Videos Discuss Ultrasound Bills, Religious Exemptions, Spoof Women's Health Debates

March 1, 2012 — The following summarizes select women's health-related videos.

Ultrasound bills : Backlash against a Virginia bill that would require an ultrasound before abortion care is reverberating to other states, Rachel Maddow reports. A lawmaker in Alabama said he would revise a similar bill so that women could choose whether the ultrasound would be vaginal or abdominal, but -- as Maddow notes -- women would be forced to undergo the medical procedure either way. Meanwhile, a Pennsylvania ultrasound bill specifies that the screen with the image would have to face the woman (Maddow, "The Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC, 2/27).

Contraceptive coverage : The fight continued this week over whether employers and health plans that have moral or religious objections should be allowed to bypass the health reform law's requirements for covering certain services. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus debates the issue with Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List. Dannenfelser questions whether a small group "should be dictating what an appropriately formed conscience looks like." DeGette says she agrees that a small group should not decide the issue for all Americans. "I don't think the U.S. bishops should be able to say whether millions of Americans make the conscientious choice themselves to" use birth control or not, DeGette says (Matthews, "Hardball," MSNBC, 2/28).

More parodies : In the latest spoof on the contraceptive coverage debate, Funny or Die offers its take on who should be deciding issues of women's health care. "Late-middle-aged men know the most about everything," the video says (Funny or Die, 2/27). Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert also weighed in on contraception again this week, giving a "wag of the finger" to "spermicidal maniacs" at the University of Kansas who are working on a male birth control pill. "Any of us who have attended mass at the Church of the Immaculate Santorum know that birth control is an affront to all that is holy," he adds (Colbert, "The Colbert Report," Comedy Central, 2/29).