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A personhood amendment on the state ballot would declare that life begins at conception. There is support for the measure in the conservative state but opposition from groups that say its broad language could limit contraception and threaten fertility treatments.

The former House speaker began his career as a history professor at West Georgia College. "He thought he could have some kind of impact, to get kids to think," says a friend and former colleague. "But he really wanted to get into politics."

The state Senate voted to override Gov. Brad Henry's veto of two abortion measures, a day after the House voted overwhelmingly to do the same. One of the bills requires women to undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the fetus before getting an abortion.

In Philadelphia, a murder case involving a sordid abortion clinic is fueling debate over how clinics should be run. Several states are considering stricter regulations. Abortion rights groups say that could force some clinics to close and make abortions more expensive.

The state subsidized portions of workers' salaries in the hopes that it would lead to permanent jobs. Six months after the program ended, more than half of the participants were still working. "It just takes a bit of the sting out of the cost of hiring," says one employer participating in the program.

Pennsylvania's new governor, Tom Corbett, has dismissed several workers and ordered sweeping changes to the way two state agencies regulate clinics that provide abortions. Corbett says workers failed for years to spot horrid conditions at a clinic where multiple infants and women died.

A new Boeing plant in nonunion South Carolina is the subject of a legal battle that's playing out across the South and in Congress. The aircraft giant says the state offered a lot of incentives to get the plant, but the union says Boeing broke the law and violated workers' rights.

The first shots of the Civil War were fired 150 years ago Tuesday at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. The state was the first to secede from the Union; now, it's treading carefully as it commemorates a war that left more than 600,000 soldiers dead.

A dwindling supply of sodium thiopental has forced states to find an alternative drug for lethal injections. Corrections officials in Oklahoma have started using pentobarbital, and Ohio says it will soon follow suit. But death penalty opponents have raised questions, since the drug hasn't been tested for this use.

A new Georgia law aimed at cracking down on illegal immigrants takes effect July 1 and will require most businesses to verify worker eligibility. For farmers and their workers, the likely consequences will be hefty: The law could lead to understaffed farms, and to cutbacks in two lucrative state crops — peaches and Vidalia onions.