Portside

Two potentially sweeping Supreme Court cases set the stage for a seismic shift in the battle over abortion and contraception.

After two days of near silence, Republican presidential candidates are finally praying for the victims of the Colorado attack. Praying is always okay, even for sinners. It's a turn of phrase that doesn't risk showing even the slightest desire to protect Planned Parenthood from future attacks. Republicans might not want Planned Parenthood workers killed, but they sure don't seem to mind if their angry hordes do everything just short of that.

GOP presidential candidates incited against reproductive health group before Paris terror provided a more lucrative target.

There are two reasons abortion rights activists have been boxed in. One is that we’ve been reactive rather than proactive. The second reason we’re stuck in a defensive mode is that too many pro-choice people are way too quiet.

The Center for Medical Progress is led not by well-meaning bioethics geeks but by some of the most virulent members of the anti-choice movement.

Anti-abortion groups have long pushed to defund Planned Parenthood, even though no federal money is used to provide abortions. But that hasn't stopped their efforts to shut down the clinics, which provide services like contraception, cancer screening and other tests.

Women’s-health clinics have been under assault for years. Abortions make up just 3 percent of the services Planned Parenthood performs. Planned Parenthood estimates that 130,000 women in Texas go without preventive health care, like breast-cancer screenings, due to Texas' anti-abortion cuts to women’s-health-care funding, and a lot of those women will die as a result.

Decision means state will continue to provide basic reproductive healthcare to low-income women.