A year ago, I wrote about changes in abortion access globally, as countries like Ireland and Argentina were on a path to decriminalizing access to abortion services. While there have been both gains and losses in global abortion access since, 2019 has seen a drastic increase in U.S. states passing abortion bans, including the near total ban on …
Category Archives: Web Roundups
Web Roundup: It’s Alive! Not! Well, Maybe? Brain Death and BrainEx
Four hours after slaughter, 32 pig brains in a BrainEx system were busy metabolizing, showing signs of life, if not consciousness, despite their bodily separation. The pig brains were part of an experiment conducted by a neuroscience lab at Yale University with first author contributions by Zvonimir Vrselja and Stefano G. Daniele. According to the findings published in …
Web Roundup: Having a Moment: Ruminations on Women, Hysteria, Stress, and the Pelosi Backclap
Women are having a moment. At President Trump’s State of the Union address, Democratic women wore white as a nod to suffragists and female leadership, and Nancy Pelosi’s backclap went viral. At the 2019 Oscars, women of color made history, receiving an unprecedented number of awards, and Period. End of Sentence. (2018),a film about menstruation in rural India,won best …
Web Roundup: Who Counts? Who’s Counting?
In March 2018, the Pew Research Center reported that the Justice department intended to include a new citizenship question on the 2020 US Census. This past November, a New York court took on the legality of the citizenship question following a suit by a number of plaintiffs, including 18 states. Plaintiffs argued that asking “are you a citizen?” would …
Web Roundup: Marketing, Masculinity, and Commodity Activism
On January 13th, Gillette, a razor blade brand, released a new ad campaign called, “We Believe.” The video ad opens with a collage of news clips that—unlike the voiceover narrator—explicitly use the words, “toxic masculinity” and “#MeToo movement.” The narrator then asks, “Is this the best a man can get?” In the short film, Gillette plays on their decades-old slogan…
Web Roundup: CRISPR Babies and Bioethics
In late November, He Jiankui, a scientist in China, announced that he had created the first “CRISPR babies,” meaning that he performed germ-line genome edits on human embryos, which were implanted through in vitro fertilization (IVF), and has now resulted the birth of twin girls. He used CRISPR-Cas9, a genome editing technology that can target DNA at precise …