Carcano decided to tell her story publicly for the first time after reading here about the Peace Corps Equity Act, introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg last week, which would modify the current policy by extending Peace Corps health coverage to abortions in case of rape. Carcano, who majored in human biology at the University of Texas and is now working as a research assistant on HIV/AIDS, says she wasn't particularly educated about the politics of abortion. But then, in the months after her ordeal, the headlines were full of politicians talking about abortion, "legitimate rape" and doubting rape victims could even become pregnant. "I came back to my country and I felt like other Americans were against me or against my choices," she says.

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But there's a catch. Less than a month ago, the Obama administration was court-ordered to lift the age requirement entirely, by a federal judge calling them out for politicizing the process. There's no scientific or public health basis for any age limit -- the idea is that the morning-after pill be sold just as condoms are -- and requiring documentary proof of age presents a hurdle particularly for younger women and the undocumented. Also for no clear reason, Plan B will only be sold in places that have a pharmacy, as opposed to any convenience store, despite the fact that pharmacy employees will no longer be involved except with girls under 15.

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When Gillibrand -- a hot topic in political circles this week, as a potential liberal presidential candidate and a champion for addressing sexual assault in the military -- was appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat in 2009, Nate Silver wrote, "This is not a terrific outcome for progressive Democrats," because "Gillibrand, statistically speaking, has been one of the more conservative Democrats in the House. Moreover, she is a somewhat proud conservative, being a member of the Blue Dog caucus. In a state like New York, which is capable of electing and re-electing a very liberal senator, that’s a somewhat underachieving result for the Democrats."

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"The safety and security of Peace Corps Volunteers is our highest priority. Over the past few years, we’ve put in place a number of new, significant practices and safeguards to reduce the risks for Volunteers and ensure victims of crime receive compassionate and effective support.

The Peace Corps supports Senator Lautenberg’s bill and the President’s Fiscal Year 2014 budget, which extends the same rights and protections to female Peace Corps Volunteers as many of their federal colleagues by applying exceptions on abortion restrictions as outlined in the Hyde Amendment."

As Mary Kate Shannon waited to find out if she was pregnant after being raped for the second time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru, the healthcare coordinator told her her options were limited. "If I were pregnant, the Peace Corps could not pay for the abortion due to some kind of federal law," Shannon recalled in an interview with Salon. They would, however, pay for parenting classes.

"I felt betrayed," Shannon said. "I felt like it was a decision that was going to be made for me. I wasn't in a place financially where I felt like I could pay for it."

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We don't know why Tamerlan and his brother blew up the Boston Marathon -- we may never really know -- but we do know that in doing so, they were performing a kind of masculinity that took control of the city through public destruction.

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This time, despite claiming he wouldn't talk to me, he stayed on the phone for 20 minutes to discuss, alternately angrily and resignedly, the massive backlash among his liberal customer base to his decision to sue the Obama administration over contraceptive coverage.

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No one who supports the provision of safe abortion care to women excuses any of what Gosnell is accused of, from willfully gruesome conditions to sadistic treatment to infanticide. He is not typical, and there was, and has been, swift renunciation of his facility. But the case provides the ideal opportunity for the right-to-life movement to conflate his abusive clinic with all abortion as it's widely practiced in the U.S., and to focus on graphic later abortions, conveniently redirecting attention from their desire to ban all abortions for everyone. That desire, by the way, is being enacted into law explicitly in states like Arkansas and North Dakota, and implicitly with laws designed to close abortion clinics in states like Mississippi and Virginia.

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It was Michael Potter, the Eden Foods founder and CEO. He was calling to respond to my Salon report from last week, which revealed that his organic food company -- which markets itself to a crunchy, liberal crowd -- was quietly suing the Obama administration over its requirement that his company's employee health plan cover birth control. Mostly, he said in the most amiable, avowedly Midwestern way imaginable -- at one point he called himself "a pretty simple guy, a Midwestern homemade-soup guy" -- he was calling to apologize to me.

It wasn't that he was upset about my reporting or what his company was doing. He was just sorry my request for comment had gone unanswered due to an oversight. I accepted the apology, and asked why he said he didn't care about birth control, since he filed a suit about it and all.

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That is, Eden Foods -- an organic food company with no shortage of liberal customers -- has quietly pursued a decidedly right-wing agenda, suing the Obama administration for exemption from the mandate to cover contraception for its employees under the Affordable Care Act. In court filings, Eden Foods, represented by the conservative Thomas More Law Center, alleges that its rights have been violated under the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act.

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For decades, Thatcher's gender provided some public relations cover for her most noxious politics. That was true even today in the White House's statement on her death, which included the following treacly sentence: "As a grocer’s daughter who rose to become Britain’s first female prime minister, she stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered."

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The administration, said 2nd Circuit District Judge Edward Korman, acted in "bad faith" -- a phrase that arises again and again in the stinging decision. And Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius acted in a fashion that "was politically motivated, scientifically unjustified, and contrary to agency precedent."

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It is not "difficult to call a woman good-looking in public," not in a world where women's looks are considered public property, to be commented on, uninvited, whether it's on the street, in a job interview, or in the press. Many people find it quite easy to do, many of them men, and many people who should know better, like Barack Obama.

This is hardly the first time Obama has been smarmily sexist under the guise of paying a compliment. In the same New York magazine story on Christine Quinn in which Mayor Michael Bloomberg was notoriously quoted saying, "Look at the ass on her," Obama got a pass for a more politely phrased brand of creepiness. According to the piece, Obama said to a Republican legislator, 32-year-old Nicole Malliotakis, that she didn't look a day over 23. Quinn promptly joked that Malliotakis should become a Democrat, and the president chimed in, “Come on, honey! I said you’re pretty! I said you look 23!”

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The feminist bragging rights of Christine Quinn, the only female candidate in the New York race -- the front-runner, potentially the first female and the first lesbian mayor of the biggest city in America -- were being questioned. Using her power as speaker of the City Council, Quinn was blocking a sure-fire vote mandating paid sick days.

She faced a clear choice. While the bill was opposed by her key ally, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, lack of sick days disproportionately affects low-wage female workers, who also tend to have more care-giving responsibilities -- and the coalition including the Working Families Party and union leaders made sure everyone knew it. Just as Quinn needed the support of people like Gloria Steinem and other high-profile feminists for her campaign, they were holding firm in demanding a vote on paid sick leave as a women's issue. And it all came at a time when people who might vote on feminist bona fides were arguing over a central question raised by Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In": whether more female leaders would improve the lot of all women.

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"The real story this week is the haunting and disturbing story of this doctor in Philadelphia -- [Kermit] Gosnell, who is being tried this week," she said, adding, "This was a man who had an abortion mill, that was in fact a death mill for babies essentially born. Being tried now, we'll see how it goes. But this is a story that is haunting, about the implications of decisions made by courts." (In fact, Gosnell is accused of crimes that have never been sanctioned by any court, and appears to have been exploiting gaps in access for low-income women.) The point was this: Noonan, in keeping with the bigger antiabortion groups, doesn't want to talk about banning abortion in the first trimester, when it is overwhelmingly supported by Americans. They would rather change the subject to grislier, rarer, later procedures. Too bad for them that a growing number of state legislators aren't getting in line.

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It was a duh moment, but a necessary one. Yes, DOMA's about discrimination. That disapproval of gay people, not tradition or government uniformity, is at the root of the act is blatantly obvious both to anyone who observed it at the time and to everyone who has changed their Facebook profile photo this week. But it needed to be set out on a national stage, a few feet away from rainbow-festooned children asking what the big deal was. This week, both sides put forward their best cases and it quickly became clear the opposition to equality is based not on law or reason, but bigotry.

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Defenders of California's ballot referendum banning gay marriage said today in court, and in their brief, that if marriage becomes a "genderless institution," children will suffer, because gay people can't procreate without help -- or rather, because marriage evidently exists to sanctify the accidental baby-making of men and women, despite the fact that so many women and men making babies today are rejecting marriage. Yes, this is their real argument.

Making it into a "what about the children" question sounds better than hating gay people for being gay, and it also sounds better than saying that men are intended for one thing and women for another. And yet that's exactly the implication made clear before the Supreme Court today. (The child-welfare argument may not work, either, no matter how much Antonin Scalia fulminated about the "sociological evidence" being too inconclusive about the impact of being raised by gay parents -- there was swing voter Anthony Kennedy wondering aloud whether the "voices of the children" of gay people should be heard.)

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