In her new book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, the feminist Nation columnist and poet Katha Pollitt urges pro-choicers to embrace abortion as a positive social good. The book makes a bold case in lucid and often acerbically funny prose. Pollitt deftly dissects the muddled thinking that characterizes our national abortion debate. I review the book in the latest issue of The American Prospect. 

 The Best of the Week’s News

• The National Labor Relations Board rules that Facebook “likes” and comments constitute protected activity.

• It’s more than an Ebola outbreak, it’s a chance for Dr. Philip Smith, father of the biocontainment unit at the University of Nebraska, to say, “I told you so.”

• Irony alert: A report to Congress on authorized disclosures of classified information to the media is classified.

• A Pakistani champion of girls’ education, and an Indian opponent of child labor share the Nobel Peace Prize. Kailash Satyarthi, the crusader against child labor, is a member of the board of the International Labor Rights Forum, a global workers’ rights advocacy group that partnered with the Hillman Foundation to sponsor a panel discussion on sweat shop labor.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]

The Philadelphia Education Reform Commission deployed what observers are calling “the nuclear option” on the city’s teachers’ union, cancelling their contract on Monday, unilaterally and without notice:

In a stunning move that could reshape the face of city schools, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission voted Monday to unilaterally cancel its teachers’ contract. The vote was unanimous.

The Philadelphia Federation of Teachers was given no advance word of the action — which happened at an early-morning SRC meeting called with minimal notice — and which figures to result in a legal challenge to the takeover law the SRC believes gives it the power to bypass negotiations and impose terms. [Philly.com]

According to Philly.com, the commission has no immediate plans to cut the pay of the 15,000 teachers and staff in the Philadelphia school system who belong to the union. The move is a bid to wrest control of the teacher’s benefit program from the union in order to force steep hikes in the worker’s share of health insurace. 

The Commission insists that it has the power to cancel the contract, but the teachers intend to fight the decision in court. 

[Photo credit: Jasper Nance, Creative Commons.]

The Best of the Week’s News

• Linda Tirado became an internet sensation with her essay, “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or Poverty Thoughts.” Read a review of her new book, Hand to Mouth.

• John Carlos Frey and the PBS Need to Know team win an Emmy for their Sidney Award-winning story, Dying To Get Back. Congratulations to them and their collaborators at the Investigative Fund of the Nation Institute! 

• The fall of the Oral Roberts televangelism dynasty.

• Jessica Valenti on rape, bullying, and suicide in an age of online harassment.

[Photo credit: Wander Mule, Creative Commons.]