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).

A press release from the DCCC said the ad is meant to hold King accountable for protecting special interests instead of the middle class.

“King has repeatedly voted to end Medicare and opposed creating jobs while protecting tax breaks for Big Oil and billionaires,” the release reads. “Three recent polls show voters prefer to elect Democrats to Congress in 2012 over Republicans in a generic ballot.”

King is one of 25 U.S. House Republicans being targeted by the DCCC with radio ads. The campaign will also include phone banks, web ads and phone calls.

King, first elected to the House in 2003, is facing what will likely be the most difficult election of his career in 2012. Former Iowa First Lady Christie Vilsack is challenging King, and has gained national attention for her fundraising thus far.

Here’s the script of the radio ad:

Congressman Steve King is protecting tax breaks for billionaires instead of Medicare for seniors and jobs for us all. Tell him to fight for Iowa.

U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron) used a nationally-televised debate Saturday evening to praise a budget plan from U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), saying the country is “up against a very big problem” when it comes to the cost of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and the federal budget is growing so fast “it’s pretty hard to get a handle on what it all means.”

King made the comments at a debate between GOP presidential candidates Herman Cain and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Saturday in Texas. King co-hosted the event, held by the Texas Patriots PAC, which focused on entitlement reform.

With entitlement programs making up more than half the budget, King said, it’s difficult to address the nation’s deficit without looking to reform those programs. He praised Ryan’s plan for taking the initiative to do just that, and noted his own battle to do away with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

“It is a very, very difficult task to be able to shrink this,” he said. “I tried to do so by cutting off all the funding to Obamacare. I didn’t get that done yet.”

King said his one-year-old granddaughter’s share of the national debt is near $50,000. And by the time she’s in 5th grade, he said, she’ll owe $88,000.

“To put that in perspective the average student loan debt upon leaving college is $24,000,” King said. “Can you imagine coming into the world owing Uncle Sam twice as much as you might owe as a college graduate to pay off her tuition?”

And King warned it’s only a matter of time until each person’s share of the national debt becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars, and said it’s going to take “grit, determination and support” from a number of groups to address the issue.

“I pray I live to see the day that we have deficit reduction in this federal government and I am hopeful that we will take a big step tonight on how to get there,” King said before handing the conversation over to Cain and Gingrich.

The Department of Defense, in the wake of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, has indicated that it will allow chaplains and same-sex couples to use facilities on a “sexual orientation-neutral basis,” something Republican members of the U.S. House oppose.

The letter was authored by Republican Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri and was signed by 86 members of the House.

“The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by a bipartisan vote in Congress and signed into law by President Clinton,” Akin said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, this current administration is now directing the Department of Defense to ignore this law and perform gay marriages on military bases. I think this is wrong, which is why I offered an amendment to the House-passed defense bill making it clear that DOMA applies to the DOD. This letter calls for the Senate to add a similar amendment to their version of the bill. The Department of Defense should not be allowed to simply ignore laws they do not like.”

The House members complain that guidance by the Department of Defense General Counsel would make resources available to all members of the military. The general counsel guidance said that the “use of DoD real property and facilities for private functions, including religious and other ceremonies, should be made on a sexual orientation neutral basis.”

“This clear and deliberate violation of established U.S. law sets a dangerous precedent,” the letter states. “[The Defense of Marriage Act] makes it clear that for purposes of the federal government, marriage is defined as between one man and one woman. The use of federal property or federal employees to perform anything but opposite-sex ceremonies is a clear contravention of the law.”

The letter comes as same-sex couples in the military filed suit to overturn DOMA on Thursday in order to secure military benefits denied to them by the federal government.

Here’s the American Jobs Act’s impact on Iowa:

* 60,000 businesses would see a payroll tax cut on the first $5 million in wages.
* A $1,580 tax break for a typical Iowa household making $51,000 a year.
* $385.9 million in infrastructure investments, supporting about 5,000 jobs.
* $287.2 million to support up to 4,100 educator and first responder jobs.
* $132.6 million for school improvements, supporting about 1,700 jobs.
* $56.7 million for community colleges.
* $20 million to refurbish local communities.
* Additional help for 34,000 long-term unemployed Iowa workers through extended benefits and training programs.

The U.S. House on Thursday approved a small part of Obama’s jobs plan, an IRS code that withholds 3 percent on certain payments made to vendors by government entities. That was approved, 405 to 16, with all of Iowa’s Congressional delegation supporting it.

But Republicans representing the state in Washington have not embraced the American Jobs Act as a whole. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Tom Latham (R-Ames) said earlier this week that reining in federal spending and eliminating regulations are key to recovery.

“Much like the president’s failed ‘stimulus’ bill in 2009, the American Jobs Act as a whole will not provide the certainty that the American people and businesses need to begin investing in America again,” said Fred Love.

And U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-Kiron) said after Obama unveiled his plan in September that paying down the nation’s debt and balancing the budget should be the priorities.

“The best thing he could have done would be call for a balanced budget amendment, instead he called for a lot more spending and he called for us to figure out how to pay for it,” King said. “And he told us this is all paid for; well it is if we figure out how to do that here in Congress.”

Abortion via telemedicine in general refers to doctors who authorize the distribution of abortion-inducing drugs to women in rural areas with no access to abortion clinics. These abortions generally involve mifepristone, commonly referred to as RU-486, which is generally used in conjunction with a secondary drug misoprostol to end an early pregnancy. Both drugs have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In a statement released Tuesday, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan expressed concern that banning discussion of or reference to abortion could have negative health impacts on women who live in rural areas who then experience “high-risk” pregnancies.

“Under Sen. DeMint’s extreme plan, if abortion came up in that doctor-patient conversation, the woman and her physician would have to go to a separate communications system,” Keenan said. “He’s calling for an abortion-only version of Skype. It is impractical, ridiculous, and, most importantly, bad for women in rural or remote areas who would not be able to discuss the full set of options with their doctor.”

According to the Guttmacher Institute, 87 percent of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2008.

DeMint’s amendment is similar to one Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) introduced to the related related House Resolution 2112, or the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012, which passed through the House in June.

During the House floor debate, King said one his intentions was to prevent Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers from accessing a $15 million line-item in the bill reserved for the development of telemedicine services.

As The American Independent’s sister site The Iowa Independent previously reported, the language of King’s amendment — “none of the funds made available by this Act may be used for mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486, for any purpose” — does not specifically target the telemedicine line-item but applies to any and all appropriations within the bill.

“We have had 14 deaths of moms that have come from this; 2,207 adverse events, 339 blood transfusions [and] 612 hospitalizations,” said King on the House floor in June, but, as The Iowa Independent noted, he offered no source for his statistics. No deaths have been reported by women who have used the Iowa pilot telemedicine program — administered by Planned Parenthood of the Heartland — to which King was referring.

On Monday, LifeNews.com, which focuses on abortion-related issues, reported the same statistics King relayed to his colleagues, citing an FDA report (PDF). The report, which was uploaded by the Family Research Council, reveals information from U.S. post-marketing reports received by the FDA and documents “adverse events” that occurred among patients who had taken mifepristone for abortions.

“Because FDA has eliminated duplicate reports, and in some cases, reclassified the adverse event terms for individual cases after reviewing the narrative details,” the report notes, “the numbers provided here may differ from the numbers of the reports that may be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.  These events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of information gaps about patient health status, clinical management of the patient, concurrent drug use and other possible medical or surgical treatments.  The estimated number of women who have used mifepristone in the US through the end of April 2011 is approximately 1.52 million women.”

Former Iowa First Lady and 4th Congressional District candidate Christie Vilsack is among a handful of House and Senate candidates who “are distinguishing themselves as breakout fundraising stars in the still-developing 2012 campaign season,” Politico reports.

Reporter Alex Isenstadt writes:

Vilsack has quickly established herself as one of the most formidable Democratic fundraisers, raking in more than $750,000 in her first six months of campaigning. Vilsack, the wife of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and a former Iowa first lady who was an influential player in the state’s political circles, is tapping a nationwide fundraising base — holding fundraisers in New York City and Northern California. GOP Rep. Steve King, Vilsack’s opponent, had raised a little more than $200,000 through June — and another subpar haul should set off alarms in Republican circles.

Last week Politico identified Vilsack and King’s fundraising in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District race as among “10 FEC reports to watch.”

Reporter Alex Isenstadt wrote Friday evening that the third quarter fundraising totals for U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Des Moines, and U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, will be barometers in the battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Leonard Boswell

Boswell has served in Congress since 1997 and is taking on U.S. Rep. Tom Latham, a Republican formerly of Ames that moved south to challenge Boswell rather than battle King in the newly-drawn 4th Congressional District.

Latham, who has served in the House since 1995, raised more than $1 million in the second quarter and has nearly $1.5 million cash on hand. Boswell took in about $336,000 and has $286,000 on hand.

Isenstadt wrote “the Iowa Democrat needs to prove that he can keep pace.”

“During his more than two decades in elected office, Boswell has established himself as a tenacious campaigner,” he wrote. “But his looming post-redistricting race against GOP Rep. Tom Latham is sure be the most perilous – and expensive – contest of his career. Latham, a House Appropriations Committee cardinal who is close to House Speaker John Boehner, is already hauling in the cash.”

Steve King

Christie Vilsack

Meanwhile, King has found himself trailing former First Lady Christie Vilsack in fundraising in the 4th Congressional District. Vilsack, a Democrat, announced earlier this week she’s raised $754,000 since launching an exploratory committee in April. She has $540,000 cash on hand.

King has not yet announced his fundraising totals for the third quarter, but in the second quarter he raised $210,071, spent $161,197 and had $229,972 on hand. The deadline for reporting is Oct. 15.

Isenstadt wrote King “needs to show that his conservative support can translate to cash.”

“King is a conservative heartthrob, but he’s never faced a race like this one,” Isenstadt wrote. “His opponent: Christie Vilsack, who during her eight years as Iowa first lady defined herself as one of the most influential political players in the state.”

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Vilsack is running against long-time incumbent U.S. Rep. Steve King in the state’s newly-drawn 4th Congressional District, which encompasses the northwest portion of the state.

She holds $540,000 cash on hand, and has raised about $754,000 since announcing her candidacy in April.

King, a Kiron Republican, has not yet announced his fundraising totals for the third quarter. In the second quarter he raised $210,071, spent $161,197 and had $229,972 on hand.

Vilsack has traveled throughout all 39 counties of the district, her campaign said, laying out her plans to double the number of apprenticeships in Iowa and nationally and advocating for flood relief.

“I am truly humbled by the Iowans from every walk of life who are supporting our campaign,“ Vilsack said. “We can tackle the great challenges facing our nation and ensure that Iowa’s children have the economic opportunity to raise their own families here—but only if we put an end to the partisan game playing that puts politics before people.”

The deadline for candidates to report fundraising totals is Oct. 15.

Now, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is accusing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Janet Napolitano of engaging in preferential treatment by releasing Onyango Obama. On Fox News, King said that “We have to bring drunken ‘Uncle Omar’ in front of the House Judiciary Committee, drill down into this, and tell America what’s going on.”

The accusations of double standards come at a time when the administration has declared its intent to use its power of prosecutorial discretion to grant indefinite stays of deportation on many undocumented immigrants. King, House Judiciary Chair Lamar Smith (Texas) and other immigration-enforcement hawks in Congress are jumping on Onyango Obama as a way to paint deportation reform as an erosion of the rule of law.

They have also pointed to Zeituni Onyango, Obama’s aunt, who was living in the United States without authorization but was granted asylum in 2010. King says Zeituni’s asylum was a product of the “bleeding heart” of Napolitano, in spite of the fact that the order to grant Zeituni Onyango political asylum was issued by an immigration judge, not Napolitano herself.

Here’s video of King on Fox News accusing the Obama administration of double standards, via The Hill: