In the US, rats could soon have better birth control access than women | Arwa Mahdawi

The fight for rat-productive rights

Eric Adams, we recently learned, seems to have spent the bulk of his time as mayor of New York trying to wangle criminally cheap business class tickets from Turkish Airlines. But while Adams may have made history by becoming the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges, the fact that he has a slightly wonky moral compass is old news. Even before being appointed mayor, there were questions about Adam’s truthfulness, including a long-running debate about whether the swagger-obsessed candidate lived in Brooklyn, as he insisted he did, or New Jersey.

Still, let’s give the mayor his due, shall we? It would be unfair to say he’s spent the entirety of his time in high office trying to live the high life. Adams, who appointed New York City’s first “rat tsar” last year, has also spent a lot of time thinking about the city’s rodent problem. “I don’t think there’s been a mayor in history that says how much he hates rats,” he grandly proclaimed during New York City’s inaugural Rat Summit in September. “I dislike rats.” Adams added that he was confident New York could “look forward to a new paradigm in urban rat management”.

Wheelie bins are part of that exciting new paradigm in urban rat management. There was much mirth on social media over the summer when it transpired that New York City had paid McKinsey over a million dollars to figure out whether it might be a good idea to put loose rubbish in a bin. (Or, in management consultant speech, “containerize” it.) Now the brainiacs in Adams’s orbit have come up with an exciting new paradigm shift: the city council recently greenlit pilot schemes to deploy ContraPest, a type of rodent birth control.

The irony that New York is investing in rodent contraceptives at a time when women’s access to reproductive services across the US is under fire hasn’t gone unnoticed. Social media has been filled with wry observations along the lines of “it’s easier to get reproductive rights as a rodent in New York than it is for a woman to get reproductive rights in most of the country”.

Because pedants never take a day off I will note that quip isn’t strictly true. At least for the moment it isn’t. But if Donald Trump wins the election and the extremists backing him have their way then it might very well be true that rats will soon have better access to birth control in the US than women. Over the past few years, rightwingers have started to speak more openly about the possibility of banning birth control. In 2022, for example, an Idaho Republican leader suggested he’d consider banning certain forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill. Around the same time the governor of Mississippi refused to rule out future contraception bans during an interview on NBC.

This isn’t just all talk. Over the years the right has managed to undermine access to birth control in a number of alarming ways. In 2022, for example, an appeals court ruled that federally funded family planning centers in Texas must receive parental consent before prescribing birth control to teenagers. (Previously federal courts had found that the national title X program guaranteed minors the right to access birth control without parental involvement.) Then, this summer Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have recognized a legal right to contraception.

Perhaps most importantly, anti-abortion activists have also been doggedly trying to argue that certain birth control methods, such as Plan B and certain intrauterine devices (IUDs), are abortifacients because they may prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs. While it’s unlikely that we’ll see any sort of direct push to outlaw access to contraceptives, expect to see anti-abortion laws sneakily widen to restrict access to birth control. As advocates have noted, Roe was not toppled in a day–and access to contraceptives won’t be overturned imminently. But anti-abortion extremists have made clear what their endgame is. And when these people tell you who they are, you’d better believe them.

‘I’ve never worn trousers up a mountain, and I never will’

I find cycling in a dress awkward. Meanwhile, Cecilia Llusco, one of Bolivia’s first female Indigenous mountain climbers, scales icy peaks in a pollera: a traditional voluminous floral skirt. Don’t miss this wonderful Guardian feature on the Cholita climbers of Bolivia–it has some incredible photographs.

Melania Trump wants you to know she is passionately pro-choice

In her new memoir the former first lady writes, “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body.” Good question Melania! Ever tried asking your husband that? Speaking of which, Melania’s decision to speak out about abortion rights a month before the election feels part of a calculated strategy by the Trump campaign to soften its rhetoric on abortion.

Prominent Palestinian journalist Wafa Aludaini killed in an Israeli airstrike

Wafa was killed alongside her husband, her five-year-old daughter and her seven-month-old son. As Reporters Without Borders recently noted: “At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza, there will soon be no-one left to keep you informed.”

India’s government thinks criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh”

One in 25 women in India have faced sexual violence from their husbands, the BBC reports. And, of course, nothing happens to most of these men because marital rape is not a criminal offence in India. For years now, campaigners have been petitioning India’s supreme court to try and change this but have faced enormous resistance from the government, religious groups, and men’s rights activists. An affidavait submitted by India’s Interior Ministry on Thursday argued criminalizing marital rape “may seriously impact the conjugal relationship and may lead to serious disturbances in the institution of marriage.” It also said that while a man “does not have any fundamental right to violate the consent of his wife” including marital rape under anti-rape laws would be “excessively harsh” and “disproportionate”.

Mexico’s first woman president announces reforms to battle gender discrimination

On her second full day in office, Claudia Sheinbaum said her government had proposed reforms to broaden women’s rights, including a constitutional guarantee of equal pay for equal work.

EU court rules gender and nationality enough to grant Afghan women asylum

An important ruling by the European court of justice recognizes Afghan women as a persecuted group.

The week in podtriarchy

In 2012 Melania Trump famously posted a photo of a smiling beluga whale with the caption “what is she thinking?” Despite the fact that entire podcast episodes have been devoted to this question, we still don’t know. Scientists have recently discovered, however, that bottlenose dolphins ‘smile’ at each other to communicate during social play. The open-mouth expression is meant to signal fun and avoid conflict. So, in other words, dolphins have better social skills than many politicians.