New Light on Battered-Woman Syndrome, and Mental Illness

#Elizabeth Flock, "A Violent Defense," The New Yorker, January 20, 2020.
There is no statewide public defender in Alabama, so courts often appoint private attorneys to provide defense for the indigent. Mary Anne Franks, a professor at the University of Miami School of Law, wrote a study of gender disparity in self-defense law, entitled "Real Men Advance, Real Women Retreat," arguing that women have long been deemed pathological for acting in self-defense. Battered-woman syndrome, a theory developed by a psychologist in the nineteen-seventies, has often been deployed as a defense in cases in which a woman has killed her abuser. Unlike Stand Your Ground laws, which offer justification for a defendant's action, battered-woman syndrome proposes that a woman has "acted wrongly but is so defective in some significant sense that she cannot be held accountable," Franks writes.

#Mandy Oaklander, "When every day is a mental health day," TIME, February 3, 2020.
"Mental illness is rising in every country in the word. Depression is so common and debilitating that it's one of the leading causes of disability in the world, and coupled with anxiety, costs the global economy about $1 trillion a year in lost productivity, according to the World Health Organization. Among millennials, who are ages 24 to 39 in 2020, depression is the fastest-growing health condition, the Blue Cross, Blue Shield recently found." A 2019 poll by the American Psychiatric Association found 62% of people ages 29 to 37 feel comfortable discussing their mental health at work, compared with about half as many people ages 54 to 72."

#Greg Adams, "Shedding new light," TIME, February 3, 2020.
Greg Adams agrees with Mandy Oaklander that depression is a leading cause of illness among young people, and that anxiety is on the rise. His contribution to this illness issue is that suicide ranks third as a cause of death for 15-to-19-year-olds, and is increasingly becoming a health-equity issue: African American girls in grades nine to twelve were 70% more likely to attempt suicide in 2017, compared to non-Hispanic white girls of the same age.

#"Planned Parenthood rejects federal funding over 'gay rules'," The Week, August 30, 2019.
Acting Planned Parenthood president Alexia McGill Johnson said: "Our patients deserve to  make  their own health care decisions." She added that she will "not be forced to have Donald Trump or Mike Pence make their decisions for them."

"But in Utah,where Planned Parenthood is the only Title X provider, and Minnesota,where Planned Parenthood serves 90 percent of Title X recipients, cutbacks could mean that low-income women will face long waits for appointments." "Texas provides a disturbing preview. After the state clamped down on family planning funds in 2011, long-acting contraceptive use fell by 35 percent, and Medicaid-covered births jumped 27 percent."

ADDENDUMS:
*73% of private sector workers have paid sick leave, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

*According to Dan Perry, an economist at the World Bank, a carbon tax of thirty-five dollars per ton would raise the price of gasoline by about 10%, and the cost of electricity by roughly five percent.

*Chris Gelandi, "Deportation as a death sentence," The Week, August 30, 2019.
"ICE considers about 120,000 immigrants who came here as refugees 'deportable' if they  have any crime on their record, including marijuana and drunk driving."

*Polly Toynbee, "Prepare for agricultural Armageddon," The Week, August 30, 2019.
Sean Richard, the former economist of the U.K. National Farmers' Union, says that: "Without a trade deal, the high proportion of U.K. farm produce exported by the bloc's tariffs on imports from nonmembers [will increase by]: 27 percent on chicken, 46 percent on lamb, and 65 percent on beef."