• The marriage application of a gay couple was rejected by Russian courts on the grounds that marriage is between a man and a woman, despite the fact that there is no ban on same-sex marriage in Russian law. They bought tickets to Canada, where they plan to get hitched. • In the 1960s, William R. ("Randy") Lovelace, II and General Donald Flickinger set out to test whether women were suited to space travel. Over the course of their investigation, they found that women had the lung capacity to survive in space. Although most of their data has been lost, a recent paper published in Advances in Physiology rediscovers the story of the Women in Space program. •  Serena Williams has reclaimed her spot at No. 1 after she beat Ekaterina Makarova in the second round of the China Open on Tuesday. "It feels pretty good, I'm really excited," she said. •  If you're in the market for an XBOX 360 autographed by Sarah Palin, there's one selling on eBay for $1.1 million. According to the description, "The infamous Sarah Palin XBOX 360 was autographed at the governors picnic on July 24, 2009, in Wasilla, Alaska, just two days before her resignation as governor of that state. You can own this 60GB, perfect-condition, one-of-a-kind item before her expected run for president of the United States of America in 2012." • According to a UN Children's Fund report five percent of boys and up to 10 percent of girls in rich nations experience penetrative sexual abuse during childhood. Up to three times as many experience some form of sexual abuse. • U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a new report that the international community needs to invest in women and girls even though the economy is bad. He wrote, "Maintaining national commitments to children and women and enhancing social protection will not only help to ensure a more rapid recovery from the (financial) crisis but will also build a foundation for equitable growth and sustained progress. • Police have admitted that they got a tip about Jaycee Dugard only a year after she was kidnapped, 17 years before she was found. A man reported that he'd seen a girl who looked like Dugard looking at a poster about her abduction at a gas station near Antioch, California and had left in a yellow van. Officers just checked the gas station and didn't find Dugard or the van. • A bill has been introduced in the District of Columbia that would allow gay couples to marry in the capitol. The bill is almost certain to pass, but it may not become a law because Congress gets to review D.C. legislation before it takes effect. • More than 2 million babies and mothers die worldwide each year from childbirth complications, according to a study by the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics. Doctors say such deaths could be avoided with improvements in basic health care and training for local health care workers to perform emergency Cesarean sections and other lifesaving techniques. • Egypt's most senior cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Tantawi, is preparing to issue a Fatwa against women wearing the niqab, the full length garment that covers the body from head to toe, in schools. On a recent trip to a girl's high school he asked a girl wearing a niqab to take it off, saying it's a "tradition, it has no connection with Islam." • £700 micro pigs are all the rage among Britain's top celebrities, such as Rupert Grint. "They are highly intelligent and are the fourth most intelligent species after man, monkey and dolphin," says pig breeder Jane Croft. "They really are the perfect pets, I don't know why people haven't thought of them before." • Pilot "Sully" Sullenberger, St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Brendan Ryan, and Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Clay Zavada among the 18 finalists for the "Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year," the American Mustache Institute's highest honor. •

A survey for the Christian Medical Association found that 90% of providers would "quit their practices before violating their conscience." But even if this statistic is accurate, we're unlikely to see a mass exodus of doctors. After Roe V. Wade, many state laws and some federal laws were enacted to protect doctors and other health care workers from having to carry out abortions. Some laws are broad enough to allow doctors to exempt themselves from performing sterilization or in vitro fertilization, or from prescribing emergency contraception.

Joxel Garcia, Bush's assistant secretary for health, says we need the newer, Bush-era laws on top of these older laws because doctors aren't aware of the older ones (apparently the thought that if you're going to refuse to perform a medical procedure, you might at least be responsible for checking whether you're legally protected, has not occurred to Garcia). He adds that, as a med student in the late 80s, he was advised not to apply to certain ob-gyn residencies if he wouldn't perform abortions. The fact that some ob-gyn programs might want to train doctors who will offer women the full range of medical services encompassed by their specialty isn't particularly surprising — except in light of Medical Students for Choice member Rozalyn Farmer Love's account of having to hide her pro-choice views for fear of discrimination by professors. Anti-abortion doctors aren't the only ones whose convictions are under fire.

Bioethicist Nancy Berlinger says,

Words like belief, when you talk about them in the context of health care, aren't just anything you might think of. They have to be defensible. And a false belief about science or the promotion of ambiguity where things can be disambiguated is not ethical.

Berlinger's words are a reminder that there are limits to how much a doctor's beliefs can affect his or her practice. A Christian scientist physician cannot refuse a cancer patient chemo — is it really reasonable to allow a gynecologist to refuse a woman a legal abortion? What about to refuse IVF? The Pill? The more "conscience provisions" an aspiring ob-gyn needs, the more sensible it seems for him or her to consider a different specialty. The solution is certainly not to maintain several separate sets of laws that allow doctors to deny women care.

Some Docs Resist Repeal Of Bush-Era Abortion Regs [NPR]

Dr. Healy, former president and CEO of the Red Cross sees the conservative values of both groups of teens who were studied as "traits worth noting" because they had what she sees as positive effects on the teenagers' sex lives:

The more sexually conservative teens, pledge or not, held more negative views toward condoms and birth control, though half or more used both regularly. Nevertheless, these more conservative teens had less risky sex (for example, more had had only one partner in the prior year). Perhaps most notably, they reported losing their virginity at, on average, 21 years of age. Among most youths today, sexual activity begins closer to age 17.

Waiting until age 21 to have sex may not be waiting until marriage, but it certainly does point to a grand public-health direction that would make teens healthier and parents happier.

First off, Dr. Healy gets the information about these teens losing their virginity at age 21 wrong: the study found that more than half of both groups had had sex for the first time by age 21. So basically, on average, most of these kids had had sex by the time they were 21, they were not losing their virginity at age 21.

Dr. Healy lists the conservative traits of the two teen groups as positives, including:

6. More negative feelings about having sex or using birth control

7. Strong sense of guilt about having sex, with a bit of worry about upsetting mom.

Let's see: sex guilt and negative feelings about safe sex, gee those all sound like healthy values that a licensed medical professional should be promoting!

Dr. Healy equates conservatism and religion with lowering the frequency of teen sex, therefore making it safer even if the teens are developing unhealthy attitudes and practices when sex is concerned. However, Dr. Healy doesn't note that a teen doesn't need to grow up in these types of environments in order to avoid teen pregnancy and a risky sex life; these are simply the traits of the families that were studied. In fact, blue states have the lowest rates of teen pregnancy and divorce, which shows that not only can liberals raise teens who don't get pregnant, but they can also (hopefully) teach them that sex and birth control isn't something to feel bad about.

7 Factors That Foster Teen Virginity, Pledge Or No Pledge [US News]

Earlier: No Sh-t: New Study Finds 'Virginity Pledges' Ineffective, Promoting Unsafe Sex
As Abstinence Pledges Falter, A New "Middle Class Morality" Emerges

• Authorities from Australia and New Zealand are investigating Roman Hasil, an uncertified OB/GYN who lives in a homeless shelter in Australia, after patients complained of medical negligence and sexual assault, including one claim that he touched a patient's vagina and said "who is the boss now?" • Rev. Peter Mullen, a chaplain in England, said on his blog that homosexuals should have warning labels such as "FELLATIO KILLS" tattooed on their backs and necks to warn about diseases; he now claims the statements "light-hearted jokes" that were "in the tradition of English satire." • Ultra-Orthodox Jewish "modesty patrols" in Israel have been accused of physically attacking women they view as being immodest and torching stores that sell internet technology. • A study of young children attending an international school in Beijing found that girls have a harder time than boys adjusting in an environment where they don't fully know the language. • A recent study has found that female smokers require less tobacco exposure than men to increase their colon cancer risk. • Sentencing is scheduled this week for a rapist in London who was nabbed by authorities because of distinctive rings he wore (two gold sovereign rings and one rink marked "Dad") when he attacked and raped a woman. • Holly Budge was among the three skydivers who became the first skydivers to freefall over Mount Everest yesterday after 15 years of preparation.• The centuries-old tradition of "sworn virgins" in Albania, where a woman can claim to be a man and have all the rights of a man in exchange for celibacy, is dying out. • Author Marc Silver asks if a wife's cancer will lead to her husband's infidelity and finds out that... it really just depends on the husband! • A cleric in Saudi Arabia has asked Muslim women to wear one-eyed veils because having two eyes visible (and being able to gauge distances) is too seductive. • Recent studies have found that there may be a link between CMV, a common herpes virus, and malignant giloma, a deadly brain cancer. • After a scandal broke out in Para, a state in Brazil where a 15-year-old woman was jailed for weeks with men who sexually abused and tortured her, the Governor of Para has acknowledged that girls were being arrested by police to "expressly to provide sexual gratification for prisoners." • A recent study has found that pregnant women who get flu shots can greatly reduce the risk of their infants getting the flu and/or respiratory illnesses for that year. • Meanwhile, a study has found that babies who slept in rooms with fans were 72% less likely to die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. •

• Meanwhile, efforts are under way to increase the amount of female neurosurgeons (women only make up 6%) which can be linked to gender inequality in pay and promotion in the field. • Maybe the neurosurgeons could recruit this young lady: A 17-year-old female Canadian teen discovered that MSG causes stunted brain cell development. • A man in Los Angeles was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment for killing his girlfriend's cat to threaten her. Have fun in prison, asshole! • The Beyonce "Whitening" ad debate continues: One black female TV personality in the UK talks about the message a lighter-skinned Beyonce sends to young black women. • Preventing domestic and sexual abuse of married women in India may decrease the abused women's risk of contracting HIV. • A woman in Poulsbo, Washington tackled and beat her fiance at their prenuptial party after her 12-year-old son told her he saw her fiance kissing her friend. •

Yeah, same old issues. But a new study by UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business found that MBAs were more likely to drop out of the workforce than doctors or lawyers. Why?

It's not because of education: All of the 1,000 participants in the survey went to Harvard. It's not age: All were 37 years old and had at least one child. The difference was in the workplace. A third of the women with MBAs became stay-at-home moms; compared to 6% of MDs. Could it be that doctors often work in private practice and can make their own hours? Could it be that a business environment is not family-friendly? Would it help if there were more women in business, thereby forcing companies to become flexible or lose valuable employees? But why would more women go into business when clearly women in business have a tough time? It's a catch-22. (Would some sort of Title IX help?) I'm reminded of something I read recently, in which the author suggested that the reason the comments on this site are so witty and funny is because women are underutilized at their jobs. Maybe it's not just businesses — maybe the entire concept of a "workforce" needs to be overhauled?

Working Moms Look Back With Mixed Emotions [CNN]
More Women With MBAs Take Mommy-Track Than Doctors: Study [Reuters]

Related: Government Officials: Should Title IX Apply To Science Departments?
On Jezebel's Fine Lines Series and Spunky Female Protagonists [South In The Winter]

Earlier: Many Women Prefer Stay At Home Motherhood To Soulless Cubicle Dwelling

Only 7% of women say their health professional has ever asked them about domestic violence, notes the Times, and many of the doctors feel that asking is ineffective and a criminal justice issue — not a medical one. All the while, "Abused women are at increased risk of chronic pain, depression, anxiety and alcohol and substance abuse, and they can have problems taking their medication correctly and getting to appointments. In one recent study, women who said they had been abused within the past year were more likely to have partners who interfered with their medical care," according to the Times. The issue speaks to larger questions of health care, because we're dealing with a system where many battered women don't have health insurance to go to the doctor in the first place.

All the same, Felicia Cohn, director of medical ethics at UC Irvine laments that "the continuing inattention [to domestic violence] is both inexcusable and embarrassing. This is a public health pandemic with immense health care implications.”

Screening for Abuse May Be Key to Ending It

CDC: 25% Of American Women Are Victims Of Domestic Abuse