A few things that have caught my attention over the last couple of weeks:

Over at Nature, which is *supposed* to be a respectable publication, Ed Rybicki wrote some utter unfunny bullshit in Parallel Processing, in which men hunt, women gather, and HA HA, WOMEN are so good at SHOPPING because they can ACCESS A PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Because of how women and men are just so inherently different in a binary, unknowable-to-men way. LOLLERSKATES. Christie Wilcox over at Scientific American’s Science Sushi has the more mature response.

At another Scientific American blog, Kate Clancy talks about menstrual synchrony and why women might not really synchronize their cycles.

Rock Center has a segment on involuntary sterilization in North Carolina that disproportionately targeted women of color.

Health News Reviews takes a look at media coverage of a study on preventive mastectomy.

The draft research review for Closing the Quality Gap Series: Quality Improvement Interventions to Address Health Disparities is online (free) and open to public comment through Dec 15. (via BHIC)

eeshap at the Crunk Feminist Collective writes about diamonds and conflict, and why care in purchasing is not enough – we must make choices that devalue the diamond in society and therefore reduce diamond mining-related incentives to cruelty.

A clear photographic example of the way products for children reinforce gendered steretypes, in the form of magnetic words for boys and girls. Here, boys get the moon, a wizard, and a dragon, while girls get a diamond, perfume, and make-up. Oh, and bunnies.

Lena Chen has a guide to/review of some sex toys. The separate files for this article are totally unwieldy, but there is some good info therein.

I haven’t spent much time on the site yet, but here is the inevitable OccupyHealthcare. One thing they’re talking about is health information and responsibility for health literacy.

Jill Filipovic talks at the Guardian about the long game for personhood amendments.

The FDA revoked its approval of Avastin for metastatic breast cancer treatment.

Kotex has recalled a whole bunch of tampons.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Cancer, Drugs, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education

Update: the ballot initiative was defeated, 58% to 42%. Kudos and thanks to everyone who worked in Mississippi to defeat this measure.

Today and tonight, Mississippi voters will go to the polls to determine whether a fertilized egg is a “person.” Initiative 26 would:

…amend the Mississippi Constitution to define the word “person” or “persons”, as those terms are used in Article III of the state constitution, to include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.

There are any number of problems with this approach, among them:

• It would make abortion illegal. Women will have abortions anyway, so either women or doctors or both could become criminals, women will have to go out of state even more than they already do (in a state with one abortion provider) – disproportionately affecting poor women, and/or women will have unsafe abortions in these kinds of conditions.

• Emergency contraception, some IUDs, and even some “regular” oral contraceptives could become illegal if they prevent implantation of fertilized eggs. Most oral contraceptives *don’t* work mainly by preventing implantation, but they *hypothetically* could.
• Potentially subjecting women who have miscarriages (also extremely common) to additional scrutiny, perhaps even including criminal investigation. I worry that women with citizenship issues or other legal concerns, or simply women who belong to groups routinely targeted for oppression, will forgo medical care during miscarriage for fear of such investigation. This is not far-fetched.

This is all aside from the fact that a *huge* percentage of fertilized eggs never implant, and there is no way to actually detect a fertilized egg. The medical definition of pregnancy involved an implanted, fertilized egg because a) implantation is *required* to establish and continue a pregnancy, and there are no detectable bodily changes (because there’s no pregnancy…) until implantation.

Similar efforts in Colorado and by a former HHS leader have already failed. Honestly, even if it passes, I don’t think it will hold – lawsuits are pretty much guaranteed, and the Center for Reproductive Rights has pledged to take it to court.

Loretta Ross points out that the initiative is likely to punish women of color much more so than white women, in Race, Class, and Rights in Mississippi: How A Reproductive Justice Campaign Can Save the Pill and Save the Vote:

Women of color will be the first and majority of the casualties of the Personhood Initiative if women are investigated for miscarriages. Mississippi already has the highest rate of infant mortality in the country. If the Voter ID Initiative passes, it is highly likely that the voters most affected will be voters of color. We know this in our guts. Now we have to believe it with our higher reasoning brains.

Loretta also asks, “To be heard, do black women have to bring Nina Simone back to sing her famous song about Mississippi?” I have to say, that’s the song that’s been running through my head ever since I heard about the initiative.

Further reading:
What Happens If the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Passes? – The Atlantic
A ton of coverage at RH Reality Check
What the Mississippi Personhood Amendment Can Teach Us About Organizing Around Reproductive Rights and Justice – Christine at Our Bodies Our Blog
Why a Fertilized Egg is Not a “Baby” – A Gardener’s Analogy – yours truly

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Contraception, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Pregnancy