Apparently it now includes easy access to Plan B in military clinics and hospitals.

After recommendations from the Pentagon’s Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee and a successful vote to include the morning after pill on the list of drugs that military facilities should stock, officials announced the Department of Defense will begin making the pill available in its hospital and clinics around the world. It’s the latest step taken by the Obama administration to reverse women’s health policies made during George W. Bush’s administration, and fulfills a request from 2002 by women’s health advocates. “It’s a tragedy that women in uniform have been denied such basic health care,” said Nancy Keenan of NARAL Pro-Choice America. “We applaud the medical experts for standing up for military women.”

I say a country that has as many as 200 “honour” killings, and where a teenage girl can be buried alive for having male friends, is anything but.

The gruesome details surrounding the murder of Medine Memi has shocked Turkey, home to some 200 “honour killings” every year—half of all murders in the nation. The 16-year-old was found outside her home in the south-eastern province of Adiyaman last December in a sitting position, her hands tied. A postmortem exam revealed large amounts of soil in her lungs and stomach, indicating that she had been alive and conscious while being buried. “The report is blood curdling,” one official told the London Times. Memi’s father and grandfather have been arrested and are due to face trial. Her mother was also charged but has since been released. Media reports say the father had told relatives he was unhappy that his daughter had male friends. The grandfather is said to have beaten her for having relations with the opposite sex. It has also emerged that Memi had repeatedly tried to report to police that she had been beaten by her father and grandfather days before she was killed. “She tried to take refuge at the police station three times, and she was sent home three times,” her mother said after the body was discovered.

Please forgive this display of crusty-old-goatitude (it had been a while, no?), but what the heck, let’s gripe. We all know teenagers are interested in sex, but how many of us would write seriously about the etiquette of sex-on-prom-night? None other than two women with “Post” as their last name. Poor old Emily is, as we speak, spinning uncontrollably in her grave.

[h/t]

Police in New Zealand would like you to know that auctioning off your virginity on a public website is “not a safe practice.”

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Andrea adds: Come now. Can’t we all agree they’re being just a bit prudish?

Stephen Taylor believes he just found the magic solution:

Here’s what the Conservatives might say about Michael Ignatieff’s flirtation with abortion policy,

“Mr. Ignatieff doesn’t seem to realize that in the past 34 years, we Canadians closed the divisive debate on abortion in this country. This topic has split families and the debate has caused heartache for countless Canadians. We are saddened by Mr. Ignatieff’s attempt to reopen the topic for discussion and to callously use the philosophical debate over life and the exercise of reproductive rights as a political football to be tossed about carelessly.

Mr. Ignatieff we’ve moved past this. We will not allow you to bring the American-style politics of abortion to this country as a wedge issue to divide Canadians.

Canadians that we’re consulting these days are concerned about jobs and the economic recovery. While Mr. Ignatieff wants to hold university style seminar discussions about abortion, we’re focused on phase II of our Economic Action Plan.”

So winning now means giving up? Orwell would be proud.

Or so it seems, from this research:

Patients left in a “vegetative” state after suffering devastating brain damage are able to understand and communicate, groundbreaking research suggests.

Experts using brain scans have discovered for the first time that the victims, who show no outward signs of awareness, can not only comprehend what people are saying to them but also answer simple questions.

They were able to give yes or no responses to simple biographical questions.

No, the technique those researchers use doesn’t work with every PVS patient. But they claim it did work with some. As the article also notes:

It will raise questions about when doctors should switch off life support machines. It is likely to add to the debate on assisted suicide as the patient could potentially decide and communicate if they wish to carry on living.

I’ll bet. And a good thing, too.

I find this surprising, to say the least:

The mortality rate of Californian women who die from causes directly related to pregnancy has nearly tripled in the past decade, reports California Watch. The investigative reporting website interviewed the authors of a not-yet-public Department of Public Health study identifying the most significant spike in pregnancy-related deaths since the 1930s. Although the total number of deaths remains relatively small, the report affirms that it’s now more dangerous to give birth in California than it is in Kuwait or Bosnia. Possible reasons behind the spike include an uptick in morbid obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes, along with hemorrhaging from the growing numbers of C-sections. And the trend could be nationwide. An alert issued last week to hospitals by the Joint Commission, the leading health care accreditation and standards group in the country, warned: “Unfortunately, current trends and evidence suggest that maternal mortality rates may be increasing in the U.S.”

Whatever you do, don’t ask Michael Ignatieff to comment.

Apparently, “baby brain” is a myth. Govern yourselves accordingly. (That means, fine, whatever, blame it on the hormones and the lack of sleep.)

Universal daycare isn’t a good idea. Specific programs to help children and families in lower-income brackets, or people with various life challenges (self-inflicted or not), I can see. There is research that shows daycare helps those children, at least a little. But your average kid from the average middle-income family? Not so much.

“It’s also the best anti-poverty program. I want every single child in Canada to have the opportunity to get a square meal when they come to daycare; to get loving care and tender care,” Mr. Ignatieff added. “A lot of children in our country, we don’t like to admit it, start in a very turbulent difficult environment at home. The great thing about these programs is they give kids an equal start.”

Mr. Ignatieff is correct in one sense: Studies show that, on average, child care moderately improves the cognitive performance of children from low-income families — and the benefits last into adulthood. On the other hand, the same studies generally have shown no such lifelong benefits for children from middle- and high-income families.

Oh, and in the average normal family, “loving care and tender care” is something kids get at home, not in a government institution. When’s the last time you felt loved by a government bureaucrat?

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Thanks for posting about this, Brigitte: I try to keep my day job, in which I research child care, and my after-hours life, PWPL, separate. But on a day when a politician follows up an announcement about daycare with one about abortion that becomes difficult, to say the least.

Do these people even hear themselves talk?

Michael Ignatieff warned Stephen Harper today not to play “ideological games” with women’s health, suggesting the Prime Minister’s new commitment should extend to abortion programs.

“Let’s keep the ideology out of this and move forward,” said the Liberal leader at an afternoon press conference.

Mr. Ignatieff says he supports Mr. Harper’s initiative to make maternal health a key plank at this year’s G8 summit in Muskoka but cautioned that women must “have a full range of contraceptive options and have control of their fertility.”