In the US, rats could soon have better birth-control access than women
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/05/new-yorks-rats-get-better-access-to-contraception-than-some-women
New York is pushing birth control to curb its rodent problem at a time when womens reproductive rights in other US states are under attack. Oh, the irony
Eric Adams, we recently learned, seems to have spent the bulk of his time as mayor of New York trying to wangle criminally cheap business class tickets from Turkish Airlines. But while Adams may have made history by becoming the first sitting mayor of New York to be indicted on federal corruption charges, the fact that he has a slightly wonky moral compass is old news. Even before being appointed mayor, there were questions about Adams truthfulness, including a long-running debate about whether the swagger-obsessed candidate lived in Brooklyn, as he insisted he did, or New Jersey.
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Still, lets give the mayor his due, shall we? It would be unfair to say hes spent the entirety of his time in high office trying to live the high life. Adams, who appointed New York Citys first rat tsar last year, has also spent a lot of time thinking about the citys rodent problem. I dont think theres been a mayor in history that says how much he hates rats, he grandly proclaimed during New York Citys inaugural Rat Summit in September. I dislike rats. Adams added that he was confident New York could look forward to a new paradigm in urban rat management.
Wheelie bins are part of that exciting new paradigm in urban rat management. There was much mirth on social media over the summer when it transpired that New York City had paid McKinsey over a million dollars to figure out whether it might be a good idea to put loose rubbish in a bin. (Or, in management consultant speech, containerize it.) Now the brainiacs in Adamss orbit have come up with an exciting new paradigm shift: the city council recently greenlit pilot schemes to deploy ContraPest, a type of rodent birth control.
The irony that New York is investing in rodent contraceptives at a time when womens access to reproductive services across the US is under fire hasnt gone unnoticed. Social media has been filled with wry observations along the lines of its easier to get reproductive rights as a rodent in New York than it is for a woman to get reproductive rights in most of the country.