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BIRTH CONTROL
The Legal Group Going After Birth Control
What: Slate has a deep dive on the “Alliance Defending Freedom”, an organization that’s “been working for decades to reshape America into a Christian nation—and will keep doing so, regardless of who wins the presidential election in November.” One of their targets? Birth control.
Why it matters: “The lawsuits and model legislation make clear that ADF wants to redefine some birth control as abortion so it can be banned without the group having to overturn 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut—if abortion is banned and contraception is abortion, then contraception is also threatened. An alternative prong of this strategy is getting the court to agree that the Comstock Act of 1873 bans the mailing of abortion-inducing drugs and devices, a claim ADF makes in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Comstock could be used to prohibit certain forms of birth control too.”
Source: Slate
FERTILITY
Abortion Bans Aren’t Increasing Fertility
What: Research from the University of Houston found the fertility rate fell in all states last year—including those that banned abortion.
Why it matters: “Much more data in these realms is to come—but the signs are that if the bans were in some measure an effort to expand births to reassert patriarchal power and a status quo economy, it’s not working out that way. Trying to force women into families they don’t feel ready for while pushing them out of civic life only makes them even less likely to start families than they were already.”
Source: The Nation
ABORTION ACCESS
Over a Third of Women Don’t Know They’re Pregnant Before Six Weeks
What: Research from the Guttmacher Institute found nearly 40% of women don’t know they’re pregnant at six weeks, the abortion ban limit in four states. They also found under 25% of those who found out about their pregnancy in six weeks were able to get an abortion.
Why it matters: “Six-week abortion bans are especially pernicious because they prohibit abortion before many people know they are pregnant,” the researchers wrote in a Guttmacher news release. “Uncovering information on the timing of pregnancy recognition is vital to understanding the harmful effects of abortion bans based on gestation and who is most affected by them.”
Source: Health Day
MENOPAUSE
Boiling With Menopausal Rage
What: Comedian Samantha Bee talks about her menopause experience, which is the basis of a new three-night show in NYC.
Why it matters: “Bee says anger was the first sign of the changes she was undergoing. And that’s saying something for the Canadian-born comedian, who says she was not prone to throwing tantrums for most of her life. ‘I’m not really generally a hot takes type of person, and I do like to think about things and consider things, but the anger inside of me would boil. I would rage boil in a nanosecond,’ she said. ‘It was such a powerful feeling that I did–at the end of some–I was throwing things. Privately, my personal anger was overtaking me.’”
Source: Daily Beast
ONCOLOGY
The Challenge of Dense Breasts
What: The Guardian looks at the federal government’s recent requirement that women must be notified if they have dense breast tissue, which can make it harder to spot cancer via mammogram–and the challenges that can present.
Why it matters: “’It’s very confusing,’ says [Dr Angela DeMichele, professor of medicine and co-leader of the breast cancer program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson cancer center]. ‘We have not had a definitive study that showed us exactly the right test to do in [people] with dense breasts that could [detect] cancers without also leading to more cancers and more biopsies.’”
Source: The Guardian
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