Author: Jessica Roberts Martin

On Nov. 8, Mississippi voters will cast their ballots on Initiative 26, which would make every “fertilized egg” a “person” as a matter of law. “Many have rightly condemned this so-called ‘personhood’ initiative as an attack not only on abortion rights, but also on the ability to practice widely used methods of birth control, to attempt in vitro fertilization, and to grieve a miscarriage in private, without a criminal investigation by the state,” says Susan Appleton, JD, family law expert and the Lemma Barkeloo and Phoebe Couzins Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis. “But these criticisms fail to identify another flaw in the reasoning of the initiative’s proponents,” she says. “The proponents assume that attaching the label of ‘person’ to fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses necessarily establishes a legal basis for criminalizing abortion, or even for requiring its criminalization.”

Susan Stepleton, PhD, former president and CEO of Parents as Teachers, recently joined the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis as director of its Policy Forum. A new initiative of the Brown School, the forum will host a series of programs and collaborations designed to enhance the quality of policy discussion and decision making in St. Louis, across the country, and around the world.

Experts on communication will gather at Washington University in St. Louis at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 18, as part of the Woman’s Club of Washington University’s “Meet the Leaders” panel discussion series. The panel discussion, titled “Communication in the 21st Century: Bridging Cultures, Generations, and Genders,” will examine why some communication practices are acceptable to us and why the same practice might be taboo to others. Admission is free and an RSVP is required by Wednesday, Nov. 16. A light lunch will be included with the program. Please note any dietary restrictions in your RSVP.

The Brown School’s Transdisciplinary Problem Solving course on global hunger and undernutrition hosted a Hunger Banquet Oct. 18 in Brown Hall Lounge to recognize World Food Day. Hunger Banquet guests were given tickets as they entered the event representing food allowances from different income levels around the world. Mirroring the current crisis, food prices rose throughout the event, limiting the amount of food people could purchase. Video features comments by Brown School students Tess Thompson and Susan Vorkoper. 

Front-of-package nutrition labels already exist on many foods in the U.S., but an Institute of Medicine (IOM) panel recently recommended standardizing and simplifying this information through a rating system modeled after the Energy Star program. “You shouldn’t have to be a nutrition scientist to make healthy food choices for your family,” says Matthew Kreuter, PhD, member of the IOM panel and director of the Health Communications Research Laboratory at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other legislators are calling for baseball players to stop using chewing tobacco on the field and in front of their fans. “This is an important public health issue,” says Douglas Luke, PhD, director of the Center for Tobacco Policy Research at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “Not only is smokeless tobacco use hazardous, but young people who use smokeless tobacco are more likely to also start smoking cigarettes.” Luke notes that smokeless tobacco use is a growing problem, particularly for the youngest baseball fans.

Social Security recipients will receive a cost of living adjustment (COLA) of 3.6 percent beginning in 2012, the first increase since 2009. “COLA is welcome but will not fully maintain beneficiary purchasing power,” says Merton C. Bernstein, LLB, a nationally recognized expert on Social Security and the Walter D. Coles Professor Emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “The formula setting that rate does not meet fully the needs of Social Security recipients, especially when considering medical costs.”

The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., and Washington University in St. Louis announce recipients of grants from the joint Academic Venture Fund. The purpose of the AVF is to support collaboration between scholars at WUSTL and the Brookings Institution, particularly long-term projects that impact research, education and policy.

Litigation and legislative reforms have achieved formal rights to equal treatment for women in employment. But women continue to perform disproportionate amounts of caregiving in the home, to suffer economic penalties for childbearing and to face discrimination on account of motherhood in the workplace. “The disconnect between formal equality and the deepening work-family conflict is no accident,” says Deborah Dinner, JD, legal historian and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Law students have a new opportunity to learn firsthand about the practice of business associations and regulation in the nation’s largest city through Washington University in St. Louis School of Law’s New York City Regulatory & Business Externship. Offered for the first time this fall, the semester-long clinical experience includes a variety of legal externship opportunities, including those with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, New York City Department of Finance, Standard & Poor’s/McGraw Hill, Securities and Exchange Commission, New York Attorney General’s Office, Anheuser-Busch’s New York headquarters and the New York City Law Department.