Favorites from this week

Such a fantastic week. Wendy Davis and her support staff's #StandWithWendy filibuster, the Supreme Court's recognition of marriage equality, and officially summer. For all the new grads taking exams, go with your gut! For all those who have passed, welcome to midwifery!...Wendy Davis, Superhero - Katha Pollitt at The Nation"...Wendy Davis is my hero. Make that my superhero. This brave and unbelievably stalwart legislator filibustered for nearly eleven hours to prevent a vote on SB5, a draconian bill that would ban abortion after twenty weeks and regulate abortion providers so severely all but five of the state’s forty-two clinics would be forced to close. Davis remained standing, unable to take a bathroom break, eat, drink, sit or even lean against a desk. She was polite and patient and calm and gracious, as Republican men condescended and patronized her, and said a lot of ridiculous things that showed they knew very little about women’s bodies or lives. For hours, she read eloquent and deeply personal letters from Texas women who had had abortions. For hours more, she minutely and knowledgeably dissected the problems with SB5. Not that the Republicans were listening. Finally, she was forced to stand down, after she was deemed to have done three things that were not “germane”—she allowed a colleague to help her with her back brace (so much for southern chivalry!), she discussed Planned Parenthood and she talked about the state’s mandatory ultrasound law. Suddenly Planned Parenthood and mandatory ultrasounds are not “germane.” Never mind that Texas Republicans have spent considerable energy defunding Planned Parenthood as a hotbed of abortion and heaping up ultrasound requirements precisely in order to make abortion harder to get...When Senator Leticia van de Putte repeatedly raised a procedural point, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst just ignored her and barreled ahead. This gave her the night’s most indelible line: “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?”At that moment, an amazing thing happened. The other heroes of the night swung into action—the hundreds of abortion rights supporters who thronged the capitol cheered Davis and van de Putte so loudly and for so long that the vote missed the midnight deadline. Even for those of us watching on line—150,000 around the world—this was a profoundly heart-stirring moment. My friend Rebecca Traister compared it to the singing of “La Marseillaise” in Casablanca. The missed deadline did not prevent someone (who?) from falsifying the time clock to make it appear the vote took place before the midnight cutoff. Thank you, Internet, for screen shots that proved what had really happened. At 3 am, Dewhurst announced the bill was dead..."...DOMA, Prop 8 and SB5 - A Testament to Activism - Karen Teegarden at Samuel Ward"...If ever there was a period of time that demonstrates the effectiveness of activism, it is now. The defeat of SB5 in Texas and Supreme Court rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 is the culmination of so many people standing up to inequality in so many ways…but standing together.We need to acknowledge each other in our shared fight…those on the ground protesting, those directly working with our elected officials to engage them in the battle, those making phone calls, writing emails, tweeting, sharing posts on Facebook and so any others. Working together, we moved equality forward. We could not have accomplished these results without the shared effort of everyone.But we are not done. Let us all celebrate today but then we need to get back to work...."...U.S. Selected Practice Recommendations for Contraceptive Use, 2013"...The recommendations in this report are intended to help health-care providers address issues related to use of contraceptives, such as how to help a woman initiate use of a contraceptive method, which examinations and tests are needed before initiating use of a contraceptive method, what regular follow-up is needed, and how to address problems that often arise during use, including missed pills and side effects such as unscheduled bleeding. Each recommendation addresses what a woman or health-care provider can do in specific situations..."...Use 6-cm dilation to judge labor progress - Sherry Boschert at Ob.Gyn. News"...A threshold of 6-cm cervical dilation is more accurate than the conventional 4 cm to determine when a woman enters the active phase of labor, a reevaluation of evidence suggests.The historical evidence behind the commonly used assumption that 4-cm dilation signals the start of active labor contains methodological flaws, doesn’t match today’s population of pregnant women, and is contradicted by more recent studies supporting the 6-cm threshold, Tekoa King, C.N.M, Ph.D., said at a meeting on antepartum and intrapartum management sponsored by the University of California, San Francisco...."...