Eideard

Few people realize that getting pregnant can mean losing your job. Imagine a woman who, seven months into her pregnancy, is fired from her position as a cashier because she needed a few extra bathroom breaks. Or imagine another pregnant employee who was fired from her retail job after giving her supervisors a doctor’s note requesting she be allowed to refrain from heavy lifting and climbing ladders during the month and a half before her maternity leave: that’s what happened to Patricia Leahy. In 2008 a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled that her firing was fair because her employers were not obligated to accommodate her needs…

Federal and state laws ban discrimination against pregnant women in the workplace. And amendments to the Americans With Disabilities Act require employers to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees (including most employees with medical complications arising from pregnancies) who need them to do their jobs. But because pregnancy itself is not considered a disability, employers are not obligated to accommodate most pregnant workers in any way.

As a result, thousands of pregnant women are pushed out of jobs that they are perfectly capable of performing — either put on unpaid leave or simply fired — when they request an accommodation to help maintain a healthy pregnancy. Many are single mothers or a family’s primary breadwinner. They are disproportionately low-income women, often in physically demanding jobs with little flexibility…

This kind of law is a public health necessity. Without its protections, pregnant women are reluctant to ask for the accommodations they need for their own health and for the health of their unborn children. For many women, a choice between working under unhealthy conditions and not working is no choice at all. In addition, women who can work longer into their pregnancies often qualify for longer periods of leave following childbirth, which facilitates breastfeeding, bonding with and caring for a new child and a smoother and healthier recovery from childbirth.

Pregnancy-related accommodations also promote economic security for families. Women who are forced early into unpaid leave are set back with lost wages and, when they return to work, with missed advancement opportunities. Women who are let go don’t just lose out on critical income — they must fight extra hard to re-enter a job market that is especially brutal on the unemployed. Worse yet, they often confront a bias against hiring mothers with small children…

Three-quarters of women now entering the work force will become pregnant on the job, yet gaps in our civil rights laws leave this enormous class without the right to the modest accommodations that would protect them…No pregnant woman in this country should have to choose between her job and a healthy pregnancy.

You’d think these simple accommodations would already be on the books, right? Ask your Congress-critter if they’ve worked to get something like this on the federal books. Ask your state representatives.

Dare I ask – how up-to-date is your state? Given that an essential part of denying aid to people is states rights.

Fertility researchers created sperm-producing germ cells in a lab and transferred them into infertile mice, which after the treatment were able to produce healthy offspring.

The development, which was described by experts as “hugely exciting”, could help thousands of infertile men become fathers if the method proves similarly effective in humans.

Japanese scientists at Kyoto University used stem cells from mouse embryos to create primordial germ cells, which drive the production of sperm in men.

When transplanted into the testicles of infertile mice, the cells produced normal-looking sperm.

Researchers led by Dr Katsuhiko Hayashi injected the sperm into mouse eggs and implanted them into female mice, which give birth to healthy pups.

The babies, when they grew up, were capable of reproducing naturally, according to a study in the Cell journal…

The technique may not fall foul of British laws which ban the use of lab-made mature sperm in fertility treatments because the scientists only created germ cells which produced sperm naturally.

Dr Pacey said: “The philosophy of the law is to stop that kind of thing happening.”

After all, the philosophy of most Anglophone lawmakers either side of the pond is to either halt sex from occurring or at a minimum make it as uneventful and not-enjoyable as possible.

As the law applies to everyone else, of course.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

A jury has been chosen Monday for the trial of a man charged with raping a 15-year-old fellow church member who was forced to stand before the congregation and apologize for getting pregnant.

A hearing on legal issues in the case of 52-year-old Ernest Willis of Gilford was set for Tuesday in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord. Opening statements in his trial were scheduled for May 23.

Willis is charged with forcibly raping Christina Anderson twice during the summer of 1997, when she was his children’s baby sitter and he was 39.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they were victims of sex crimes, but Anderson, now 29, asked that her name be made public…

Once Anderson realized she was pregnant, she said her mother took her to their then pastor, Chuck Phelps of Concord’s Trinity Baptist Church, for counseling. Phelps arranged for her to move to Colorado to live with a Baptist family there and place her baby up for adoption. He said he did so at the request of her mother, Christine Leaf. Leaf has declined to comment on whether she sought or consented to her daughter’s relocation.

Concord police officials say they tried to investigate the case but were stymied because they could not locate Anderson. The case remained unsolved until 2010, when online posts and friends of Anderson led police to her in Arizona…

Phelps is also on the prosecution’s list of witnesses. Anderson told police that Phelps forced her to write a letter of apology she had to read to the fundamentalist congregation.

RTFA. These good Christian folks appear to have treated this young lass like a chattel slave. Not the first time for this kind of advocacy, denial of equal rights for women and girls in an American fundamentalist church. Probably, not the last, either.

Thanks, Mr Fusion

A jury has found a Joliet man guilty of first-degree murder for fatally shooting a man during a 2009 melee after the victim told his pregnant girlfriend she looked fat in a photograph…

Tyrone Henderson, 31, also was found guilty of home invasion, criminal trespass to residence, aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and being an armed habitual criminal.

Henderson shot Michael Amos, 21, on Aug. 26, 2009 at the victim’s home in Joliet, according to the Will County state’s attorney’s office. Amos had teased Henderson’s girlfriend that evening. She called Henderson, who arrived at Amos’ house a short time later armed with a .45-caliber weapon.

Henderson punched the victim’s brother in the face, which led to a melee inside the house. Henderson then brandished his weapon and shot Amos three times -– once in the shoulder, once in the stomach and once in the leg -– while others in the house tried to take the gun from his hand, officials said.

This dude sounds like he was looking for long time since he was born. Number one, ask your honey to stop hanging out with people rude enough to signify on her weight.

Protesting a security demand that an al-Jazeera producer remove her bra, fellow colleagues bowed out of a meeting with Israel’s prime minister.

Israeli security personnel screening those attending the annual foreign correspondents event in Jerusalem Tuesday, asked al-Jazeera producer Simri Diab, 31, to remove her bra. She refused and was not permitted to enter the hall where Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was due to speak, Ynetnews.com said Wednesday.

Diab told Ynetnews three reporters from the station planned to attend the event. She said she was forced to wait for a long period in the queue and then singled out with other Arab reporters. One of the security guards allowed her to sit down because of she is pregnant. She later agreed to a body search in a holding room downstairs, she said.

“They later took me downstairs to the security check cell. They asked me to take off my coat and then my vest. I did. Then they asked me to take off my shirt. I took a deep breath and did it. I was left with just my undershirt and trousers, without my shoes and the rest of my equipment. The female officer felt me with her hands for 15 minutes in any place possible. I told her I was pregnant and asked her not to use the manual device, but compromised on that later too.” When later asked to remove her bra, she said she refused and was told she would not be permitted to attend…

Yes, this goes beyond the usual depths of paranoia and political dementia that infects the actions of self-important pimps of national security, TSA, Shin Bet or otherwise. But, then, there’s probably a race to the bottom between Israel and the United States over who can produce the greatest number of bigoted incidents per month.

Neither nation produces any justification greater than “people hate us” – without ever examining the larger question of “Why does everyone hate us?”

Not the same baby — but you get the idea

A man who jumped into a Calgary dumpster to rescue a newborn that had been discovered by another passerby says he later found out the baby boy was his son, he told CBC News on Wednesday…

Police said Wednesday that the mother likely didn’t know she was pregnant and could face criminal charges related to her actions following the birth.

The man who claims to be the father of the baby said he was unaware his girlfriend was even pregnant.

“I pulled into my parking spot and hadn’t even got to the back of my truck and a girl said, ‘I think hear a baby in the dumpster.’ So I, you know — no knowledge at this time that this is my kid whatsoever — I went running over,” he said.

“And I jumped in and I removed the stuff and I personally opened the bag. My first sight of my baby was covered in garbage…”

The man and the woman who first heard the infant called 911, while another passerby used his shirt to keep the child warm.

The baby was taken to hospital and is in stable condition in the neonatal intensive-care unit at Foothills hospital.

RTFA. There’s a bit of detail; but, it will be a few days before anyone truly sorts this strange story.

The photo CNN decided to crop before using it to top their article

Britain’s advertising watchdog has censured an Italian ice cream manufacturer over an advertisement depicting a heavily pregnant nun that appeared ahead of a papal visit to the UK.

The ad featuring the strapline “immaculately conceived” over an image of the expectant sister spooning from a tub of Antonio Federici ice cream was “likely to cause widespread offense,” the Advertising Standards Authority ruled…

The watchdog rejected the manufacturer’s claims that it was “using gentle humor” to convey the message that “ice cream is our religion…”

“We concluded that to use such an image in a light hearted way to advertise ice cream was likely to cause serious offence to readers, particularly those who practised the Roman Catholic faith.”

The Antonio Federici ad is the company’s second invoking religious imagery to fall foul of the ASA. An advertisement featuring a nun and a priest eyeing each other for a kiss was banned in July last year.

The ice cream company said the ASA’s ruling amounted to censorship of artistic freedoms ahead of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain this week.

It said it had also been banned from showing another advertisement showing two men dressed as priests apparently on the brink of sharing a kiss. The ASA has not published any ruling on the ad.

A statement from Antonio Federici said the company was seeking to relaliate by securing a series of billboard advertisements along the route the pope’s motorcade is expected to take during his visit to London.

Har!

A Roman Catholic priest allegedly seduced a 17-year-old girl while she was a senior at a Catholic high school in Reading into a sexual relationship that resulted in her giving birth at age 19, according to a civil lawsuit filed by her parents in Berks County Court.

According to the lawsuit, the Rev. Luis A. Bonilla Margarito was removed as chaplain of Reading Central Catholic High School and pastor of St. Joseph Church in Reading after the parents secretly video-taped him having sexual intercourse with their daughter in the basement of their home in November.

By then, she had graduated from high school and had turned 18 years old, but the lawsuit alleges the sexual relationship began when she was still in high school. The lawsuit says the parents allowed their daughter to meet with the priest for counseling because she had severe mental health issues as a result of prior sexual abuse by another adult male…

The Allentown Diocese announced Bonilla was removed as priest of St. Joseph’s in November because he had a relationship with an 18-year-old woman…A church spokesman said Bonilla would be sent to a treatment facility and no criminal charges were pending.

But the lawsuit alleges church officials knew of the “illicit relationship” when it first began and that it had continued after she graduated.

The parents decided to video-tape one of the counseling sessions their daughter had with Bonilla because they had become suspicious of his intentions, the lawsuit said. The parents claim in the lawsuit they overheard Bonilla tell their daughter she didn’t have to obey them anymore because she was 18. They also claim he alienated their daughter from them by “leading them to believe his relationship with their daughter was superior to theirs…”

The lawsuit says the parents gave money to the church and school expecting that their daughter would be protected from “sexual abuse and exploitation by sexual predators such as Father Bonilla.”

Not an unreasonable expectation, I would say. If you believe.

Newborns of non-smoking moms exposed to secondhand smoke during pregnancy have genetic mutations that may affect long-term health, according to a…study published online in The Open Pediatric Medicine Journal. The abnormalities, which were indistinguishable from those found in newborns of mothers who were active smokers, may affect survival, birth weight and lifelong susceptibility to diseases like cancer.

The study confirms previous research in which study author Stephen G. Grant, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental and occupational health at Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, discovered evidence of abnormalities in the HPRT gene located on the X chromosome in cord blood from newborns of non-smokers exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.

In the current study [.pdf], Dr. Grant confirmed smoke-induced mutation in another gene…that is representative of oncogenes – genes that transform normal cells into cancer cells and cause solid tumors. The GPA mutation was the same level and type in newborns of mothers who were active smokers and of non-smoking mothers exposed to tobacco smoke. Likewise, the mutations were discernable in newborns of women who had stopped smoking during their pregnancies, but who did not actively avoid secondhand smoke.

“These findings back up our previous conclusion that passive, or secondary, smoke causes permanent genetic damage in newborns that is very similar to the damage caused by active smoking,” said Dr. Grant. “By using a different assay, we were able to pick up a completely distinct yet equally important type of genetic mutation that is likely to persist throughout a child’s lifetime. Pregnant women should not only stop smoking, but be aware of their exposure to tobacco smoke from other family members, work and social situations.”

Sometimes I wonder how folks of my generation ever made it beyond wars, foolish habits, our self-destructive culture.

For years, a widely held assumption was that women of childbearing age fell neatly into two camps: those trying to have children, and those not trying to have children.

A new nationwide study suggests, however, that nearly a fourth of women consider themselves “OK either way” about getting pregnant — a wide swath of ambivalence that surprised researchers, and that could reshape how doctors approach many aspects of women’s health care.

In a study of nearly 4,000 women ages 25 to 45 who are sexually active, about 71 percent said they were not trying to get pregnant, while 6 percent said they were. But nearly one in four, 23 percent, told researchers they were “OK either way” — they were neither trying to conceive, nor trying to prevent a pregnancy.

Among women who had no children, 60 percent said they were trying to not get pregnant, 14 percent were trying to get pregnant and 26 percent responded that they were “OK either way.”

“This finding dramatically challenges the idea that women are always trying, one way or another, to either get pregnant or not get pregnant,” said Julia McQuillan, professor of sociology at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the study’s lead author. “It also shows that women who are OK either way should be assessed separately from women who are intentional about pregnancy.”

In addition, the study examined the attitudes and social pressures regarding pregnancy of the respondents, as well as their socioeconomic status.

RTFA – in fact, read the study [.pdf]. Interesting stuff and something all sexes should consider.