That these new guidelines come amid a contentious healthcare debate has also raised paranoia that this is part of an effort to lower healthcare costs -- at the expense of women's health. The impossible-to-avoid Sarah Palin took to Facebook late Thursday to air her worries about this shift in the wisdom about pap smears: "There are many questions unanswered for me, but one which immediately comes to mind is whether costs have anything to do with these recommendations," she wrote. "The current health care debate elicits great concern because of its introduction of socialized medicine in America and the inevitable rationed care." Many other Republicans have jumped on the "rationing" bandwagon as well. (Yeah, now they care about women's healthcare!) Judy Norsigian, executive director of the Boston Women's Health Book Collective (aka Our Bodies Ourselves), told me that "we have a discourse at the moment that is dominated by right-wing rhetoric that the Democrats are all about denying healthcare services."

The truth is that Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of health and human services, insists that the breast cancer screening guidelines will not change "what services are covered by the federal government." (Also, insurance companies claim they won't change mammogram coverage and, as David Dayen points out on FireDogLake, "the procedure is mandated at [age 40] in 49 of the 50 states.") The Obama administration has yet to address the new standards for cervical cancer screening -- but medical opinion on the benefits and risks of pap smears is far less contentious than when it comes to the mammogram debate (which has been going on for decades).

Cindy Pearson, executive director of the National Women's Health Network, an independent consumer-advocacy group, told me that the suggested pap smear routine "is not at all about cost-cutting," but instead "improving women's health." Most women's bodies are able to fight off the virus that causes cervical cancer -- but, when a doctor does detect infection through a test for the virus or the appearance of "disturbed cells" on the surface of the cervix, they typically provide treatment that very well might be unnecessary. This isn't just an issue of experiencing bothersome "cramping, discomfort and missing some work" after having the abnormal cells removed, she says -- "what's actually happening is it's weakening the cervix in some women so that they can't support a pregnancy full-term."

My question for her was why doctors haven't instead adjusted their response to the discovery of the virus' presence -- was it in the interest of avoiding malpractice suits? She explained that the medical community operates under the mantra of "if you see it, you treat it." Essentially, the new cervical cancer screening guidelines reduce the likelihood of a doctor seeing it, so as to avoid their treating something likely to clear up on it's own. "Sometimes there are cases when you say, 'Watch and wait,'" she says, "but almost no one does it."

It just goes to show that you have to be your own advocate when it comes to navigating the healthcare system. As Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote earlier this week about the new mammogram standards, "What’s optional for one woman may be the difference between life and death for another." She also added that "blanket guidelines are just that -- they're fine for covering the many, and they are not laws we have to follow." A woman and her doctor still have to take into account her individual history and particular risk factors. That has always been the case and continues to be so. As Norsigian from Our Bodies Ourselves said: "You give women the scientific evidence and let them make their own choices."

Mike L., the lead subject in Padawer's piece, found evidence of his wife's affair with a coworker and decided to have L., his 5-year-old daughter, take a DNA test. The results arrived in the mail: He was not the father. "I ran upstairs, locked myself in the bathroom and cried and dry-heaved for 45 minutes. I felt like my guts were being ripped out," he says. Mike separated from his wife, Stephanie, and began paying her child support because, he says, she claimed Rob, L.'s bio-dad, had refused. Things continued on this way for several years, until he got news that Stephanie would be marrying Rob, and that was too much to bear. He asked a Pennsylvania court to relieve him of parental responsibility, but a judge ruled that Mike was the legal father, not Rob.

Padawer explains, "Once a man has been deemed a father, either because of marriage or because he has acknowledged paternity (by agreeing to be on the birth certificate, say, or paying child support), most state courts say he cannot then abandon that child -- no matter what a DNA test subsequently reveals," she continues. "In Pennsylvania and many other states, the only way a non-biological father can rebut his legal status as father is if he can prove he was tricked into the role -- a showing of fraud -- and can demonstrate that upon learning the truth, he immediately stopped acting as the child’s father." In Mike's case, the judge ruled that he was the legal father because he stuck around even after the DNA test -- in other words, because of love, not fraud.

"I pay child support to a biologically intact family," Mike says. "How ridiculous is that?" Pretty ridiculous when you consider that Rob gets to live with L. and play the role of papa; and Mike only gets to see her on the weekend. As vexing as this case is, though, we hardly want courts to devalue the unbreakable bond that can develop even in relationships without genetic ties. At some point, DNA can become rather irrelevant. The truth is that Mike's utter adoration of L. jumps off the page; he is a doting, indulgent father. L., now 11 years old, still sees him as her daddy and he wants it to remain that way -- he just doesn't want to pay child support to the woman who cruelly cuckolded and defrauded him. As far as the law is concerned, though, he can't have it both ways. There are many different ideas for how to best address the issue -- from limiting paternity challenges to the first two years of the child's life to widespread DNA testing at birth (I picture Maury Povitch being wheeled from delivery room to delivery room: "You are not the father! You are the father!") -- but all are imperfect.

Paternal uncertainty is one of the many biological inequalities of reproduction (see also: pushing a human being out of your vagina) and, as evolutionary psychologists tell it, getting stuck raising some other schmo's kid is a hard-wired male nightmare. But if you had any doubt that we humans are more than our base evolutionary imperatives, this article should convince you: For all his rightful resentment, men like Mike show that family is thicker than blood.

In fact, the advance sales have been so overwhelming that MovieTickets.com and Summit Entertainment, the studio behind the film, stopped reporting sales data earlier this week, for fear of losing customers who assume there's no point in even trying to get into a showing of "New Moon" this weekend. Says NYT ArtsBeat blog, "It could dent the opening-weekend gross if consumers mistakenly think that no tickets are available. At a certain point, average moviegoers might skip the multiplex altogether if they think 'Twilight' hoopla has grown too insane."

I hate to break it to nervous studio execs, but that ship has sailed. "Twilight" hoopla has been bonkers for years, and the "New Moon"-specific hoopla is really only noteworthy for being even more so. The L.A. Times article notes that "more than a week before its release, the film sold more than four times as many tickets as the original 'Twilight' at MovieTickets.com at the same point in the sales cycle." And it's not just teenage girls driving the frenzy; MovieTickets.com's latest data said 27 percent of the buyers were women between 25 and 34 -- the slightly embarrassed but no less addicted demographic Sarah Hepola reported on for Salon earlier this week.

Another 35 percent are women under 25, though, and altogether, 87 percent of advance ticket holders are female. That's no surprise, but a majority-female audience breaking sales records left and right certainly is. "Let's just think about that," wrote Melissa Silverstein at her blog Women & Hollywood last week. "A franchise fueled by girls and women has the potential of beating the machines for the box office record. This movie could potentially be 'guy proof' meaning they won't need guys to see it for it to kick some box office butt. Whereas the other franchises NEED women to make their numbers."

Having seen the first movie and read the first two books before officially determining that neither the lols nor the thought of blogging furiously about the wildly popular series' gender messages held my interest enough to continue, I never imagined I'd find a reason to see the "Twilight" phenomenon as a potential triumph for women. In the books, at least -- far more than in the first movie -- heroine Bella is spineless and infantilized, while dreamboat vamp Edward is stalky and emotionally abusive. The thought of the effect those characterizations might have on young girls who see it as a depiction of "true love" pained me. But Silverstein makes a great point: What about the effect the "Twilight" saga's success might have on Hollywood's confidence in female-oriented films?

"New Moon finally give us an apple to apples comparison with other types of fan-driven films," she told me in an e-mail. "The biggest films in Hollywood are the ones that come out of comic books, toys and books. Starting last year with 'Sex and the City,' 'Mamma Mia' (and both those can be dismissed because the targeted audience was older), but now with the two 'Twilight' films, it shows that female filmgoers can be as rabid in their fandom as male." The question is, will the powers that be recognize young women as a robust market that's been largely ignored and condescended to, or will they write it off as a limited phenomenon? "Studios should look at this as a golden opportunity and not a fluke!" writes Silverstein. But tapping into the passions of young female audiences means "working to try and uncover things that are bubbling in fandom and even trying to come up with exciting ideas to engage the audience," not just waiting around for the next runaway bestseller.

It might also mean sticking with what works, especially when it's a female director who's demonstrated a knack for understanding teenage girls. Unfortunately, Catherine Hardwicke, director of "Twilight," was replaced by Chris Weitz for the second installment, despite the first film's having grossed $383.6 million worldwide -- and the series seems to have suffered for it artistically, if not financially. Salon's Stephanie Zacharek enjoyed Hardwicke's movie as an "unapologetic, unembarrassed foray into teen-heartthrob territory, hitting the sweet spot where pop culture, teenage curiosity about sex, and vampire lore meet," but says Weitz's "offers few of the juicy, go-for-broke romantic pleasures of its predecessor." 

Zacharek's not alone in her disappointment. Granted, popular teen-oriented franchises hardly need critical acclaim to succeed, and the first film only earned 49 percent positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes -- but contrast that with the 30 percent rating "New Moon" has. Positive word of mouth may be no more than the icing on the cake for such a big movie, but it's nevertheless likely to be absent this time, even though Weitz had far more money and momentum going into the project. Says Silverstein, who saw an advance screening, "I think they really miscalculated in not keeping Hardwicke. The budget for this film was $50 million up from I believe $39 for the first one and one of the things that the studio and Hardwicke were fighting about was budget. She really seems to know how to tap into the teen spirit and that was missed here. She just knows how to elicit emotions from young people. It's her thing, and that's what worked best in the first movie and worst in this movie."

So even if the studios do learn something about the power of female audiences from the "Twilight" saga, they seem to have ignored any lessons the first film offered about the capabilities of a female director. Nevertheless, Silverstein is optimistic about "New Moon's" potential to improve women's lot in Hollywood across the board -- as long as executives recognize its tremendous appeal as more than a fluke. "Hopefully, this success will infiltrate the minds of Hollywood number crunchers and seek out products for the female audience," she says. "If people start thinking and making more movies that star women and are women driven, it can only help women at all levels of the business." 

On Wednesday, "Modern Family's" Sofia Vergara prompted nervous titters on "The View" when she dropped an off-the-cuff joke about being "raped" at 13 to explain the existence of her teenage son. She didn't clarify for Whoopi whether it was rape or "rape rape."

But stand back and learn from the masters, "View" ladies, because you've got nothing on conservative commentators. And lock up your women and your borders, because as Media Matters for America demonstrates, Limbaugh, Beck and Steele know that Obama and his progressive agenda are coming to forcibly penetrate the flag. If that's possible.

Mental rape! Pocketbook rape! Government-sanctioned rape! Values rape! Private sector rape! Statue of Liberty rape! Behold and prepare for the liberal rapeocalypse.

Who is being mourned is the most important question of all. 160 estimated deaths of trans people, and the vast majority in Central and South America (75% according to Transgender Europe). So it seems to me that to unite all trans people under one banner ignores the specifics of death --  sex (the majority are trans women), race (Latina and black), class and occupation (sex work) are as important factors as transness.

A look at the list of those who have died since the 2008 day of remembrance -- which can be found at the TDOR website or in the video below -- makes that clear, along with a couple of other things. Like the number of victims of anti-transgender hatred whose names are unknown, and how extraordinarily brutal their deaths often are. According to the Human Rights Campaign, such crimes "tend to be particularly violent." Just last week in Puerto Rico, 19-year-old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado was decapitated, dismembered and burned by a man who thought the gay teen was a woman when he picked him up for sex, and became enraged upon learning that he was wrong. Jos at Feministing points out that we don't know how the victim self-identified, but "Lopez Mercado's murder reflects those of too many others killed when presenting a gender other than that assigned to them at birth. Some may not have identified as trans but all were killed because of hatred directed towards those who break the strict rules of the compulsory gender binary. They were killed because they did not conform to what someone else thought their gender should be."

In an interview on the GLAAD blog, trans man and activist Ethan St. Pierre, whose transgender aunt Deborah Forte was murdered in 1995, says, "Transgender Day of Remembrance is a day when we come together to remember those that we've lost, but it also reminds us of how unsafe we are and how we are targets of violence -- and that nobody is really safe from it. If you're a trans person, especially if you're an unemployed trans person out on the street, there's a really good chance you're going to lose your life. It reminds me how unsafe we are. And it reminds me how much work we have to do to educate people so that it doesn't keep happening."