The story, not involving Americans, hasn't gotten a ton of play Stateside, but since 2006 the name Véronique Courjault has been familiar to anyone in France. The couple was living in South Korea when police found the bodies of two newborns in the freezer of the home Courjault shared with her engineer husband Jean-Louis and their two sons. Although the family initially denied any knowledge, Véronique later admitted to giving birth to both babies in secret and smothering them - in addition to a third baby she'd buried back in France.

Prosecutors apparently accept the fact that her husband was totally oblivious to the three pregnancies, home deliveries, and stranglings - to say nothing of the babies stashed in the freezer for years. (He allegedly found them when attempting to make room for a fish in 2006.) This mystery - as well as the motivations of the friendly kindergarten aide - have created a lurid national fixation with the case, currently on trial in Tours. Until recently, a Facebook page existed in which users could bet on the verdict.

Neither husband nor wife seems able to provide any explanation - although some family members do say that Veronique was prone to dramatic shifts in weight that might have explained his obliviousness. (Although, you know, being pregnant will do that.) As to Courjault herself, she only says, "What I did is so monstrous, without explanation...For me, those children did not have a real existence." The issue, for many, is why she chose to carry the babies to term - well, okay, one of the issues. And in addition to the very odd and lurid particulars of the case, is the dreadful fascination that always accompanies cases of infanticide - a crime so universally reviled as unnatural that it provokes the greatest self-righteousness, horror, and confusion of any kind of crime.

In fact, it's not that uncommon - homicide is apparently the 4th leading cause of death of children under four. Many of these are attributed to Postpartum depression, or in cases like that of Andrew Yates, Postpartum psychosis. Of the 49 women on death row, nearly 11 are there for murdering their children - and in almost every case, the women claim they knew they were in danger of doing so, but were ignored. Says one medical anthropologist, '"There's a collective denial even when mothers come right out and say, "I really shouldn't be trusted with my kids."' Simply put, we want to think it's rare and horrible. Horrible it might be, but pretending it doesn't happen does no one any favors. When one of these high-profile cases occur, we are duly horrified; there is a flurry of analysis and speculation; we are told of the warning signs; then we forget about it. One hopes that the Véronique Courjault case will move beyond the "why was she a secret monster - and how did she hide it?!" speculation to the realization that this can happen - and how to prevent it.

Veronique Courjault, French Woman Who Allegedly Killed Her Babies And Hid Them In The Freezer, Goes On Trial [Huffington Post]
Infanticide Case Mesmerizes France [Washington Post]

Related: Women Who Kill Their Children [About.com]

Mothers Who Kill Often Give Warnings [Women's News]

"In India, China and sub-Saharan Africa, millions upon millions of women are missing. They are not lost, but dead: victims of violence, discrimination and neglect," writes Nicole Baute, who spends the rest of the article exploring the various causes behind the "missing women" phenomenon.

Female infanticide in countries like China has widely been considered one of the causes behind the gender discrepancies in population growth. However, Baute points out a study by Siwan Anderson and Debraj Ray that shows that while infanticide is certainly an issue, the majority of "excess female deaths" comes much later in life. As Anderson notes: "Previously, people had thought that they (the missing women) were all at the very early stages of life, prenatal or just after, so before four years old. But what we found is that the majority are actually later."

Those "later" deaths can be attributed to a number of factors: poor access to health care for women, high suicide rates, HIV and AIDS, and dowry-related murders (which, Burke notes, are marked as "injuries.") Women are treated as second-class citizens whose worth often has a monetary price, and when that price gets too high, they are quickly disposed of. "If you're interested in gender discrimination," Anderson says, "it's really one of the starkest measures of discrimination, because it's women who should be alive, but aren't."

How Did 100,000,000 Women Disappear? [Toronto Star]

Devi and her fellow vigilantes are a sign of how bad things can be for women in India — Banda natives say it's no surprise that women have resorted to violence to combat discrimination. But it's also a sign that things may be improving, that after generations of second-class status, Indian women are taking unprecedented social power.

They have a lot to fight against. Though prenatal gender testing and gender-selective abortion are now illegal in India, having a baby girl is still widely considered shameful, and over 10 million baby girls have been killed in the last 20 years. Only 798 girls were born in Punjab last year for every 1,000 boys. Because of dowry requirements, many families think of girls as a financial liability, and stories of women being abused are common. The problem isn't confined to poor areas like Banda — Delhi pediatrician Mitu Khurana is taking legal action against her husband and his family for trying to force her to abort her twin girls. "Even as an educated woman," she says, "I am pushed around."

The Times of India, however, tells a different story. According to an article called "Macho girls!," "women in every sphere have come into their own in the last two decades." They are entering traditionally male professions, becoming collections agents and security guards on the India-Pakistan border. They are dressing in Western suits in order to appear more "businesslike." Fitness expert Leena Mogre says "the Madonna influence" has caused 40 percent more women in the last year to seek "defined arms, something that was earlier only demanded by men."

Sangeeta Singh, executive director of international accounting firm KPMG, says "economic independence has made women feel more confident about their personal lives. Hence, they are taking more personal decisions or forming their own support networks." Many women in Banda don't have economic independence. And many throughout India still suffer from the prejudice against girls. But if the pink gang is any indication, women across Indian society are indeed "forming their own support networks." Sampat Pal Devi says, "village society in India is loaded against women. [...] Village women need to study and become independent to sort it out themselves." And although their methods may be a little disturbing (thrashing a policeman, for instance), the pink gang is doing exactly that.

India's 'Pink' Vigilante Women [BBC]
Where A Baby Girl Is A Mother's Awful Shame [Guardian]
Macho Girls! [Times of India]

In a Pennsylvania rally this weekend, Sarah Palin told voters explicitly:

In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know that it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding a concern as the right to life, and it seems that our opponent kind of hopes you will forget that.

According to Slate's Melinda Henneberger, only about 13 percent of people in this country vote on pro-life issues alone — and even plenty of conservative women who have in the past are abandoning the GOP ticket this year.

But Palin wasn't done trying to remind voters that Obama supports reproductive rights — as about 60 percent of Americans do at the moment. According to Time, she also spent the weekend bringing up the long-debunked infanticide rumors, pleading with them to get outraged about that rather than her ticket's lack of a coherent economic strategy or their waffling on issuing a new tax cut plan (they've decided against it, by the way — apparently, tax cuts for corporations and CEOs are good enough cookies for them). Even the Family Research Council is getting in on the act with an Obama abortion ad — but at least theirs is, you know, actually accurate about Obama's record. It says something that the reporting on their attack ad notes that, for once, a Republican attack ad about abortion is true.

But, on the other hand, these are the same people that are trying to ban abortion in South Dakota, declare a fetus a citizen on Colorado and have passed a law intended to guilt women out of having abortions in Oklahoma by making them undergo unnecessary medical procedures. A little lie here and there never hurt anyone the GOP cared about anyway.

Obama Up by 10 Points as McCain Favorability Ratings Fall [Washington Post]
Women Who Are Giving Up On The GOP [Slate]
How Valid is Palin's Abortion Attack on Obama? [Time]
McCain Abandons Plans For New Tax Cuts [Politico]
FRC Vs. Obama On Abortion [Politico]
Abortion Rights on the Ballot, Again [NY Times]
Lawsuit Filed Against Oklahoma Ultrasound Requirement [Feminist Daily News Wire]

One good example of this is political advertisements. McCain wants conservatives to think he'll eliminate it and people who inhabit the grey areas to think he won't; Obama wants liberals to think he will guard the gate and the grey-embracers to think that he'd listen to them, too. And so an abortion rights group runs commercials asking John McCain for how long he'll send women who abort fetuses to jail when he gets the Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, while conservatives insist they'll only jail doctors — not that that's better, but it doesn't mean the commercial is a fair depiction. A pro-life group run advertisements featuring an "abortion survivor" who claims that Obama wanted her dead (even though he was barely a teenager when she was born) due to his vote on a bill in Illinois about health insurance for late-term aborted fetuses — despite the media having debunked the conservative talking point on that issue ages ago. And John McCain runs radio commercials trumpeting his pro-embryonic-stem-cell research plans in liberal locales and hopes that the pro-lifers don't listen to Top 40 radio in the morning while Obama's radio spots suggest McCain is pursing a constitutional amendment against abortion (he isn't) and his new TV spots suggest that McCain personally objects to the rape-and-incest exception to making abortion, which isn't true (though the Republican party does).

All of this comes as pro-life groups have successfully pressured Google into agreeing to run anti-abortion ads that depict "abortion in a factual way." What this means is that if women are searching for information on abortion — like how to obtain one — their "sponsored" results might well come from anti-abortion advocacy, so-called pregnancy crisis centers that work to convince women not to have abortions. Are these advertisements likely to affect or dissuade me? Likely not, since I spent 15 minutes scrolling with little thought through graphic fetus pictures to find an appropriate illustration for this article. But I wouldn't expect advertisements for Planned Parenthood to convince the people running these ads. What they do attempt to do is try to create a false consensus about the "truth" about abortion through revulsion, rather than trying to win on a serious argument about the definition of "life." Because there is no one truth — and there never will be — about that, and so they'll take what wins they can get.

Another TV Ad Hits McCain on Abortion [Politico]
New Group Enters “Born-Alive” Fray with Anti-Obama Video [Utne Reader]
Two Carefully Crafted Messages On Abortion [CBS News]
Obama Hits McCain On Abortion In New Spot [Politico]
Anti-Abortion Groups Try To Buy Ads On Google [The Times]

The whole controversy stems from an Illinois bill called the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which supporters contended would require doctors to provide medical treatment to a fetus that survives and abortion. Of course, the legislation would've also significantly restricted access to abortion — which was the real point, given that Illinois law already required that medical treatment be provided to infants that survived abortion. In fact, the Illinois Medical Association opposed the bill for many of the same reasons Obama did — that it was a back-run, feel-good attempt to persuade legislators who would have otherwise opposed bills that restricted abortion access to support the bill so they wouldn't get called baby-killers. Obama didn't take the bait.

By the way, the whole effort to push this meme is being led by Jill Stanek, a rabid pro-lifer from Illinois who, it turns out, is also raising money to fund more anti-condom billboards in AIDS-ravaged Tanzania because she thinks people shouldn't ever have sex outside of marriage. So, it's not about the precious life of your precious child that Obama supposedly wants to kill, the legislation was just another attempt by the same old anti-abortion and "purity" crowd to get their religious beliefs enshrined into law. In other words, it's a smear campaign run by the same old people that consider every abortion an infanticide and every doctor that provides them an immoral abortionist. But if they called Obama pro-choice or pro-abortion, the media and the independent voters would yawn, so they went with baby-killer. It just has a better ring to it to the kind of people that don't want women to ever have one.

NOW Again Attacks Obama's Illinois Voting Record on Abortion Bills [Washington Post]
Hillary Slams Obama 'Present' Votes On Abortion, Gun Laws [Chicago Sun Times]
Wash. Post's Solomon Ignored Planned Parenthood Support For Obama's Abortion Votes [Media Matters]
Obama Infanticide Attack Being Readied By 527s, Pat Buchanan Says [Huffington Post]
Obama Faces New Criticism on Abortion [Associated Press]
Obama's Pro-Life Critic [Politico]
Obama And Abortion Ctd. [Andrew Sullivan]

We've long suspected this: Old, fat and/or Catholic women have the hardest time getting dates. [NY Times]

We've long suspected this too: Sororities are full of superficial, skinny white bitches. [Salon, via NY Times]

India's health minister requests ban on gender bias in ads due to high rates of female infanticide. [Feministing]

It's the female illegals and their children who may be suffering the worst in the war on immigration: some swept up in raids are living in jail cells with inadequate prenatal care and an inability to feed their young kids. [Firedoglake]

Elderly women in America aren't doing too well, either. [Huffington Post]

More proof that blondes really do have more fun! Apparently it's more difficult to drug-test light-hued hair than dark. [Slate]

Wee! It's true! Female primates smarter than male ones. [Washington Post]