On Election Day 2011, when Mississippians voted down the “personhood” amendment that would have criminalized abortion and, potentially, common forms of birth control, the political arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) launched the Women Are Watching (WAW) campaign, a social-media project intended to educate and engage Planned Parenthood supporters throughout the country.

According to a press release, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund (PPAF) will run online banner ads highlighting “Champs” and “Chumps” of reproductive rights.

Current “Chumps” featured include GOP presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, as well as U.S. Reps. Steve King (R-Iowa), Allen West (R-Fla.), Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) and Todd Akin (R-Mo.). “Champs” include President Obama, U.S. Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.); and U.S. Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Shelley Berkley (D-Nev.); and former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack, who is running for Congress as a Democrat.

In an editorial for the Huffington Post published Tuesday, PPFA President Cecil Richards wrote:

Over the past year, we have witnessed the most aggressive legislative attacks on women’s health and rights in a generation. The 2010 elections dramatically changed the U.S. Congress and state legislatures nationwide, leading to a wave of efforts to restrict access to vital women’s health care, including lifesaving cancer screenings and birth control. … [M]ore than 1,000 reproductive health bills have been introduced in legislatures across the country, the majority of which seek to undermine women’s health.

These attacks on women’s health are unacceptable and we’re putting anti-women’s health candidates from both parties on notice. Women Are Watchingwill work to ensure that politicians who play politics with our health are defeated and to support candidates who fight for the care women need to stay healthy.

Planned Parenthood saw victory Tuesday night with Mississippi’s “personhood” rejection and with Democratic victories in Kentucky (Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear was re-elected), Iowa (Democrats retained control of the state Senate) and New Jersey (Democratic control expanded in the state Senate).

However, Virginia is now completely controlled by the Republican Party, which won seats in the already GOP-majority House of Delegates and appears to have tipped the balance of power in the state Senate from Democrat to Republican, with the election of Republican Bryce Reeves over incumbent Sen. R. Edward Houck of District 17. The national anti-abortion-rights group the Susan B. Anthony List claims to have spent $25,000 in radio, TV and mailer ads against Houck’s reelection.

Planned Parenthood is also watching various states in 2012, including:

• Pennsylvania: Bills have been introduced to enforce new regulations on abortion clinics and to require women to receive state-mandated information about abortion.

• Florida: In 2012, Floridians will vote on a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to prohibit public funding of abortions, which is already illegal, but more significantly the bill would “prohibit the State Constitution from being interpreted to create broader rights to an abortion than those contained in the United States Constitution” — thus rolling back a constitutional privacy right in the state constitution that currently provides more protection for women than the U.S. Constitution does. A “personhood” amendment just like Mississippi’s will also be on the ballot.

• Planned Parenthood is also “watching” New Hampshire, which severed a decades-long family-planning contract with Planned Parenthood of Northern New England this year; Ohio, which introduced the controversial “heartbeat bill;” and Texas, which slashed the state’s family-planning budget from $111 million to $38 million and passed a mandatory ultrasound bill (many of the provisions of this law were struck down by a federal judge).

“I think we are, by our nature, nurturers and negotiators. We want people to get along, we want to find a solution, we want to move forward,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) told Terkel. “I think sometimes there is a tendency to like the fight for the fight’s sake every once in a while with some of the guys. So I think having more women involved will help.”

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said that in negotiations female senators are more solutions oriented.

“When women are part of the negotiation and are part of decision-making, the outcomes are just better,” said Gillibrand. “When we have our dinners with the women in the Senate — the Democrats and Republicans — we have so much common ground. We agree on so many basic principles and values. I think if there were more women at the decision-making table, we would get more things done.”

With more women, priorities might likely shift as well, just as a demographic matter. Take the view of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, for example. Should we slash those programs?

As Terkel reports, “56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries, 57 percent of Social Security beneficiaries and 69 percent of adult Medicare recipients are women, who tend to live longer than men.”

Would the Senate be focusing more on the recovery than, say, defunding Planned Parenthood?

Since the recession began in 2007, men have regained 27 percent of jobs lost while women have regained only 9 percent, according to Terkel. The recovery is moving three times faster for men.

On the state level, Coloradans have long abandoned lopsided male-dominated representation.

As the Colorado Independent reported this year, 41 women were sworn into the state legislature in 2011, strengthening the state’s standing as the women-lawmaker capital of the nation. Colorado gained five women in the Senate and lost one in the House. In addition to the 17 women in the 35-member Senate, there are 24 women serving in the 65-member House. That’s the largest percentage of women serving at any state capitol across the country and it’s also the largest number of women ever to serve at the Colorado capitol. .

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that the percentage of women serving in state legislatures in the country is down from 24.5 percent in 2010 to 23.4 percent this year. The percentage of women serving in Colorado dwarfs those figures at 41 percent.

Got a tip? Story pitch? Send us an e-mail. Follow The Colorado Independent on Twitter.

Thus far in the current campaign cycle, tea partier Akin has received $91,500 from defense-related interest groups while serving on the House Committee on Armed Services, the House Committee on the Budget and the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. That figure puts him in second among members of Congress in amount received from defense interests during this election cycle, after House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) and nearly $40,000 more than President Obama.

Meanwhile, Akin has started a ‘task force’ to increase federal contracts for defense companies based in Missouri, held numerous defense industry breakfasts and said that defense is a “vital, Constitutional responsibility of the federal government” while questioning the financial viability of Medicare.

Akin is currently campaigning for the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Claire McCaskill, whose pet issue since being elected in 2006 has been defense contract oversight and promoting transparency in government affairs. McCaskill currently serves as the chairwoman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

“The atti­tude in the mil­i­tary has been, too many times, ‘I want what I want, when I want it,’” McCaskill told the Kansas Monitor, promising to increase oversight of contracted military spending.

Their race will likely be an interesting microcosm of the role of special interests in elections, as McCaskill and Akin hold opposing positions on many social and fiscal issues, and most of their funding sources are similarly polarized.

Akin, the former Army combat engineer whose Missouri district is home to Boeing Defense, Space and Security, has made no secret of these ties. Of the top ten organizations that have donated to Akin in the past two years, three are defense companies.

After convening the St. Louis Defense Industry Task Force, which would “increase the profile of the importance of the defense industry” in Missouri, he boasted in a press release that he “will call on greater coordination and support between state, federal and local officials in actively supporting the strength of defense manufacturing in the St. Louis region.”

He has also held numerous defense industry fundraising events, eighteen in the past year, and has toured defense companies to show his support for their manufacturing base in Missouri.

Along with large contributions from different corporate interests, Akin is ideologically conservative. He has supported proposals to teach intelligent design in public schools, display the Ten Commandments on public property and retain references to God in the Pledge of Allegiance.

“I don’t think so,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) told the National Journal in response to whether she would comply with the resolution. She argued the moratorium was simply “about messaging” and would give a false impression about taking serious action on reducing the deficit. Sens. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) expressed similar reservations yesterday.

And Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), for her part, attempted to backpedal on her definition of exactly what an earmark is, telling the Minneapolis Star Tribune that transportation projects should be excluded. “I don’t believe that building roads and bridges and interchanges should be considered an earmark,” Bachmann said. “There’s a big difference between funding a tea pot museum and a bridge over a vital waterway.”

On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Mark Udall (Colo.) have teamed up with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) to press for a vote on the Senate floor on the issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, remains a staunch proponent of earmarking and he has said he’ll block any efforts to have a floor vote on the issue should it be brought up today. He argued the Senate simply doesn’t have enough time to consider the measure right now, but would be open to a vote at another time.

Although the Republican Conference voted to adopt the moratorium, it’s important to remember that — currently, at least — it’s a nonbinding resolution.

“I’m going to look out for my state of Oklahoma,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Poltico today, in apparent defiance of the upcoming decision. “Obviously, that’s what the Constitution says I’m going to do, and I’m going to do it. Let’s keep in mind this is over. I’ll be the last conservative standing.”

Whether Inhofe’s small act of civil disobedience — or Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C) hedging — prevents Republicans from claiming the moral high ground on the issue remains to be seen.

That’s not yet a majority, but it’s about double the number who have come out against the measure, so nearly all the senators now sitting on the fence would have to vote ‘no’ for DeMint’s moratorium to fail. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) emailed me the following statement on Friday:

The message from the 2010 election was unmistakable: Washington spends too much and borrows too much.  I want to take every possible step to reduce spending, decrease the debt and limit the size of the federal government.   Since joining the Senate in 2007, I have voted consistently for earmark reform.  Banning earmarks will not on its own put our fiscal house in order.  It will however send a strong message that we need to do something different and I plan to continue to vote for it.

And the momentum isn’t coming just from Republicans. Following President Obama’s call for Congress to reform the earmark process, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) released the following statement:

“Earmark reform has been a lonely fight for a long time, so it’s encouraging to have others taking this issue seriously, especially among Democrats since I will be the only senator from my party opposing earmarks after the new year,” McCaskill said.  “The bottom line is that tax dollars shouldn’t be doled out based on politics or secret deals, and it’s time both Democrats and Republicans join together to stop them.”

Earmark reform, and perhaps other open government and congressional ethics rules, might be a rare place of ideological overlap between President Obama and the Tea Party agenda. Teaming up on something like more aggressive lobbying reform or shoring up the Office of Congressional Ethics — which some Republicans have indicated they would like to see scrapped — would require a real setting aside of partisanship, however, and I haven’t seen anything so far to indicate that it’s in the works.

The Hill talked to Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Mary Landrieu (D-La.), all of whom said they were still undecided. Landrieu, Dorgan and Conrad gave no indication of how they would vote on the DREAM Act, while McCaskill leaned more toward a “yes”:

“It depends on the language,” she said. “I have some problems with the way the bill was drafted last time. I am certainly more comfortable with the notion that somebody who has been in the country for five years and who came here through the fault of their parents and not their fault ought to get a green card to serve in the military. I’m very sympathetic to that. I’m just looking at the drafting now.”

But Pryor is leaning no.

“I’ll have to look at it and see, but my inclination is probably to vote against it again,” he said. “But I want to look at it and see. I know there’s been some changes.”

With Democrats undecided, the likelihood of the DREAM Act passing as an amendment remains up in the air. Reid will need 60 votes to pass the bill because several Republicans have vowed to block the DREAM Act, claiming it has nothing to do with defense spending. Previous Republican supporters of the DREAM Act, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), have said they will vote against the bill.

The bill was designed to pay for itself through increases to visa fees for foreign companies that bring temporary skilled workers to the U.S, but House leaders say those increases might violate Constitutional rules that revenue measures must originate in the House.  The fee increase would mainly impact Indian IT companies.

Spokesmen for Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) did not immediately respond to calls for comment.

Some Republicans were initially reluctant to support the bill. John McCain (R-Ariz.) attempted to amend the bill to add provisions from the 10-point border security plan he co-wrote with fellow Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl (R). The McCain-Kyl plan would have been funded out of the 2009 stimulus budget, which critics said would hurt middle class families. (The bill passed last night is fully paid for through increases in visa fees for foreign companies that help bring temporary skilled workers to the U.S.)

Schumer rejected the amendments, but McCain agreed to support the bill anyway.

The Senate bill passed last night will have to be approved by the House before it can go to the president to be signed into law. The House seems likely to support it: it passed a $701 bill to fund border security improvements last week.

Republicans have said repeatedly they will not support comprehensive reform until gains in border security are made. Now that Democrats in both chambers have proven they support border security measures, Democrats hope it signals bipartisan support to work on other immigration reform measures.

But some immigrants rights group question whether the bill was necessary or simply an attempt to pander to Republican politicians. Instead, Democrats should push for comprehensive reform, Deepak Bhargava, executive director of Center for Community Change, said in a press release yesterday:

It is extremely disappointing to see Congress fall for Republicans’ wholly manufactured allegations of an insecure border. Every study and report shows the border has never been safer. Crime statistics, free of political bias, show crime has never been lower. Our federal budget shows spending at the border has never been higher. [...]

Republicans shouldn’t be allowed to take Congress’ attention away from the issues that truly deserve their energies, namely a comprehensive overhaul of our broken, outdated immigration system. No amount of additional spending will ever satisfy people who refuse to look at the issue factually.

After passage of the bill, Schumer said he plans to focus on comprehensive immigration reform.

Schumer and McCaskill praised the success of the drones already in operation along the border:

“A lot of people now think of drones in the way that they’ve been used in Pakistan in taking out Al Qaeda, but primary to the drones is their ability to get real-time surveillance,” McCaskill said. “ So imagine the advantage of getting real-time surveillance above the airspace where we have some lawlessness going on and what that could do to assist the people on the ground of manning up where they need to man up in terms of resources at the border.”

The Department of Homeland Security already operates seven drones in border areas: four in Arizona, two in Texas and one along the North Dakota-Canada border. Each drone costs millions of dollars, with the camera alone worth more than $2 million. The unmanned drones can fly for more than 20 hours at a time, but can only be used when weather is deemed clear enough.

The drone program has some detractors in the border security community, where border patrol agents and sheriffs have said money on drones would be better spent on more human law enforcement. Safety is also a concern: The Federal Aviation Administration said earlier this summer they need to finish writing regulations for unmanned aircraft before they can approve significant increases in the number of unmanned drones in civilian airspace.