Generous as this conclusion may seem to vocal opponents of abstinence-only education, its supporters aren't too happy with the results. Two members of the CDC Community Guide have issued a minority report claiming that the panel's recommendations "fail to acknowledge the effectiveness of abstinence education" and "make comparative effectiveness claims about [comprehensive risk reduction] versus AE that are based on weakly supported assumptions." Unfortunately, the dissenting report bases its claims on evidence that has not yet been cleared for release to the public, so there's no way to scrutinize its claims. Randy Elders of the CDC responded in the Washington Post by saying that "all of those points were considered by the task force" and that their criticism reflects "a fundamental misunderstanding of a systematic review process." He explained, "The whole point of what we are doing is to aggregate data from as many studies that are critical to answering the question. What they were doing was chopping up the evidence into very fine subsets to poke holes."

Debates over the effectiveness of various sex ed approaches have always been contentious, but that is especially true right now because there is a tremendous amount on the line: Congress is currently mulling President Obama's proposal to allocate government funds only to sex ed programs that are scientifically shown to work. Based on this report, at least, abstinence-only would be out.

Don't mess with (DNA tests in) Texas
In a legal event reminiscent of HBO's cult hit "Big Love," Texas prosecutors are struggling to peg FLDS leader Raymond Jessop with charges of statutory rape, as the woman involved in the case has refused to cooperate with authorities. The prosecution's evidence rests on DNA samples that indicate, with a 99.9 percent probability, that Jessop fathered the girl's child. But the defense is working overtime to cast doubt on the DNA data, proposing that mistakes with DNA samples have occurred before, and Jessop should not be convicted based solely on this evidence.

Born on the Internet
If you thought live-tweeting a birth was bad, prepare to be further floored: a woman in Minneapolis has decided to broadcast the birth of her first child live on the Internet. Having tracked her experiences with pregnancy for the past few months on the motherhood site MomsLikeMe, 23-year-old Lynsee decided to air the birth on the site "to document the pregnancy and create a one-of-a-kind memento for our baby to have forever." Lynsee's due date is November 19th, and she's inviting the whole world to join in on every detail of her child's birth -- "tastefully," of course.

Forget sexting, think contraceptexting
A new experiment conducted in high schools in the UK has attracted more debate over birth control access for teens. Students at six schools deemed "high risk" due to their elevated level of teen pregnancies were given the option of texting requests for emergency contraception. Instead of automatically having their requests filled, the five students who participated were given an appointment with a nurse to evaluate their needs and answer questions.

School sued for considering MySpace their space
After posting risqué pictures of themselves taken at a sleepover to their MySpace accounts, two Indiana high school students were suspended from extra-curricular activities and forced to apologize to the athletic board for their "inappropriate" behavior. Now, ACLU lawyers have taken on the case, arguing that the students' right to freedom of expression were disregarded. With students' lives moving further into the public sphere of the Internet, ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump stated that, "this is something that's happening more and more."

The sexual dysfunction you never knew you had
You've probably seen the commercials for the much-questioned Restless Leg Syndrome, but did you know that your vagina can develop a similar condition? On Tuesday, AlterNet reported on a "Journal of the American Medical Association" study that stated that "43% of women experience some degree of impaired sexual function." By coining new diseases that may afflict that 43 percent, pharmaceutical companies are able to hock some rather laughable medical solutions. The larger slight here is that Big Pharma seems to think that if you're not screwing like a porn star, you're clearly a frigid nun incapable of orgasm.

Kate Winslet's revolutionary road
On Tuesday, Academy Award winner Kate Winslet won the libel suit she filed against the "Daily Mail," which accused her of lying about her exercise habits. The newspaper was forced to pay her $40,000 in damages. Winslet is a well-known critic of the media for its part in perpetuating body image issues. "I was particularly upset to be accused of lying about my exercise regime," she said, "and felt that I had a responsibility to request an apology in order to demonstrate my commitment to the views that I have always expressed about body issues, including diet and exercise."

Know who else has responded to the study just as feverishly? A religious leader on campus, whose blood pressure has risen for an entirely different reason: He's pissed. Father Joe Vetter, director of the Duke Catholic Center, said: "I think it can give the impression that the university is endorsing behavior that I don't think the university should endorse." God forbid the university allow its researchers to issue an open call for women -- that's right, adult women -- who are interested in attending a sex toy party to help further the study of sex. No one's being forced into a sex den filled with vibrating silicone and rubber. Women are volunteering to check out some naughty novelty items and, both before and after, speak openly with researchers about their attitudes toward sex.

The school's vice president for public affairs, Michael Schoenfeld, bless him, has issued an utterly rational response to Vetter's public outrage: "Not all research will make people comfortable," he said. "In fact, there's a lot of things, there are a lot of questions, there are a lot of issues that are studied at a university that make people uncomfortable. That's how we get an understanding of things like ethics [and] behavior." Science -- not always politically correct!

Vetter is under the impression, although he doesn't say why and researchers have remained mum on the topic, that the study is driven by a "concern about promiscuity on campus." He seems to believe that the study is looking at sex toys as an alternative to partnered sex. If you think a man like Vetter would celebrate such an goal, you're wrong. While he is "concerned about promiscuity," he's more concerned that "these students are in this developmental phase," he told The News & Observer. "I don't think it's a good developmental practice to just tell somebody to just sit around and masturbate. I don't think that promotes relationships."

I'm 99.9 percent sure the researchers aren't asking young women to "just sit around and masturbate." But you gotta love the apocalyptic fear of sexuality on display here; the assumption seems to be that self-pleasuring women will lock themselves in their rooms with no more motivation to relate to the opposite sex.

Turns out lots of things are feminist about "discriminating a photo shoot," although not all feminists will agree on all of the reasons, or even think of the same ones off the top of their heads! Actual Feminist Amanda Marcotte, for instance, makes this point:

The idea behind the "porn is empowering!" argument is that women who work in porn gain power in a pragmatic way, playing by men's rules, and feminists should support this for pragmatic reasons, because at the end of the day, women have more real power. And that would be a legitimate argument if the women involved had more power at the end of the day. But what power do they have, exactly? Joanna Krupa cites the big paychecks you get for nude modeling in Playboy, but since those paychecks stop coming when you're a hag of 23 or so (or possibly younger), then it's a false form of power.

See, the underlying principle of feminism is equality. As things stand here in the country that produces Playboy, women and men are not equal. Men, for instance, are favored for all sorts of powerful, high-paying jobs, and often respected more as they get older and better at those jobs. Women, on the other hand, can sometimes make a bunch of money by taking off all their clothes when they're young and most attractive to a large number of heterosexual men, but then they are less respected in that profession as they get older, no matter how much valuable information they've learned about posing naked by that point. Do you see the difference?

Also, as Actual Feminist Samhita Mukhopadhyay notes, many women are excluded from that limited-time-only opportunity in the first place, on grounds that their bodies are insufficiently pleasing even when young!

Feminists have opposing view points on pornography and other forms of erotic art, that is not a new story, but suggesting that feminists don't get how "empowering" it is to fit into society's standards of able-bodied, white, cis-gendered, thinness, well let's just say we totally get that. I am not saying the act isn't empowering for her, like she said, I wasn't there, but the process that empowers her is embedded in a really specific idea of what a woman should look like and the kind of woman that "turns men on." It is not the function of turning men on that is the sexist part to me, but the unrealistic expectation put on women through the production and proliferation of images like Krupa's and the corresponding value put on women's bodies through this very same process.

So, to recap: The vast majority of women are never considered sufficiently wankworthy to earn money for taking their clothes off, and those who are can only hold that distinction until they begin to age visibly, at which point they join the unsexy masses. Making matters worse, as Marcotte mentions, women who have at some point bared it all for money are taken less seriously when, inevitably, their no longer marketable bodies force them to seek a new means of making a living. Thus, many Actual Feminists conclude that being photographed naked is not, in fact, a job that moves women as a group closer to equality with men in terms of employment and earning opportunities. Instead, it is one that reinforces the distinctly unfeminist and demonstrably false idea that the commodification of certain young women's sexuality is a form of real power. See?

And I haven't even touched on the radical feminist arguments against porn -- you don't even need them to understand why a feminist would discriminate a photo shoot! I hope this helps you understand, Joanna Krupa, why we "self-important, so-called 'feminists'" don't see your paycheck and creative input into your own nudie photos as a win for women. If you need any other questions about feminism answered, you know where to find me. 

It’s not cheap. The left-behind parent she chooses to follow, Todd Hopson, a Florida lawyer, pays $25,000 for Zamora to retrieve his nine-year-old son, Andres, from Costa Rica. (And that rate is the recession special!) The ethical issues of responding to an alleged kidnapping with another kidnapping are murky enough. But in her reporting, Labi adds yet another layer of complexity:

Hopson is not Andres’ biological father; Jason Alvarado, a Costa Rican dentist, is. And it’s Alvarado who is the target of the snatchback.

Labi’s piece (and please read it) has all the elements of an international thriller. There’s no question that by the time parents are engaged in abductions and counter-abductions, both have probably lost sight of the best interests of the child. But in choosing to profile a non-biological custodial father, she also raises additional questions about how we define the people who matter most in a child’s life: When two parties disagree, who counts more? The person who sired a child or the person who raised him?

All parties seem to agree that Todd Hopson acted as Andres’ parent, perhaps even his primary parent. His mother, Helen Zapata, spent two years with his father, Alvarado, in their native Costa Rica. By the time she became pregnant, at 19, the two had broken up. (Zapata claims Alvarado asked her to have an abortion; he denies it). She met Hopson while she was pregnant and was living with him in Florida by the time Andres was born. Hopson was the first to hold Andres in the hospital, cared for him by himself during his first week of life, and paid his mother’s $25,000 hospital bill. Alvarado took a blood test and acknowledged paternity, but didn’t pursue custody, preferring to leave the child with his mother. His mother, unfortunately, later developed a drug habit, leaving the bulk of the child-care to Hopson. “I’ve been 100 percent the father, and, over the last year, maybe 80 percent of the mother,” Hopson tells Labi. Zapata adds, “Andres trusts Todd more than he trusts me.”

In June 2008, Zapata went to Costa Rica to kick her cocaine habit. She asked Alvarado to take their son for a few days while she was in rehab, though she admits she “lied to him” and said she was job-hunting instead. When Alvarado learned about her drug use, he decided to keep Andres, and won custody from a court in Costa Rica. He called Hopson to thank him for caring for his kid for nine years. Naturally, Hopson flipped out. “If you’re going to be the father, you don’t let someone else carry the freight,” he tells Labi.

Shortly thereafter, believing he had exhausted his legal remedies, Hopson gets on a plane to Costa Rica, accompanied by Gus Zamora, his kidnapper-for-hire. They snatch the kid at the bus stop, careen through the streets of Costa Rica in a high-speed chase and make it back to Florida, where Andres goes back to private school and Little League. Mission accomplished.

One can muster a certain amount of sympathy for a parent who has the very reasonable fear to believe that he will never see his son again. In the particular case Labi writes about (she cites many others in her full piece), one can certainly understand why both men would figure Andres would be better off with living with them than with their mother (Zapata collaborated with both, in a way; she first dropped off Andres with Alvarado, then became Hopson’s accomplice in the snatchback). But what kid wants to be snatched from a bus stop? How likely is it that all the parents who claim to love this child will be able to sit across from each other and engage in civilized discussion when family disputes are being mediated by Rambo? From a purely pragmatic standpoint, kidnapping your own kid may actually be an effective solution, if the problem is being forced to share that child with others who love him (only about 51 percent of left-behind parents get their kids back by filing an application under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction). And if someone else has kidnapped your kid, hiring a private goon to get him back might work pretty well, too. While a spokesperson for the U.S. state department told Labi that the department frowns upon such things, the woman handling Hopson’s Hague application expressed relief at Andres’ return and told Hopson she wasn’t sure he would have got his son back by legal means. But once parents start treating their children as the spoils of war, you know for damn sure there will be some pretty hefty casualties.