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Week of
October 27, 2011 | | EXTREME In November, Mississippi will hold a widely watched vote on whether to amend the state's constitution to define embryos as persons. The effort, part of the so-called personhood movement, aims to undermine Roe v. Wade and ultimately outlaw abortion—but changing the definition of what a person is could undermine women's access to in-vitro fertilization practices as well. As a result, doctors are beginning to field panicked calls from women hoping to conceive, reports Michelle Goldberg in an eye-opening column. And similar initiatives may soon be underway in nine other states. While the chances that lawmakers will successfully outlaw abortion are slim, it remains to be seen how women's access to reproductive health care will be affected. STEP FORWARD Virginia Rometty, a senior vice president at IBM, has scored the company's top job, making her the first woman ever to lead the legendary U.S. computer-technology company. Rometty, 54, will take over for Sam Palmisano, who will remain chairman of the board of directors after heading the company for more than a decade. IBM is the largest U.S. corporation by market value to be headed by a woman. (IBM is also known for its eco-friendliness, coming in at No. 1 on Newsweek's 2011 green rankings.) Rometty joins a select group of women at the helm of U.S. tech companies, including Meg Whitman, the former head of eBay who was recently named CEO at IBM's biggest rival, Hewlett-Packard. To support efforts to increase diversity in IT and computing, visit the National Center for Women & Information Technology. SMACKDOWN In a move that set the blogosphere buzzing, a group of 36 members of clergy bought a full page in The New York Times on Tuesday, using the space to publish a letter directed at Village Voice Media, demanding that the company shut down the "Adult" section of its classified listings, Backpage.com. Calling the page "a platform for the trafficking of minors," the clergy cited 14 states in which adults have been arrested for selling minors for sex via the page. The public pressure is similar to that which successfully ended Craiglist's "Adult Services" section a year ago, but this time, the battle will be harder: Backpage delivers some $2 million a month to the media conglomerate. For an embattled company attempting to stay afloat in a difficult environment for print, that is not an insignificant number. BLAZE Hundreds of Yemeni women set their full-body veils on fire in the streets of the capital on Wednesday, in defiance of a brutal government crackdown on the country's popular uprising. The night before, 25 civilians were killed in bloody clashes. The role of Yemen's women in the uprising was highlighted this month by Tawakkul Karman, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts at finding resolution. VICTORY LAP On Thanksgiving Day, women's running pioneer Dr. Julia Chase-Brand, 69, will run in the same 4.75-mile race in Manchester, Conn., that she ran in 1961 as a student at Smith College, when women were banned from participating. At the time, the Amateur Athletic Union forbade American women from running in road races, while the Olympics wouldn't let them compete in races longer than a half-mile, for fear that their reproductive health would be negatively impacted. When Chase-Brand ran in the race 50 years ago, it was widely publicized as an act of civil disobedience. This time, she's running in celebration of the milestone—and she won't be in the minority. | | 
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