More Buzz on HHS Secretary
Our Bodies, Our Blog floats the names of possible replacements for Sen. Tom Daschle at the Department of Health and Human Services.  Kathleen Sebelius is getting the most serious attention, but other candidates being considered include Howard Dean and Rep. Rosa DeLauro.

Kansas Legislature Considers Anti-Choice Bills...
Two biased counseling and two bills limiting late-term abortion rights will come before the Kansas state legislature this term, reports the Kansas City Star.  "The proposed Woman’s Right to Know and See Act would require abortion clinics to offer more information — in pamphlets and videos — regarding stages of fetal development. It also would force abortion providers to offer women the option of viewing a free sonogram of the fetus. Clinics also would have to post signs noting that coerced abortions are illegal."  Pro-choice advocates say the bill is unnecessary, given that clinics already offer their patients free sonograms.

Another bill would eliminate the mental health exception to the state's ban on late-term abortion.  And yet another bill would "require clinics to provide specific information to the state about the diagnosis used to justify the late-term procedure."

...And So Does South Carolina's Legislature
In the South Carolina legislature, anti-choice bills would extend the state's mandatory delay period from an hour to 24 hours and require physicians to attempt to save the life of fetuses born during an abortion.  "Both bills, filed by Rep. Greg Delleney, R-Chester, are awaiting floor debate in the House, which could come as early as Tuesday," the Charleston Post-Courier reports.  "There's no medical reason to make someone wait 24 hours," said Alison Piepmeier, director of women's and gender studies and an assistant professor of English at the College of Charleston. "I think it's insulting to women because it implies that a woman choosing to have an abortion hasn't thought about it before arriving at the clinic."

Ginsburg Sets the Bar

In the Guardian, Scott Lemieux takes the measure of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Lemieux writes,

The Lebetter case is not the only one in which Ginsburg has filed an angry but closely argued dissent lamenting the erosion of womens' rights under the current supreme court. Previously, in Gonzales v Carhart, she meticulously shredded justice Anthony Kennedy's poorly reasoned and in some places sexist opinion upholding an arbitrary federal ban on the so-called "partial-birth" abortion procedure (and effectively overruling the court's 2000 decision striking down a virtually identical state ban).