Pro-Life’s 28 Days Later Billboard

Billboard from <a href="http://prolifeacrossamerica.org/">PLAA</a>; fetus from <a href="http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/medical/IM04047">Mayo Clinic</a>

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This rather befuddling pro-life billboard (left-hand side of picture) was spotted in Brooklyn by a Femisting blogger. The billboard, sponsored by Pro-Life Across America, says that a fetus’s arms are formed by 28 days after conception. If you consider limb buds the same as arms (kind of like seeing an acorn as an oak tree) this is true. But what the billboard doesn’t tell you is that even by 35 days, those arms end in an amphibian-looking flippers (see picture at right-hand side). According to the Mayo Clinic, at 35 days after conception, the entire fetus could fit on a pencil eraser and doesn’t have eyes, facial features, gender, bones, or lower limbs. It also still has a tail.

Honestly, the fetus 35 days after conception looks a bit like something out of a horror film more than an adorable infant. Aside from biological niceties, what is “born to ride”? PLAA says that the ad is meant to convey that little boy (all of them!) just LOVE to play with tricycles, bikes, and other wheeled vehicles. I’m going to avoid discussing the sexism of this and just say that with the bandanna and vest, it kind of looks like they want the baby to take a spin on a motorcycle. PLAA has another, more inaccurate billboard that says babies have facial features like eyes, ears, and tongue at 28 days after conception. As you can see by the illustration of a fetus at 35 days, that’s not exactly true. These billboards are disorienting at best, and deliberately deceptive at worst. But they might want to re-think the “personhood begins at conception” idea. If fetuses really do get personal rights, the world might look like this video.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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