This piece by Katie Breslin originally ran on the Huffington Post. Katie, the chair of the Trinity Washington University College Democrats, formerly served as the Women’s Caucus chair for the College Democrats of America. Katie serves on the DC Democratic Committee, and blogs on GenwhyPress.

2011 was a tough year for women’s health advocates. It felt like every week was a battle with Republicans across the country to protect the rights women hold so dear. During these battles, such as the one for defunding Planned Parenthood, President Obama has stood strong with women’s health advocates and protected women against the Republicans who were trying to stop us from moving forward.

On January 20th, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a ruling that required nearly all employers to offer contraceptive coverage and preventive care. By August 2012, most health insurance plans will include contraceptive coverage with no co-pay — a blessing for any poor college student. The Obama Administration and other faith-based organizations have negotiated a deal to allow religious institutions to have an additional year to comply with the Affordable Care Act regulations. This seems fair and as a Catholic woman I understand the action as one of respect towards the Catholic Church’s teachings.

HHS’s decision will help millions of women, sexually active or not. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 14 percent of pill users use the pill for exclusively for non-contraceptive purposes. Access to contraceptives is a public health issue. Birth control, the most prescribed medication for young and middle-aged women, should be covered with no co-pay because it is has significant health benefits when used. Access to contraceptives is a public health issue.

When I am looking for a candidate that stood by women and fought for access to birth control, Barack Obama will be my candidate. Mitt Romney’s political career has been a stem of bad policies about women. Romney is too concerned with the 1%, and not concerned enough about making health care more affordable for everyone. From vetoing a bill to require hospitals to offer emergency contraceptives to rape victims to proposing to the support of personhood amendments (sometimes), Romney is not a friend to women. When women are looking for a friend in health, Barack Obama has filled that role with ease.

Last night was rough for Mitt Romney.

In addition to losing Missouri's "beauty contest," he came in third in Minnesota and lost Colorado, a state he expected to win handily—after all, he carried the state with 60 percent of the vote in 2008.

That comes on top of new polling that confirms Democrats are more excited about the November elections than Republicans. That can't be good for the Republican Party's prospects—or Romneyland's in particular.

But the past months have proved that it shouldn't be surprising that enthusiasm is cratering for the GOP and for Romney. Primary voters have been confronted with a field of deeply flawed candidates who offer nothing new and who want to double down on the failed economic policies that tanked our economy in 2008.

And GOP primary voters and general-election independents are now turning away from their party's frontrunner, Romney, a candidate who will say anything to get elected—so much so that he cannot be trusted to lead. His private-sector experience has rapidly gone from a plus to a liability: Laying off people and bankrupting companies to line your own pockets is not what Americans think when they think of free enterprise.

Boston, you have a problem.

But don't take it from us. Here's a sample of what they're saying.

Jon Ward wrote in the Huffington Post today:

"It was a very bad night for Mitt Romney Tuesday, no matter which way you sliced it, another harsh blow undermining his argument that he is the strongest Republican candidate for president.

"It happened in Iowa on Jan. 3. It happened Jan. 22 in South Carolina. And on Tuesday night, Romney was again rejected by a large portion of the Republican electorate, this time in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado. …

"No amount of spinning by the Romney campaign about delegate counts could obscure what the night made crystal clear: their candidate remains unable to excite passion in the GOP and remains a long way from closing the deal with voters."

Taegan Goddard at Political Wire wrote:

"An emerging theme is that Mitt Romney can't win any state unless he's able to hammer his opponents with negative ads."

And Talking Points Memo's Benjy Sarlin tweeted:

@BenjySarlin: So while Missouri doesn't count, not a good sign that 100,000+ Republicans came out just to say they don't want Romney

In his State of the Union Address, President Obama spoke about the “generation of heroes who returned home from combat” after World War II who “built the strongest economy and middle class the world has ever known.” He called for a new Veterans Job Corps that would provide funding to communities, so they can hire veterans to serve as first responders. This would put veterans to work restoring our parks, forests, and natural resources.

The President outlined his plan on February 3^rd with specific details that will be included in his FY13 Budget. Communities that recruit and hire post-9/11 veterans to be police officers and firefighters will benefit from $166 million added to the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Hiring Grant, and $320 million added to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grants in 2012. Our veterans have proved their commitment to making the world a safer place, and through the Veterans Job Corps they will be able to continue their commitment in their local communities.

The Veterans Job Corps will also feature a conservation program that aims to put 20,000 veterans from any era to work in our federal, state, and local parks by “providing visitor programs, restoring habitat, protecting cultural resources, eradicating invasive species, and operating facilities.” Veterans in the conservation program would also help repair roads, levees, trails, and recreation facilities.

Lastly, the President hopes to expand the entrepreneurship training opportunities for veterans made possible by the partnership between the Departments of Defense and Veteran Affairs and the Small Business Administration. This includes the development of a two-day entrepreneurship program open to all service members and veterans. The Small Business Administration will also develop an intensive entrepreneurship boot camp for veterans and will offer an 8-week online training program that teaches the keys to small business ownership to over 10,000 veterans annually.

President Obama said, "When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.” The President has proved that he believes the same rules apply at home, and as veterans return home to a continuously recovering economy, his latest policies help make sure veterans are in the front of the line for employment in the country they served so selflessly already.

Barack Obama is a bold, courageous president who has addressed the huge issues facing the American people. He came into the White House in January 2009 under the worst political and economic conditions since the Great Depression—two wars, the loss of 750,000 jobs a month, Wall Street on the verge of collapse, and an inherited trillion-dollar deficit. 

In his first two years in office, President Obama secured major legislative victories, the likes of which have not been seen since President Lyndon Johnson. In his first two years, he successfully enacted the Recovery Act, which created more than 3 million jobs and saved two of the Big 3 automakers. He passed education reform with Race to the Top and invested in our infrastructure. 

The President passed health care reform, overhauled the financial sector to help protect consumers, repealed "Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, and secured a New START Treaty. The President ended the war in Iraq, helped allies overthrow a dictator in Libya, expanded SCHIP—the child's health insurance program—to include 4 million new kids, and he put two women on the Supreme Court who we can all be proud of.   

The miracle is that he accomplished these legislative successes with either little or no help from the Republican Party, the party that put us on the brink in the first place. It's been difficult to move legislation throughout the Republican-led House, but his accomplishments in the first three years of his administration more than exceed the records of presidents who have served longer terms. What President Barack Obama has done in his first term deserves to be rewarded—with a second term.

To read more of the President’s accomplishments, click here.

Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz released the following statement tonight on the results of the GOP primary in Missouri, as well as the Republican caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota:

“Tonight was a bad night for Mitt Romney, plain and simple.  What should have been a night where he began to consolidate Republican support instead has shown that Republicans are reluctant to get behind him.   Republicans are giving the field of candidates another look, demonstrating that the more people get to know Mitt Romney, the less they like him.  They know he'll say anything to get elected, and they don't want a candidate they can't trust.

"Also alarming for Republicans is the lack of enthusiasm and low turnout we're seeing in these contests. In state after state, turnout among Republican voters is lower than it was in 2008, and they are increasingly dissatisfied with their choice of candidates.

“No candidate embodies that dissatisfaction more than Mitt Romney, who hasn't managed to lock this nomination up. The presumed front runner of the GOP field lost two of tonight’s contests so far – that math speaks for itself.  He is losing support from independent voters nationally, and tonight we saw he's not gaining the favor of Republican primary voters either. They clearly don't appreciate being ignored as Mitt Romney did to Minnesota and they know his failed record as Governor of Massachusetts on the key issue of jobs, his background as a corporate raider, and his economic proposals would leave the middle class behind."

Mitt Romney's latest line of attack against President Obama is that the administration is "using Obamacare to impose a secular vision on Americans who believe that they should not have their religious freedom taken away." He's launched a petition against the administration's new regulation requiring employers and insurers to offer coverage for women's contraception.

Romney's attack has been called an "outright lie"—and it certainly doesn't square with his own record as Massachusetts governor, when he stood behind a state law that required all FDA-approved contraception, including emergency contraception, must be covered.

In other words, Romney is attacking President Obama for providing women with the very same access to contraception and preventive care that Romney did as governor of Massachusetts. It's another breathtaking example of Romney's hypocrisy—and his willingness to do and say whatever he thinks it takes to get elected.

This infographic shows that the Massachusetts law and the federal law are nearly identical. Share it widely.

White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett released this statement today commemorating National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day:

On this, the 12th annual National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I remember my sister-in-law’s fight with the disease. Tragically, she did not win that fight—she left behind a devastated husband and five-year-old daughter. But it is in her memory, and the memory of all the friends and loved ones we have lost, that we vow to keep working toward the day when HIV/AIDS is history.

Read Valerie Jarrett’s entire statement here. For more information about National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day and this administration’s efforts to fight HIV/AIDS in the black community, visit http://www.aids.gov.

President Barack Obama addressed the 60^th annual National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, February 2^nd, with a message about his own personal Christian faith and a vision for our nation anchored in the values that enable us to face our challenges and move forward greater together. “We can’t leave our values at the door,” the President said. “If we leave our values at the door, we abandon much of the moral glue that has held our nation together for centuries, and allowed us to become somewhat more perfect a union. Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Jane Addams, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Abraham Heschel -- the majority of great reformers in American history did their work not just because it was sound policy, or they had done good analysis, or understood how to exercise good politics, but because their faith and their values dictated it, and called for bold action.”

The President spoke about the ways in which the values of fairness, compassion, and shared responsibility have guided him not just in his private life, but in his public life and leadership of our nation. “I’d be remiss if…my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends. So instead, I must try – imperfectly, but I must try – to make sure those values motivate me as one leaders of this great nation.” His actions back up his words. The President’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has been busy at work empowering religious and community organizations to improve low-income schools, create social networks to help people find jobs, increase access to vital healthcare and nutrition services, ensure our veterans are employed and promote strong fatherhood. President Obama has also increased funding to Catholic charity organizations and provided grants to organizations like World Vision, American Jewish World Service and Islamic Relief for life-saving aid across the world.

President Obama’s values greatly inform his prioritization of policies that augment the impact of faith-based and community organizations throughout the country. His values also guide his approach to issues like expanding opportunity for all, protecting the most vulnerable, and making sure our housing and financial sectors are working for Americans rather than against them. The President reiterated this in his remarks. "Treating others as you want to be treated.  Requiring much from those who have been given so much.  Living by the principle that we are our brother’s keeper.  Caring for the poor and those in need…Today, with as many challenges as we face, these are the values I believe we’re going to have to return to in the hopes that God will buttress our efforts.”

The President closed by reflecting upon a moving personal encounter with The Reverend Dr. Billy Graham: “I have fallen on my knees with great regularity since that moment -- asking God for guidance not just in my personal life and my Christian walk, but in the life of this nation and in the values that hold us together and keep us strong.  I know that He will guide us.  He always has, and He always will.  And I pray his richest blessings on each of you in the days ahead.”