Big Vote Tonight in UK As voting in the Kentucky and Oregon primaries wraps up tonight MPs in London will be voting on restricting the time limit on pregnancy terminations to as little as 12 weeks. The current limit of 24 weeks has been in effect since 1990. June Bentley, Cheif Executive of the Family Planning Association in the UK said yesterday:

If the time limit is reduced on Tuesday, abortion law in Britain will have reached the historic moment when it's cut loose from common consensus and medical opinion.

Those defending further cuts in the time limit on legal abortion say the opposite, that public opinion is coalescing around a 20 week, or even earlier, limit as the survivial rate for births after this mark in the pregnancy is increasing. However, health minister Dawn Primarolo insisted that there had been no improvement in survival rates since the current limit was set in 1990:

There is no science that shows us that the survival rates have changed since we took the decision to have the time limit at 24 weeks. That is supported by the BMA (British Medical Association) and the Royal College of Obstetricians.

Cherie Blair Defends Contraception In the wake of the abortion debate in the UK Cherie Blair, the wife of former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, and life-long Catholic defended the right of women to use contraception to control pregnancy despite her church's opposition. In her recently released book a passage mentions that Ms. Blair forgot her "contraceptive equipment" on a vacation which resulted in her pregnancy with her youngest son Leo. Ms. Blair responded:

People seem to be quite shocked that perhaps a Catholic girl even uses contraception but it is really an important thing for women because one of the things about the book is about how women's lives have changed.

Time to Reexamine Our Criteria for Manhood Jay Smooth has been bringing his well versed thoughts to You Tube for a while now via his hip hop blog, ill doctrine. Check out his latest vid in which he addresses the issue of being gay in the hip hop world. He leaves us with wisdom that sounds like it came straight from the mouth of Common's Pops on the last track of Be, check it out:

GOP Family Values Parade I think it was just last Thursday that I linked to a Politico piece that said the GOP is dominating the Dems in at least one aspect right now: humiliating sex scandals. And today we get word that Rep. Vito Fossella of New York will not be running for re-election in New York "after admitting to an extramarital affair with a former Air Force official, which came after a drunken-driving arrest in Alexandria three weeks ago." Pam at Pandagon also points out that Fosella is homophobic as evidenced by his refusal to attend any family functions at which his lesbian sister is present.

And the next float to pass by in the GOP Family Values Parade down Main Street USA is bearing Nashville resident Bob Pope (with about 142 guns). The Nashville Post writes that Bob Pope, who appeared in a popular You Tube video for TenneseeGOP declaring his pride in America in reponse to Michelle Obama's statement that she is proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, is a strip club owner.