Who Needs Feminism?

Check it out.

Let us send all our very best wishes to the new APA director!

email from Michael Bratman:

I am pleased and excited to announce that Amy Ferrer will become the new Executive Director of the APA, effective August 1, 2012. The choice of Ms. Ferrer was the result of an extensive and intensive search procedure, one that involved interviews both at the 2012 Central APA meetings and later at the APA’s national office at the University of Delaware. Ms. Ferrer comes to the APA with a background in non-profit administration. She has a master’s degree in public policy and administration from the University of Massachusetts, and she has worked in non-profit administration for more than 8 years. Most recently Ms. Ferrer served as Associate Director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in Northampton, Massachusetts, where her work included communications and publications, media relations, office management, fundraising and grant management, program development, and project management. She also has extensive experience in the use of online resources to promote effective communication and outreach. She impressed the search committee as a person with the kind of intelligence, initiative, reliability, managerial skills, energy and passion, leadership skills, and interpersonal and organizational savvy to lead us in our efforts over these next years to build a preeminent learned society, one that serves all of our members and functions with distinction in this new century. Please join with me in welcoming Ms. Ferrer to the APA and in wishing her the very best as she works closely with the APA Board, the APA committees and task forces, the APA staff, and, most generally, the members of the APA.

I also hope she reads the following blogs:
what is it like to be a woman in philosophy?
what we’re doing about what it’s like

Arizona: Outlawing IVF?

Help me out, because I do not believe I am fully understanding this: If Gov. Brewer signs the new legislation, then IVF clinics which create and destroy zygotes are all person-killing, are they not?   I seem to remember multiple presentations when last I took coursework in bioethics — which was too long ago for my memory to be great — by researchers explaining that in vitro fertilization could, and sometimes did, involve the creation of multiple zygotes.  When one implants successfully in a client, the others may be kept for a while, then destroyed, unless the client directs them otherwise.

But perhaps my memory is in error, because I would think this would come up in the news coverage of the bill.  As far as I can tell, it hasn’t.  The discussions I’ve seen of the coverage tend to be about how doctors, and now legislators, count the length of a pregnancy.  But I haven’t seen any news outlet say, “Whoa, I guess some IVF clinics can no longer operate in Arizona.”  What am I missing, and am I wrong that IVF clinics have been known to do this? Advice, please, hive-mind.