Emerging Ideas Roundup

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Limited Choice
In March, South Dakota adopted a near-total ban on abortion as a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade and a call to arms to like-minded states. Regardless of how the law fares in the courts, less inflammatory barriers like mandatory waiting periods and parental consent laws are already making the procedure more difficult to obtain. These incremental gains by the antiabortion movement have not, however, reduced the number of abortions in the United States. Rather, as Cristina Page argues in How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America (Basic Books, 2006), the delay tactics have caused more women to abort later in their pregnancies.

87 percent of U.S. counties do not have a registered abortion provider for the approximately 1 in 4 pregnant women who choose to terminate their pregnancies. 61 percent of these women are already mothers, and nearly 1 in 5 are married. Meanwhile, the federal government spends more than $100 million a year on abstinence-only education, funding materials like the organization Choosing the Best's student manual, which tells students, "For condoms to be used properly, over 10 specific steps must be followed every time. This tends to minimize the romance and spontaneity of the sex act."

Sources: Public Affairs (Jan. 2006), How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America (Basic Books, 2006), NoNewMoney.org

Word Watch: Upcycling
NOUN: The practice of recycling waste materials for use in higher-value products, such as turning beer bottles into building materials, or old lumber into furniture; different from normal recycling (remanufacturing wastes back into the same products over and over) or downcycling (putting toxins into landfills). William McDonough and Michael Braungart coined the term in their 2002 book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (North Point Press). Recent citing: The Observer (Jan. 29, 2006) of London mentions upcycling as a promising avenue for reducing packaging waste.

Life After Death
The end of a whale's life is just the beginning for hundreds of species that can spring up around (and in) the mammal's decaying body. Called "whale falls," these vibrant marine communities are sustainable for up to 100 years. Of particular interest, reports E Magazine (Sept./Oct. 2005), are whale fall "specialists," some 30 known species that have evolved to thrive in this sulfide-rich deep-sea environment (and the countless others scientists believe are yet to be discovered).

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