•  According to an independent group in Britain, the number of abortions performed on fetuses with Down syndrome has been greatly underrepresented. They claim that doctors, in attempts to protect their patients from further pain, have been classifying abortions performed on fetuses with Down as "social abortions." • Excerpts of Anne Frank's diary were censored out of a school textbook in Lebanon after Hezbollah's Al-Manar television channel ran a report claiming the book promotes Zionism. MP Hussein Hajj Hassan said, "These respected, established schools are teaching the so-called tragedy this girl lived, and yet they are ashamed to teach the tragedy of the Lebanese people, the tragedy of the Palestinian people... the tragedy of the people of the south under the hands of Zionist occupation." • A new study has found that there is a significant gender-based pay gap among US faculty. "Our findings show that women who wish to challenge pay gaps at their own institution need to systematically and quantitatively approach the situation, especially during a time of economic downturn," said the author of the study. •  David Swain has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife in 1999. Swain was scuba diving in the Caribbean with his wife Shelley Tyre when something went wrong and Tyre was killed. Although local authorities found no evidence of wrongdoing, a British Virgin Islands judge has ruled differently. • Female cancer or multiple sclerosis patients are six times more likely than male patients to be separated or divorced soon after their diagnosis. Researchers said men may leave a sick spouse because they're more hesitant than women to commit to being a caretaker. • Six years ago, Stephen Weston heard about a woman who had been prosecuted for not wearing her seat belt correctly while pregnant. For many women, the cross-body belt is uncomfortable, so Weston decided to solve the problem by developing an alternative belt for expecting mothers. The shoulder harness seat belt will hit the market in 2010. • The New York Times reports on the rising number of female officers in the Iraqi police force. While women were long discouraged from higher positions, many have come to realize that there are certain benefits to having female officers. "Everyone says men are able to do everything, but that's not true," said Lieutenant Farah Hameed. "In investigations, especially with women, women use their compassion with victims to get them to answer questions clearly." •  A recent study shows that yo-yo dieting may be more like drug addiction than previously believed. Researchers put a group of rats on "diet-cycles," and they found that after going without food, the rats suffered anxiety, and the deprivation effected the same stress symptom that kicks in during drug withdrawal. • Women are getting involved in Mexican drug trafficking in greater numbers and many are being jailed or killed. More women are becoming addicts, turning to dealing as a better alternative to prostitution, or being forced to smuggle drugs through military checkpoints by male family members. •  Prosecutors have offered former astronaut Lisa Nowak a plea deal. Nowak is accused of stalking and assaulting Air Force Capt. Colleen Shipman, who was dating Nowak's ex-boyfriend. •  Wanna be happy for the rest of your life? Move West, young woman. Apparently, people are happiest in the Mountain states and on the West Coast, due mainly to the high concentration of wealth, education, and tolerance. • While experts believe that postpartum depression is still severely under-reported, there are several new programs that offer support and aid to women suffering from PPD. UNC has a particularly good program, which features a small postpartum inpatient unit. • In the next 10 years women are expected to become the majority of unionized workers, according to a report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "When you have a majority of women in the labor movement, issues like work-family balance, paid sick days and paid parental leave become more important," said economist John Schmitt. • "Weight-watchers everywhere can breathe a sigh of relief. Contrary to their image as slim models of restraint, French women, it seems, really do get fat," begins this article, on rising obesity rates in France. It's a good thing Mireille Guilano has a new shtick. • Some are calling for the website celebrityaddressaerial.com to be shut down after it was revealed that the people who allegedly robbed Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and Orlando Bloom, used the site to gather information on their targets. The site, which lists the addresses and aerial photos of hundreds of celebrity homes, contains information that could be found on sites like TMZ and Google Maps in a more easily searchable format. • A new fiction genre described as "Beatrix Potter meets the Kray Brothers" or "Pulp Fiction meets Wind in the Willows" involves animals, or even dinosaurs, in gritty detective stories. • In an interview with a British journalist who says she dreamed of being a Playboy Bunny as a child, Hugh Hefner says, "My younger brother and I were raised in a home in Chicago with no real affection; we knew we were loved, but there was no display of affection. I think that my quest for romantic love and the adventure of romantic love was filling the space that was left because I didn't get the affection when I was young." • In this security video a woman on a Boston subway platform who appears drunk falls onto the tracks. People wave at an oncoming train to stop, the driver breaks, and the car comes to a stop inches away from killing her. •

For the special, which airs tonight at 10pm on ABC, Stossel talked to Carrie Lukas, who sometimes appears as a talking head on Fox News, and is pregnant with her third child. She said her pregnancy is costing her company money and, "If my employer decides they no longer want me as an employee then it should be their right to fire me." Stossel says anti-discrimination laws may actually lead to employers being hesitant to hire people in those protected groups. Anchor Chris Cuomo, who is also a lawyer, points out that his logic is absurd, and soon after Stossel starts explaining that all of our laws are created to help lawyers make money, Cuomo cuts him off for a commercial. Clip at left.

Almost everyone agrees that the "zero-tolerance" policy recommended by U.S. doctors is unduly strict, and in Europe pregnant women are generally allowed a glass or two a week with no foreseeable damage to the fetus. So, sure, plenty of people find forbidding an adult woman the occasional drink to be, in a word, paternalistic. But "medical legal expert" Dr Colin Gavaghan has taken the argument a step further, calling such strictures "sexist" and "ethically dubious."

Gavaghan's point, presumably, is that the medical establishment's unilateral ban on alcohol during pregnancy only affects women. Which is inarguable, except I guess in the case of those sensitive fathers-to-be who like to share every facet of the shared pregnancy and willingly abstain from drinking out of solidarity. "Ethically dubious" refers to a sweeping recommendation made on fairly scant evidence - it's not been proven that very moderate drinking harms the baby - and so might be construed more as "medical ass-covering" than "full disclosure." The second part, we suppose we get. But if it's true, we're gonna go out on a limb and say that these same cautious doctors would probably be just as quick to ban pregnant men from drinking, too.

But, logic - and overly free use of words - aside, isn't there always a degree of paternalism to the regulation of alcohol? Kids can't drink. And it's up to a bartender's discretion to decide when someone has "had enough" - even if that person, is, legally, a consenting adult. Also, let's talk turkey: female drinking is up - especially binge-drinking in the UK - and however paternalistic, there's something to be said for making women aware of the risks of their behavior, if it can be done without unnecessary alarmism. To the extent that Gavaghan's argument rests on "informed choice," then yes, we agree. But he undermines it with his absurd sexism charges - and we rather resent the notion that this might have been intended to sway us, the target demo, with a buzzword. As the New York Times' etiquette columnist put it rather more moderately over the weekend, "There's no law requiring pregnant women to become vestal virgins. And a reasonable mother-to-be is the best judge of her behavior." True, but the fiction that we can live any facet of our public health lives, in the modern age, free of paternalism seems disingenuous - particularly to a "legal expert" who should at least recognize that to some, our society must seem too litigious to be trusted with all the facts.

Telling Pregnant Women Not To Drink Is 'Sexist' [Telegraph]
It's Sexist To Tell Pregnant Women Not To Drink, Says Expert [Daily Mail]
Social Q's: Make Mine a Double [NY Times]

[Hollywood, CA; July 26. Image via Splash]