Georgia Senate Seat
Stays Anti-Choice

Anti-choice Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss won
yesterday’s run-off election against pro-choice Democratic challenger Jim
Martin.  Chambliss’s "double-digit" win
shattered Democratic hopes of winning a filibuster-proof majority in the
Senate, reports the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota,
the
Al Franken campaign is optimistic that the candidate will win a Senate seat
in Franken’s race against Norm Coleman.  "I’m
very confident that Franken is going to win," said Franken’s lawyer Marc
Elias.

Why Hasn’t
Anti-Choice South Dakota
Retained an Abortion Ban?

If South Dakotans
self-identify as "pro-life" by a wide margin, why have recent votes on abortion
bans resulted in voters rejecting bans?  CBS
News reports,

A variety of theories have emerged to explain why there has
been such a divergence between the supposed public opposition to abortion and
the actual outcome of recent votes. Some suggest that a "reverse Bradley
effect" was the cause. Just as voters in the 1982 California
governor’s race are believed to have lied about their intent to vote for a
black candidate, South Dakota
voters may have lied about their support for an abortion ban. "There’s a
lot of public pressure to be anti-abortion," explains Marvin Buehner, a
Rapid City OB-GYN and South Dakota’s
most outspoken physician against the abortion bans. Buehner had predicted
voters would reject the 2008 ban, but narrowly. "People are more likely to
answer the poll that they’ll support [a ban]. Then they get into the ballot
booth and decide they just can’t vote for something like that."

CBS also notes the development of a "sophisticated electorate" who are averse to sweeping abortion bans.

Fight Over Birth
Control Access Brews in Maine

Family planning advocates in Maine are anticipating introduction of laws
that would require parental consent for teens to access prescription birth
control from school health clinics and other health care providers.  The Bangor Daily News reports
on the advocates’ work building support for unrestricted birth control access.

How to Defuse the
Culture Wars

On Alternet, David
Rosen has a series of policy prescriptions for defusing the religious right’s
culture wars, including codifying Roe in federal law, ending abstinence-only
funding, and decriminalizing and regulating commercial sex.

Speaking Out About
IVF

After the New York Times’s Alex Kuczynski wrote openly about
her use of a surrogate to give birth to a child that was genetically Kuczynski’s, some observed that hearing men write personally about
infertility, IVF and surrogacy is rare.  On The
Daily Beast, Daniel Nester shares his family’s story of IVF.