vox.com
Taiwan has spent more than $3 billion trying to get its citizens to have more children. In 2009, after decades of falling birth rates, it began offering six months of paid parental leave, reimbursed at 60 percent of a new parent’s salary — then recently increased that share to 80 percent. The government has introduced a cash benefit and a tax break for parents of young children, and has invested in child care centers. Perhaps having exhausted more conventional approaches, current and would-be la…
5 months ago
vox.com
A series of legal challenges working their way through the federal courts and now taken up by the Supreme Court has raised questions about the future of access to mifepristone, an abortion medication that is used in more than half of all US abortions with high effectiveness and few severe side effects. Mifepristone is the first of two drugs usually prescribed together to induce an abortion. The second, misoprostol, however, can be used to terminate a pregnancy on its own. The fate of mifepriston…
5 months ago
vox.com
If you’ve ever had a period — or if you just watched a lot of TV in the 1990s — you probably remember the blue-liquid ads. In one example from 1995, an actor extols the virtues of Always maxi pads as sapphire-colored fluid dribbles from a glass ampoule onto pristine white fabric. “It protects me better than any regular maxi I’ve tried,” she assures the viewer, though what exactly she needs protection from is left politely unsaid. The blue-liquid ads were easy to mock — Was that stuff water? Anti…
5 months ago
vox.com
Especially in the 1990s and 2000s, Diddy was a figure of enormous power, not just in hip-hop but in the business and entertainment worlds writ large. In the past two months, however, four women have sued him, saying he used that influence and wealth to sexually victimize them and avoid any consequences for decades. Their lawsuits, several of which include brutal and disturbing details, state that Diddy, whose birth name is Sean Combs and who has also publicly gone by Puff Daddy, Puffy, and Love,…
4 months ago
vox.com
A snowy winter in New York City brings with it a kind of magic. The air goes crisp, then bitter, and fragile snowflakes sift down in the early dark, silvering the trees and blanketing the sledding hills in the parks. After the first big snow, children and adults alike rush out to make snowmen, creations that delight passersby for the next two frigid months, until the snow finally thaws. When I took my older son, then a toddler, out for his first-ever sledding session, he squealed with awe at the…
4 months ago
vox.com
Users of Zyn, a brand of nicotine pouch that’s become a touchstone among right-wing commentators, extol its ability to free the mind, increase productivity, and even enhance sexual performance. “I use it every second I’m awake,” said Tucker Carlson on an episode of the Full Send comedy podcast in 2023. “Seconds before I fall asleep, I take it out.” There’s no evidence to promote Zyn as a sexual aid; nicotine actually constricts blood vessels, which can increase the risk of erectile dysfunction.…
2 months ago
vox.com
The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern over — so-called “fetal personhood” laws, which give fetuses, and in some cases embryos, the legal rights of a person. These laws, on the books in more than a third of states…
about 2 months ago
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Maria loves being a single mom. She doesn’t have to share decision-making with anyone, and she treasures her close bond with her teenage daughter, who will never have to worry about her parents getting divorced, because Maria has never married. But Maria, who is in her 50s, also pays a price for her single status. Somewhat ironically, she pays more in taxes than “if I had a stay-at-home spouse providing free child care and housekeeping,” she told social scientist Bella DePaulo in her recent book…
about 2 months ago
vox.com
In Akron, Ohio, teens and tweens show up to school every day with their homework, their textbooks ... and a special magnetic pouch that renders their smartphones useless during the day. The Akron schools are part of a growing movement across the US and Europe to ban phones in schools or require them to be locked up in pouches made by a startup named Yondr. School districts in at least 41 states have bought the pouches in recent years, a response to behavior issues as well as concerns about stude…
about 1 month ago
vox.com
As president, Trump delivered for anti-abortion voters in the biggest way possible by appointing the three Supreme Court justices who cast the deciding votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. This year, however, the man who once proudly proclaimed himself “the most pro-life president in American history” has been wishy-washy on the subject as he campaigns, no doubt aware that pro-abortion-rights candidates and measures have been consistently winning since Roe fell. In March, Trump voiced his potential su…
20 days ago
vox.com
PMS, food cravings, “period flu”: Anybody who menstruates knows from experience that the monthly cycle can have a profound impact on the body and mind. But researchers are still only beginning to explore exactly how menstruation can affect health — and, in some people, worsen symptoms of illness. In one recent study, psychologist Jaclyn Ross and a team at the University of Illinois Chicago asked 119 female patients who had experienced suicidal thoughts in the past to track their feelings over th…
11 days ago
