Tag Archives: birth

Here’s Why the Ted Cruz Birther Story Isn’t Going Away

by KathleneT54 Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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During the memorable clash between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz at last night’s Republican presidential debate, the real estate mogul explained why he has persistently raised questions about his Canadian-born rival’s eligibility to serve as president.

“If for some reason…he beats the rest of the field, I already know the Democrats are going to be bringing a suit,” Trump said. “You have a big lawsuit over your head while you’re running. And if you become the nominee, who the hell knows if you can even serve in office?”

As it turns out, Trump’s concerns over a lawsuit weren’t unwarranted. In fact, one was filed that same day by Houston lawyer Newton Boris Schwartz Sr. The suit asks a federal judge to define the “(1) status (2) qualifications and (3) eligibility or ineligibility of defendant for election to the office of the President and vice President of the United States.” In the poorly written, 28-page complaint, Schwartz noted that this question is “now ripe for decision,” and then invoked the so-called birther arguments used against President Barack Obama (see the full complaint below):

If all that was and is required for Defendant’s eligibility for the election to the office of the President and Vice President of the United States is that one of his biological parents be a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth in Canada outside the 50 United States…then why have the “birthers” or “doubters” and questioners of the place of birth of the 44th President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama have persisted to this date and prior to his 2008 elections in 2008 and 2012? When undisputedly: (1) he was born in the U.S. state of Hawaii after its admission on August 21, 1959 and is documented by his birth records…”

It’s unclear what will come of this complaint, but this isn’t the only birther action that Cruz is contending with. Also on Thursday, the Arizona Republic reported that Rep. Kelly Townsend, a Republican state legislator from the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, is “circulating a measure at the Arizona legislature that would call a U.S. constitutional convention to outline what it means to be a natural-born citizen.” The paper notes that Townsend hopes to get her Legislature on board before reaching out to other states, since, after all, “it will take 34 states to convene such a meeting, something that hasn’t happened since 1787.”

This legislative effort—like the lawsuit—appears quixotic. But Trump has ensured this question of his natural-born citizenship status will dog him. As seen in last night’s debate, Trump’s questioning of Cruz’s eligibility has marked a turning point in relations between the two candidates, who have previously refrained from attacking each other throughout the campaign. But, as Trump told CNN’s Dana Bash after Thursday’s debate, “I guess the bromance is over.”

Originally posted here: 

Here’s Why the Ted Cruz Birther Story Isn’t Going Away

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Mark Zuckerberg Just Announced He’s Pledging a Massive Portion of His Wealth to Charity

by LawannaStallwor Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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In a Facebook post announcing the birth of their first child, Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan revealed on Tuesday the couple will be giving away 99 percent of their Facebook shares—a current estimate of $45 billion—to a wide range of charities to “join many others in improving this world for the next generation.”

Here is a portion of the Facebook post that they addressed to their newborn daughter Max:

We will give 99% of our Facebook shares — currently about $45 billion — during our lives to advance this mission. We know this is a small contribution compared to all the resources and talents of those already working on these issues. But we want to do what we can, working alongside many others.

We’ll share more details in the coming months once we settle into our new family rhythm and return from our maternity and paternity leaves. We understand you’ll have many questions about why and how we’re doing this.

This contribution is much larger than any of the previous charitable pledges the Facebook CEO and his wife have made in the past. In June, the couple donated $5 million to helping undocumented teenagers receive higher education. Last year, the Facebook CEO donated $25 million to fighting Ebola.

Read Zuckerberg’s post in its entirety here. And Mazel Tov to the new parents!

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Mark Zuckerberg Just Announced He’s Pledging a Massive Portion of His Wealth to Charity

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More Transgender People Have Been Killed in 2015 Than Any Other Year on Record

by CyrilRuddell Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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At vigils across the country today, people are honoring the victims of fatal anti-transgender violence as part of an annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. At least 21 transgender people have been killed in the United States already this year, which is more homicides than any other year on record, according to a recent report by Human Rights Campaign. During the first six months of the year alone, more transgender people were killed than in all of 2014. Most of the victims were transgender women of color. So far, none of the attacks have been deemed hate crimes.

On Tuesday, a congressional task force launched in response to the “epidemic of violence against the transgender community.” The Transgender Equality Task Force, chaired by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who has a transgender granddaughter, aims to understand the causes of anti-transgender violence and identify what the federal government can do to improve the situation.

Activists say it’s hard to know exactly how many transgender people are killed every year. One problem, they say, is that police officers often refer to transgender homicide victims with names and pronouns reflecting their gender of birth, rather than their gender identity. (For example, transgender women are often described by police officers as men.) And while the FBI last year began publishing statistics on hate crimes against gender-nonconforming people, the bureau’s figures only reflect cases reported to authorities. Some crime-reporting programs at the state level have also opted, for budgetary reasons, not to collect data on hate crimes against transgender people, according to an FBI spokesman. Lauren Smith, a press contact for Honda, the chair of the congressional task force, said the issue of data collection has come up in discussions among task force members, but that the group won’t be meeting until shortly after Thanksgiving to hammer out specific agenda items they hope to address.

Read more of MoJo‘s coverage on anti-transgender violence here.

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More Transgender People Have Been Killed in 2015 Than Any Other Year on Record

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No, really, your birth control is supposed to be free now

by StewartDiehl Posted on May 11, 2015

put a (nuva) ring on it

No, really, your birth control is supposed to be free now

By on 11 May 2015commentsShare

For National Women’s Health Week, we’ll be highlighting women’s health issues in the United States.

Let’s play an American history game: Where Were You when you realized that the Affordable Care Act really, actually meant that you wouldn’t have to pay a copay for your birth control?

For me, it was a Walgreens on the north end of Seattle in February 2014, staring dumbfoundedly at a pharmacist who assured me that no, really, there was no charge for those pills.

This was a very happy moment, but one that not all privately insured, contraception-using women have had yet — which is really not OK. So new White House regulations, just issued today, will firmly remind health insurers that, yes, they are required to provide birth control to women at no cost.

Why is this reminder necessary? Vox reports:

Two recent investigations — one by the Kaiser Family Foundation and another by the National Women’s Law Center — found that not all insurance plans were abiding by these rules.

Some insurers seemed to blatantly disregard the Obamacare mandate. The KFF study — which looked at a sample of 20 insurers in five states — found one that simply didn’t cover the birth control ring and four that “couldn’t ascertain” whether they covered birth control implants. These are potential violations of the law.

This is really not complicated: Provide free, easy-to-get birth control, and women’s lives will universally improve. Fail to do so, and life becomes an Amy Schumer sketch — but way less fun. The birth control mandate of the Affordable Care Act has already had real, positive effects on women’s access to contraception. The percentages of privately insured women who have had no copays on their birth control have increased dramatically — in the case of birth control pills, for example, from 15 percent to 67 percent.

Basically, insurance companies, like surly teens, just need to be constantly reminded of what they’re supposed to do. If yours isn’t cooperating, call it every day until it does — or, alternatively, until it lashes out and gets a small, regrettable ankle tattoo.

Source:
The White House just got aggressive enforcing Obamacare’s birth control mandate

, Vox.

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No, really, your birth control is supposed to be free now

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Here’s the Birth of the Modern Anti-Vax Movement

by ShelliHollars Posted on February 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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A New York Times video takes a look at the birth of the belief that vaccinations can cause autism in young children:

It turns on a seminal moment in anti-vaccination resistance. This was an announcement in 1998 by a British doctor who said he had found a relationship between the M.M.R. vaccine — measles, mumps, rubella — and the onset of autism.

Typically, the M.M.R. shot is given to infants at about 12 months and again at age 5 or 6. This doctor, Andrew Wakefield, wrote that his study of 12 children showed that the three vaccines taken together could alter immune systems, causing intestinal woes that then reach, and damage, the brain. In fairly short order, his findings were widely rejected as — not to put too fine a point on it — bunk. Dozens of epidemiological studies found no merit to his work, which was based on a tiny sample. The British Medical Journal went so far as to call his research “fraudulent.” The British journal Lancet, which originally published Dr. Wakefield’s paper, retracted it. The British medical authorities stripped him of his license.

Nonetheless, despite his being held in disgrace, the vaccine-autism link has continued to be accepted on faith by some. Among the more prominently outspoken is Jenny McCarthy, a former television host and Playboy Playmate, who has linked her son’s autism to his vaccination: He got the shot, and then he was not O.K. Post hoc, etc.

This is, of course, even crazier than it sounds. It’s one thing to be skeptical of the scientific community and its debunking of the Wakefield study. But it’s now 2015. MMR vaccines that contain thimerosal—the supposed cause of autism—have been off the market for well over a decade. Not one single child has gotten a dose of thimerosal since about 2002. And yet, autism rates haven’t gone down. They’ve gone up. You don’t need to trust scientists to see that, very plainly, thimerosal simply never played any role in autism. And there’s never been any reason to think that any other vaccine does either.

And yet, there’s apparently nothing that will convince certain parents of this. At least, if there is, no one has figured it out yet. Sigh.

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Here’s the Birth of the Modern Anti-Vax Movement

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Christmas Movies Are Now Just As Horrible As Everything Else Related to Christmas

by bisericidinlemn Posted on December 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Well, this answers a question for me. Dan Drezner describes the standard Jewish ritual for Christmas day:

Chinese food and a movie. Perfectly pleasant rituals, made special by the fact that the Gentiles are all at home or at church….

No longer.

I don’t know when it became a thing for Christian families to also go see a movie on the day commemorating the birth of Jesus, but personal experience tells me this is a relatively recent phenomenon — i.e., the past 15 years or so. All I know is that what used to be a pleasant movie-going experience is now extremely crowded.

Several years ago I naively decided that it might be nice to see a movie on Christmas. I figured the crowds would be really light and we could just slip right in. Needless to say, I was disabused of this notion quickly, and headed for home just as fast as my car would take me. At the time, I wondered what was going on. Had things changed? Was I just unaware that Christmas had always been a big movie day? Or what?

I guess it’s the former. There really was a golden era when Christmas movies were uncrowded, but it disappeared before I even knew it existed. Sic transit etc.

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Christmas Movies Are Now Just As Horrible As Everything Else Related to Christmas

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More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

by SophieHildebran Posted on December 15, 2014

More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

By on 15 Dec 2014commentsShare

Good news for people who want to have sex without the whole making-a-baby hassle: The percentage of women choosing LARC (long-acting reversible contraption) methods in the United States is at an all-time high!

While the percentage of women using contraception has not changed since 2006, the percentage of those using LARCs (which include IUDS, or intra-uterine devices, and hormonal implants) in the United States has gone up. In 2002, 2.4 percent of American contraceptive users chose LARC methods, but new data from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention shows that figure has grown to 7.2 percent — and calculations from the Guttmacher Institute indicate that it could be closer to 12 percent. However, U.S. LARC usage is still significantly lower than the international average; 25 percent of global contraceptive users choose IUDs alone.

Why does this matter? Well, LARCs are more effective than any other reversible form of contraception, with a success rate of approximately 99 percent. Why? No matter how cautious you are with a method of birth control that’s susceptible to human error, mistakes can happen. Ask any woman who has some experience with birth control if she’s forgotten to take a pill, or had a condom break (I’m raising both hands). With an IUD or hormonal implant, however, a woman may never have to think about getting pregnant after the implantation procedure — until she chooses to get the device removed, of course. Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics came out in support of doctors recommending LARC methods for teen patients seeking contraception.

The increase in LARC usage could have something to do with the fact that the Affordable Care Act covers contraceptive methods without out-of-pockets costs for many, many women. Another fun fact: Between 2008 and 2011 — as LARC usage began to increase most sharply — the abortion rate dropped 13 percent. In a country where the rate of unintended pregnancy (51 percent, in case you forgot) is higher than the global average, this trend toward more reliable forms of birth control is not a small deal.

What a wacky idea — remove barriers to birth control, and women will choose safe, effective methods of contraception! Hard to believe this has never occurred to anyone before!

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More women are choosing more effective birth control — here’s why it matters

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It’s a Miracle! Spending Bill Contains Virgin Birth Provision.

by MaryannHickey Posted on December 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Our new $1 trillion spending bill1 contains a provision that allows donors to give ten times more money to political parties than in the past. This may or may not be a good thing. Jonathan Bernstein, for example, tells us that some experts on campaign finance consider formal party organizations (as opposed to independent Super PACs) to be “a force for pragmatism and against extremism.” So more money flowing in that direction might be a net benefit.

Fair enough. But check out the third paragraph of the Washington Post’s writeup:

Neither party’s leaders in Congress would claim responsibility for inserting the new provision, which was tucked into the final pages of the more than 1,600-page spending bill on Tuesday evening.

The bare minimum we should expect in an alleged democracy is to know where our laws come from and who sponsored them. Instead, our two major parties, which are normally at each others’ throats like rabid dogs, regularly connive to produce the legislative version of a virgin birth whenever the subject is something that benefits politicians themselves. This happens again and again, and it’s ridiculous. If Mitch McConnell is truly dedicated to a transparent Senate, how about putting a stop to this nonsense when he takes over next year?

1In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars, this bill is affectionately known as the Cromnibus, a mashup of CR (continuing resolution) and omnibus. That’s because it’s an omnibus spending bill that funds lots of agencies in one swoop, but for one particular agency it’s merely a short-term continuing resolution. That one agency is Homeland Security, and they get only a CR for now because Republicans consider this a kind of revenge against President Obama for his recent executive order on immigration. Welcome to kindergarten.

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It’s a Miracle! Spending Bill Contains Virgin Birth Provision.

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This Is the Best Newspaper "Retraction" You’ll Read All Year

by StarSlonemfxegk Posted on December 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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The “retraction” appeared in Australia’s Courier-Mail, which later interviewed the family:

Kai Bogert, as he is now called, was known as Elizabeth Anne for 19 years. Ms Bogert last night told The Courier-Mail that placing the ad was “a no-brainer”.

“I needed to show my son I support him 100 per cent and wanted to let the world know that.”

Perfect.

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This Is the Best Newspaper "Retraction" You’ll Read All Year

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No, There Is No “Troubling Persistence” of Eugenicist Thought in America

by Julie9987s Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Andrew Sullivan points me to a piece by Michael Brendan Dougherty bemoaning the “troubling persistence” of eugenic thought in America. But Dougherty’s evidence for this is tissue-paper thin, especially in his credulous treatment of the high abortion rate among women with Down syndrome babies:

In an article that explores this sympathetically, Alison Piepmeier writes:

Repeatedly women told me that they ended the pregnancy not because they wanted a “perfect child” (as one woman said, “I don’t know what ‘perfect child’ even means”) but because they recognized that the world is a difficult place for people with intellectual disabilities.

If the numbers on abortion and Down syndrome are even remotely accurate, the birth of a Down baby is something already against the norm. As medical costs are more and more socialized, it is hard to see how the stigma attached to “choosing” to carry a Down syndrome child to term will not increase. Why choose to burden the health system this way? Instead of neighbors straightforwardly admiring parents for the burden they bear with a disabled child, society is made up of taxpayers who will roll their eyes at the irresponsible breeder, who is costing them a mint in “unnecessary” medical treatment and learning specialists at school. Why condemn a child to a “life like that,” they will wonder.

Oh please. These women were lying. The reason they had abortions is because raising a Down syndrome child is a tremendous amount of work and, for many people, not very rewarding. But that sounds shallow and selfish, so they resorted instead to an excuse that sounds a little more caring. Far from being afraid of eye-rolling neighbors who disapprove of carrying the baby to term because it might lead to higher tax rates, they’re explicitly trying to avoid the ostracism of neighbors who would think poorly of them for aborting a child just because it’s a lot of work to raise.

This has nothing to do with eugenic thought one way or the other. The more prosaic truth is simpler: Most of us aren’t saints, and given a choice, we’d rather have a child without Down syndrome. You can approve or disapprove of this as you will, but that’s all that’s going on here.

Source – 

No, There Is No “Troubling Persistence” of Eugenicist Thought in America

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