at the State Fair. Ho-hum.

Well, I still thought it was a nice shot, as I did every time I saw it on its advertisements and fund-raiser tickets. It reminded me of the preciousness of life.

It also reminded me of how impatient I am with politics.

A staunch advocate of every child’s right to be born, I was pro-life enough for the grassroots RTL folks to adopt Piper as their poster child, but I wasn’t politically connected enough for the state GOP machine to allow the organization to endorse me in early campaigns.

Time and again, Palin uses her large family for political purposes, and then complains that they’re “off limits” when she decides they’re under attack. We’ve seen it with the use of her son Trig–Palin put him on national TV at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and has occasionally accused liberals of wanting to kill him. We’ve seen it with Bristol Palin, whose pregnancy became a national story, and with Track Palin, whose military service Palin has referred to again and again. But it seems like Piper Palin’s star turn for Alaska Right to Life was the first political deployment of a Palin family member.

Last week, it was liberal Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) predicting that anti-abortion lawmakers in the upper chamber wouldn’t be able to rally the 60 votes needed to pass an amendment to health reform legislation restricting abortion. This week, it’s an influential moderate Democrat warning that the health bill won’t pass without such a provision. Roll Call reports:

“What is clear is that for this bill to be successful, there can be no taxpayer funding for abortion,” Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Conrad said he did not know whether the Senate would ultimately adopt the restrictive language that the House passed last week, which dictated that any new government-funded health insurance option cannot pay for abortions. But he said that some kind of abortion restriction is necessary for a bill to get through Congress.

The debate in the House is following a similar storyline, with conservative Democrats insisting that the abortion restrictions be included, and no small number of liberal Democrats hinging their support on their absence. With neither side appearing ready to back down, you can look for Democratic leaders to perform a very delicate scalpel job during conference negotiations to reconcile the two bills — something that would allow both sides to claim victory.

In an interview with Detroit News, the 57-year-old Catholic warned that “the other side is playing with fire,” if they try to remove his amendment during later negotiations with the Senate.

If they are going to summarily dismiss us by taking the pen to that language, there will be hell to pay. I don’t say it as a threat, but if they double-cross us, there will be 40 people who won’t vote with them the next time they need us—and that could be the final version of this bill.

Of course, there are about 40 abortion-rights supporters in the House who are vowing to kill the bill if the Stupak language stays.

There are countless perks that come with being part of the congressional leadership. Resolving stalemates like this is not one of them.

“If someone wants to offer this very radical amendment, which would really tear apart [a decades-long] compromise, then I think at that point they would need to have 60 votes to do it,” Boxer said. “And I believe in our Senate we can hold it.”

“It is a much more pro-choice Senate than it has been in a long time,” she added. “And it is much more pro-choice than the House.”

She’s not really going out on a limb here. In the Senate, it’s almost always tougher to alter a bill than to preserve it as it arrived on the floor. With that in mind, the fear among abortion-rights advocates is not so much about what happens as the Senate takes up its own bill, but what will happen during the Senate/House conference afterward. Just as it would be tough for abortion foes to find the 60 votes to add the House amendment during the Senate debate, it would be equally tough for abortion-rights lawmakers to find the 60 votes to remove it if comes out of conference intact.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House, said that she and other pro-abortion rights lawmakers would work to strip the amendment included in the House health bill that bars federal funding from subsidizing abortions.

“I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there,” Wasserman Schultz said during an appearance on MSNBC. “And I think we’re all going to be working very hard, particularly the pro-choice members, to make sure that’s the case.”

House Democrats put themselves into a pickle over the weekend when they accepted an amendment, sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), prohibiting abortion coverage, not only in the public plan being proposed in the House health reform bill, but also in the subsidized private plans found on the newly proposed insurance exchange. Stupak and other moderate Democrats want assurances that no federal funds will go to provide abortions, and they’ve hinged their support for the overall bill on the inclusion of that ban.

Liberal lawmakers in support of abortion rights, however, are also vowing to kill the overall bill unless the Stupak language is removed. One side will have to give, or the entire health reform effort goes up in flames.

As I reported earlier this week, Republicans have stalled Johnsen’s nomination with their ambivalence about supporting cloture and the leadership’s refusal to agree to a time limit for debate on the vote. Although Johnsen clearly has the 51 votes she needs to be confirmed and may have enough votes to support cloture, Republicans’ insistence on 30 hours of debate before the Senate can actually vote on the nomination has made it difficult for Reid to put the vote on the calendar.

Johnsen has angered Republicans by being openly critical of OLC policies under the Bush administration, and by supporting abortion rights 20 years ago as a lawyer for the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL (now NARAL Pro-Choice America).

Johnsen may have more support now than she did at the time of her hearing, however, since Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, then a Republican and one of her harshest questioners back in February, has switched parties. After saying he opposed Johnsen’s nomination back in April, Specter recently met with her a second time and said he is reconsidering his position.

Update: Here’s a copy of the letter pressing for Johnsen’s confirmation sent to Sen. Reid today by a coalition of civil and human rights groups.

While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.

The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic Rep. Jim Slezak of Davison and Republican Rep. Paul Scott of Grand Blanc. There were a total of 23 co-sponsors for the bill.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jack MacIntyre, a deputy chief with the sheriff’s office, told me the ruling was “an instance of pretty rank judicial activism,” adding that “it is very very likely we will appeal.”

The way the sheriff’s office looks at it, he said, the judge’s order (which was read to the court and is not yet available in print) was “not only not leveling the playing field for persons seeking abortion, but setting them up as a preferential category ahead of anyone else seeking transport for medical procedures.”

That’s because Maricopa County doesn’t provide free transportation for anyone who wants medical assistance outside the prison clinic, he said.

“We’re continuing to charge anyone else for medical transports,” he said. “We did that recently for someone from Oklahoma who had to be tested and have bone marrow drawn because his sister had an advanced case of leukemia. He had to be tested twice and have bone marrow extracted and implanted in his sister. We charged in advance for transport and security costs,” said MacIntyre. “We do the same thing for people getting eyeglasses or dentures.”

In fact, the county is required to provide transportation for all medically necessary treatments, because prisoners have a constitutional right to medical care. But there’s no right to cosmetic dentistry or other elective procedures, so the county can charge pre-payment for transportation to those.

The ACLU had challenged the charges in connection with the abortion procedures because there is a constitutional right to abortion. The same court had already held that the sheriff cannot obstruct that right.

“The crux of the case was that for indigent women who couldn’t afford this, and couldn’t get money from friends, or from charitable organizations, she would likely be forced to carry to term,”explained ACLU attorney Brigitte Amiri, who argued the case in Arizona today. “The defendants conceded that.”

But MacIntyre had another objection, which is that there was no actual woman involved in this case, at least not right now. When the ACLU initially filed its lawsuit in 2004, it was on behalf of a woman who’d been denied access to an abortion because she could not afford the transportation and security costs. A nonprofit organization eventually paid the costs for her, but the issue remained and the case continued.

In 2005, the court ruled that the county policy was unconstitutional, and issued an injunction to prevent the county from enforcing it against anyone else. According to Amiri, the judge today ruled that the pre-payment policy was a violation of that earlier court order. Under Arizona law, it didn’t matter whether an actual woman was being denied the ability to obtain an abortion at this moment, she said. What’s more, “since this issue is certain to recur there’s no sense in not deciding it now. Also, when a woman does need an abortion, time will be of the essence, and any delay in obtaining an abortion can increase risks to her health.”

The judge apparently agreed that that was good enough reason to rule on the issue. But that still didn’t convince the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

“It really is setting up one group as a special group, and it directly impacts the taxpayers who Arpaio tries to steward as best as possible by not spending their money foolishly, trying as much as possible to run his organization on as tight a budget as possible,” said MacIntyre.

What’s more, if the woman who initially was denied an abortion because she couldn’t afford it, back in 2004, were in the court today, he added “we wouldn’t even be discussing it,” said Macintyre. “That person was an illegal alien, and there’s a federal law that prevents us from extending credit to an illegal alien.”

Actually, says Amiri, the federal statute prevents illegal immigrants from receiving welfare benefits. And transportation to gain access to a constitutionally protected abortion is not legally considered a form of welfare benefits.