Thank you to RH Reality Check for this round-up of top stories:

• Dr. Tiller’s Extraordinary Life and His Untimely Death
• The inauguration of President Barack Obama – a pro-choice President after eight long years
• Sonia Sotomayor makes history as she is sworn-in as the first Latina U.S. Supreme Court Justice
• Levi Johnston makes a name for himself…and leaves an impression
• Obama’s Speech at Notre Dame
• Secretary Hillary Clinton defends reproductive rights and family planning
• The media mangles Caster Semenya’s story but Shawn Syms gets it right.
• Nadya Suleman’s “Octo-mom” saga sheds light on what “choice” really means – and the bio-ethics surrounding assisted reproductive technology…but it may not be over just yet.
• The mystery $200 million dollar budget item in the stimulus package proposal that never actually was in the proposal and the accompanying Republican tittering over getting to say “stimulus” and “condoms” in the same sentence on television…and Rep. John Boehner getting schooled by real reproductive health experts.
• The RNC discovers halfway through their temper tantrum over private insurance coverage of abortion in the health care proposal that they have, in fact, been paying for abortion coverage in their own insurance package…and then promptly pulls the coverage for their female employees.
• Rep. Ryan calls out Democrats for Life for booting him because of his support for contraception.
• Governor Paterson signs an anti-shackling bill into New York state law, joining only a handful of states in outlawing the cruel and unusual punishment of shackling pregnant prisoners during labor and childbirth.
• Women’s health advocates rally together behind the I Am Not a Pre-Existing Condition campaign and succeed in ensuring, in health care reform legislation, the exclusion of harmful pre-existing conditions that discriminate against women: cesarean sections as reasons to deny coverage; lack of maternity coverage in individual plans; using rape as a “pre-existing condition” and more.
• “The Monumental Setback” also known as the Stupak-Pitts Amendment enrages women, health advocates of all ages, providers, and religious leaders one and all.
• Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state adds a provision to the Senate health care reform bill that would require Medicaid to reimburse licensed birth attendants who provide services in licensed birth centers benefiting Certified Professional Midwives (CPMs) and expanding birthing and provider options for U.S women.
• Uganda’s anti-gay law on the table, in front of their Parliament, will impose the death penalty on homosexuals, in certain circumstances, if enacte. But thanks to the good work of Political Research Associates, the American influence is exposed highlighting how U.S. fundamentalist Christian churches play a part in fomenting the homophobic environment in African nations, via African churches, that leads to violent legislation like this (with Rwanda not far behind).
• Repeal of the global gag rule and reinvestment in UNFPA after eight years of withholding of funds for family planning efforts internationally, and U.S. censorship on reproductive health centers.
• Keeping tabs on female soldiers in the U.S. millitary and the ways in which reproductive health care and treatment are denied to them.
• Afghanistan’s midwives work to address critical Afghan women’s maternal health issues, as American troops and American influence remains (In Afghanistan a woman dies in childbirth every 30 min; the country has the second highest death rate in women during pregnancy and childbirth in the world)
• Women’s health advocates, feminists and journalists raise awareness and expose the ways in which the mainstream health care delivery system has built barriers to women’s safe birthing options, paving the way for expanded birthing and care options for pregnant and laboring women.