The Problem with ‘Paper Abortions’
Last week, the New York Times published an op-ed titled, “Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?” The author, Laurie Shrage, argued that, since a woman has the right to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy...
View ArticleThe Latest Crazy Republican Arguments About Reproduction
People hate and fear what they don't understand. There is no more vivid illustration of this truism than the pronouncements of the religious right on sex and reproduction. Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.) set...
View ArticleIt’s a TRAP
On Friday afternoon, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed into law a bill that could shutter two of the state’s four remaining abortion clinics. The law, which goes into effect on July 8, will require...
View ArticleSexism Matters, That Equinox Ad Doesn’t
A group of mothers in Bethesda is taking the mantle of feminism to advance the cause of prudery. The moms are up in arms about a local billboard for Equinox Gym and they are gathering signatures to...
View ArticleMcDonald’s Workers Need a Raise, Not a Fantasy Budget
McDonald’s and Visa are being widely mocked for issuing a sample budget for their low-wage employees that fudges basic living expenses like heat and health care in order to make their meager wages...
View ArticleRolling Stone’s Jahar Tsarnaev Cover Is Perfect
Rolling Stone put a selfie of Jahar Tsarnaev on the cover of its August 1 issue, and all hell broke loose. The headline for Janet Reitman's cover story reads: "The Bomber: How a popular, promising...
View Article‘Legitimate Rape Myth’ Rooted in Fictional Nazi Experiments
Last year, Republican senate candidate Todd Akin gained instant nationwide notoriety with his assertion that “legitimate rape” doesn’t cause pregnancy. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has...
View ArticleWhy ‘Fetal Pain’ Is Hogwash
The New York Times reported Friday that anti-choice activists were using “disputed scientific theories” about fetal pain in a bid to overturn 40 years of settled law and ban abortion at 20 weeks. As...
View ArticleThe Butt Injection Black Market
This week, the Associated Press ran a very sad story about women who are being maimed and killed by black market buttocks injections. The story portrayed these tragedies as byproducts of female vanity...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 9: Blood Money
The final half-season of Breaking Bad begins with one of the show’s trademark flash-forwards. As usual, the viewer’s task anticipate the circumstances that brought about the scene. Walt returns to his...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 10: Buried
Jesse Pinkman is found lying catatonic on a merry-go-round, spent from hurling bundles of cash onto the lawns and stoops of a blue collar neighborhood. As we saw in the scene with the homeless man in...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 11: Confessions
In this episode, the writers elegantly orchestrate a decisive break between Walt and Jesse. A split in their deeply dysfunctional relationship seemed imminent when Jesse figured out that Walt killed...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 12: Rabid Dog
When Skyler learns that Jesse doused the White family home with gasoline, Walt tries to keep his wife focused on the bright side: At least Jesse didn’t follow through with his plan to burn the house...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 13: To’hajilee
In a dusty corner of the To’hajilee Indian reservation, Walt loses his battle of wits with Hank and Jesse. This is the clearing where they first started cooking together, the clearing where Hank and...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 14: Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip,...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 15: Granite State
In “Granite State” we finally learn what Walt was doing in New Hampshire. The vacuum salesman/rehoming specialist sends Walt to live like a hermit in rural N.H. because his case is too hot to put him...
View ArticleBreaking Bad Recap, Season 5, Episode 16: Felina (FINALE)
As far as I’m concerned, Breaking Bad ended in the wilds of To’hajilee, with Hank slipping the cuffs on Walt and Walt realizing that he had been beaten in a battle of wits with men he regarded as his...
View Article5th Circuit Shutters up to a Third of Texas Abortion Clinics
This morning, some Texas women with scheduled, legal abortions were told that their procedures could not take place because the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday that doctors who...
View ArticleLet’s Talk About Campus Shout-Downs
Last week, Brown students shouted down outgoing Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to oppose the racist stop-and-frisk policing that defined Kelly’s term in office. Since the university would not cancel...
View ArticleBad Science Reporting: The Birth-Control-Will-Make-You-Go-Blind Scare
By now, you may have heard that women who took birth control pills for at least three years were twice as likely to develop glaucoma later in life. The germ of this story was a press release by the...
View ArticleHobby Lobby May Know a Lot About Yarn, But It’s Wrong About Birth Control
This week, the Supreme Court announced that it would hear a pair of cases challenging large employers’ obligation to provide comprehensive health insurance for their employees, including birth...
View ArticleCase of ‘Forced C-section’ May Not Be What It Seems
The U.S. press is buzzing about an Italian woman who was forced to undergo a Cesarean section while she was hospitalized for a mental breakdown in the United Kingdom. The child was placed in foster...
View ArticleMaking Fun Of Purity Culture Is Feminist
Slate pundit Matthew Yglesias drew feminist ire last week for an off-color tweet promoting a post about Paul Ryan’s hypocrisy on the budget deal. “Here’s how Paul Ryan is like a girl doing oral and...
View ArticleThe Death of a Brain
The family of 13-year-old Jahi McMath removed her dead body, still attached to a ventilator, from the hospital on Sunday. A court order gave the family the power to remove their daughter’s body as...
View ArticleAre Cancer Tweets The Same As Funeral Selfies?
Lisa Bonchek Adams blogs and Tweets about the nitty gritty details of life with Stage IV breast cancer, and Emma Keller thinks that’s incredibly tacky. In a piece last week for the Guardian, Keller...
View ArticleA Victory for the Rights of Texan Women (But Only If They Are Dead)
The good news is that, in Texas, women’s second-class citizenship lasts only as long as they live. The bad news is that pregnant women who refuse life-sustaining treatment by advance directive must...
View ArticleLiberal Victim Blaming
One morning in 2012, a man snuck up behind Erika Anderson on a busy sidewalk in Crown Heights and shoved his hand between her legs. When Anderson went to the 77th Precinct station to report the...
View ArticleTwitter Is Public. Deal with It.
Last week, Christine Fox (Twitter handle: @SteenFox) asked her 13,000 Twitter followers to describe what they were wearing when they were sexually assaulted. Answers poured in from women raped in...
View ArticleBy Ridiculing Redskins, Colbert Made Racism ‘Truthy’
Stephen Colbert is not a blowhard right-wing cable news host, but he plays one on The Colbert Report. The Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report is a sexist, racist, egomaniacal jingoist, whom Stephen...
View ArticleElliot Rodger’s War on Women
Like many terrorists, Elliot Rodger picked a symbolic target when he singled out the Alpha Phi Sorority as the focus of his self-declared “War on Women.” “I cannot kill every single female on earth,...
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