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I've been trying to understand the flap this week over the recommendations from the U.S. Preventive Task Force—a group ill-prepared to handle the controversy—to delay routine mammograms to age 50 for most women. And now, in a truly terrible coincidence of timing, we have a second round of commotion over the advice of the American College of ...

Make no mistake, my main response to Sarah Palin's book is teeth-gnashing, because 1) she lies and never admits it. And her death-penalty lie mattered. And 2) she never acknowledges her debt to feminism ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX).

I would really like to drive a stake in the heart of the argument, repeated once again by Sarah Palin in her book, that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood.'' At first glance, it’s oh-so unobjectionable. But in Palin's hands, the demands of motherhood aren’t a form of preparation that complements other kinds, ...

Intra-party warfare starring Sarah Palin—who can resist the leaks about the jagged bits of her new book, Going Rogue? She makes the bizarro accusation that the McCain campaign stuck her with a $50,000 legal bill for her own vetting. (Convenient confusion over the cost of defending herself against ethical accusations in Alaska?) She goes after ...

Since the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which barred federally funded Medicaid from paying for abortions, the whittling-away of reproductive rights has almost always affected poor women much more than better-off women. We have in this country a right to abortion that’s relatively easy to access if 1) you can pay for it, and 2) you live outside the large ...

When the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2003, the polls showed disapproval by a margin of 53 percent to 35 percent. After the ruling went into effect, legislators geared up to reverse it by amending the state constitution. But two years later, the poll numbers had flipped, and the backlash never ...

Jodi's piece made me think that Michelle has her footing as a First Lady who can handle the constricted role without being defined by it. Rebecca Traister and I went back and forth last November about whether Michelle was letting herself be ''momm-ified,'' in Rebecca's phrasing. I held out then for Michelle's feminist cred. And I do think that ...

About Obama's hoops game for boys, reader Matt DeBord writes:One thing that's been overlooked is how spectacularly, epically terrifying it is for most men to be asked to play any kind of sport with the boss. Sometimes if you're really, really good—like if you played golf in college or something—they want to have you around as a kind of permanent ...

I didn't want to believe that Thursday's helium balloon TV drama was fake when all the signs pointed that way last week. But now the evidence of a balloon boy hoax has been confirmed by the sheriff who stuck up for Richard and Mayumi Heenes' story, who says now that the Heenes planned the stunt in a bid for a reality show of their own ... ...

This week on the DoubleX gabfest, Hanna, Margaret Talbot, and I talked about the studies showing that female happiness among secular, educated women has declined since the advent of feminism. Hanna mentioned an experiment she and Jess are embarking on. It's simple but radical: They're not complaining. And they're tracking whether that makes them ...