I put five stories about anti-abortion activism or bills in the show's morning news note today. You can read along with us.

From the Hill, HOUSE VOTES ON AMENDMENT THAT WOULD KEEP FED FUNDS FROM PAYING FOR ABORTION TRAINING:

The House late Tuesday was thrown off its schedule and is now expected to complete work on a healthcare bill Wednesday. The bill, H.R. 1216, would scale back federal funding for graduate medical student education. One amendment to the bill, from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), would ensure remaining funds are not used for abortion training. Debate on that amendment turned into a nearly two-hour affair, culminating in a Democratic objection to Republican attempts to move the debate along. That delay prompted Republicans to hold a vote on the two amendments it had fully debated, and delay further debate until later Tuesday evening.

From the Lexington Clipper-Herald, NEBRASKA OUTLAWS ABORTION VIA TELEMEDICINE, PASSES PARENTAL CONSENT:

Nebraska lawmakers closed the door Monday on a practice that has made drug-induced abortions more easily available in Iowa. Senators voted 38-9 to pass a bill blocking the use of telemedicine for such abortions. They also advanced a separate bill that would require parental consent for a teenage girl to get abortions.

From AP, by way of NECN.com, LOUISIANA HOUSE COMMITTEE APPROVES ABORTION BAN:

A House committee has approved legislation to outlaw abortion in Louisiana, despite concerns that the bill would knock the state out of compliance with federal law and risk the loss of federal funding for Medicaid. Abortion opponents at the hearing Tuesday applauded the committee's decision to send the bill to the House floor, where it will force lawmakers during an election year to take a stance on abortion. Republican John LaBruzzo, of Metairie, told lawmakers he hopes his bill will prompt lawsuits from abortion-rights groups, suits that could undermine the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling establishing a women's right to an abortion. The court ruled in Roe v. Wade that states cannot outlaw abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy, but LaBruzzo's law would do just that. Louisiana already has a crime of feticide, but the bill would repeal the exception for consensual abortion, in direct contrast to the Supreme Court's ruling.

From CNBC, ALABAMA SENATE PASSES ABORTION RESTRICTIONS:

The new Republican-controlled Alabama Senate rushed through a package of bills Tuesday designed to make it tougher to get an abortion in the state and to define that life begins with fertilization and implantation in the womb. The lopsided votes on the five bills were a dramatic departure from the old Democrat-controlled Senate, when abortion bills usually died in committee. The votes came after Republicans cut off stalling tactics by some Democrats. "Today was historic," Republican Sen. Phil Williams of Rainbow City said.

From InForum, CATHOLIC CHAPEL OPENING NEAR ND'S ONLY ABORTION CLINIC:

A Catholic chapel focused on prayers to end abortion will open in an office building neighboring North Dakota's only abortion clinic. The Catholic Diocese of Fargo will open the Visitation Chapel at 502 1st Ave. N. on June 1. The chapel will offer Mass at 8 a.m. Wednesdays, followed by Eucharistic adoration and recited prayers until 3:45 p.m. It will be locked the rest of the week. The Red River Women's Clinic is at 512 1st Ave. N., and sees patients on Wednesdays.

After last night's closing segment on the Confederate flag outside that Louisiana courthouse, I went back and looked at this old photo from my former Confederate state. The picture above was taken in 1939 by Marion Post Walcott in Belzoni, Mississippi. Belzoni -- pronounced bel-ZON-uh -- is a little bitty place in the Delta that calls itself the Catfish Capital, and probably is.

In the picture you see here, an African-American man is heading up the outside stairs to the section where black people were allowed to sit. The cinema he's going into is called the Crescent. Today, that same man could pay his money and go in through the front door like he should have been able to back then. Except the Crescent isn't there anymore. The local economic development group says people have recently re-opened a New Crescent, but it's more for community events. If you want to see a movie, you have to leave Belzoni and drive an hour north and west to Greenville.

Growing up in the old Confederacy, you get used to this kind of thing. It's as though white people gave up on the idea of old-fashioned public places once they had to share them. Along came cars and suburbs and prosperity, and out went sidewalks and town swimming pools. My people abandoned ordinary civic life, and the result was a whole new kind of ruin.

Louisiana State Representative John LaBruzzo

A new bill in the Louisiana state legislature would outlaw all abortions. A doctor who provided one could be brought up on charges of feticide, which carries a sentence of five to 15 years.

In its current form, the bill (pdf) would also leave women who choose abortion at risk of prosecution for the same crime. The Republican state representative who's sponsoring the bill says that part's a mistake. Representative John LaBruzzo tells the Times-Picayune he'll take that measure out for practical reasons.

"That will be amended out before it is heard in committee," LaBruzzo said Wednesday. "That is a mis-draft; that is not acceptable to me. That would make it too difficult to pass, otherwise."

What Mr. LaBruzzo's really after, of course, is a chance to challenge Roe v. Wade before a U.S. Supreme Court that's ready to chip away at it, if not overturn it. Kate Sheppard reports on Mother Jones today that Louisiana lawmakers have been passing extreme anti-abortion bills for several years now.

One year after BP's oil disaster, the companies involved in the Deepwater Horizon well seem to be doing fine. BP logged $5.6 billion in profits in the last quarter of 2010, up nearly a third from the year before. Transocean, which operated the rig itself, is the designated driller for four of the first 10 new permits issued by the federal government. Halliburton, which cemented the well that blew up, doubled its profits from the quarter before the disaster to this year, with a $511 million haul.

And yet. The New Orleans Times-Picayune uses the first anniversary of BP's disaster to call the company out for not paying to restore the local oyster beds. As the spill continued, Louisiana officials opened freshwater diversions to push the oil back and keep it from entering fragile wetlands. That decision likely spared large swathes of the ecosystem, but it hurt the saltwater oyster beds. BP now says that it shouldn't be responsible for fixing the oyster beds -- for buying new cultch for them -- because creating the diversions wasn't their choice. From the Times-Pic:

Louisiana is willing to let BP count any money spent on rebuilding oyster reefs toward mitigation rather than emergency cleanup costs, which means it won't add to the company's bottom line costs.

That makes BP's intransigence even harder to understand. Louisiana officials made decisions to protect the state's wetlands; BP is driven by a far different motivation, and the company shouldn't be allowed to call the shots.

BP says the oysters don't show evidence of being contaminated by oil, so this can't be their problem. On the other hand, as the Times-Pic points out, BP would have been dinged for the cost of wetlands destroyed if state officials hadn't kept the oil away. To fix the oyster beds, the state had wanted BP to chip in $15 million.

From the Eunice, Louisiana, newspaper, which last year ran the saddest (and shortest) Mardi Gras story ever:

An elderly Eunice man needing help getting untangled from a fence instead was poked with sticks by on-lookers before police freed him from the torment.

The newspaper later amended that to say that the man had been out looking for his dog when he got caught on the fence, and that they'd thought the rest of the story was online but maybe they'd had too much Mardi Gras and left it off somehow.

You can still find the story in its intended long form, minus the editor's note. Anyway, the coverage of true Cajun Mardi Gras is still terrific.