For a substantial part of women’s lives, regulating fertility is a primary project. This Article depicts the life course of women’s procreative choice through a series of complex visual representations of data derived from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 and the National Survey of Family Growth 2002. These graphic representations illustrate that preventing procreation, through a variety of choices, including contraception, sterilization, abortion, abstinence, and partner choice, occupies most of a woman’s fertile years, as compared with childbirth.

On December 9, 2009, the Knesset voted to advance legislation requiring that the handover of any land under the administrative and judicial authority of the State of Israel pass a national referendum. The legislation—termed the Golan Heights and Jerusalem Referendum Bill—passed its first reading by a margin of sixty-eight to twenty-two (with one abstention). It now returns to committee for revisions and then must pass second and third readings, in a process that could take months.

If the bill becomes law, it is expected to impede Israel from ceding the Golan Heights to Syria in a peace treaty. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and, in 1981, effectively annexed it over objections from the international community. Since then, the Golan Heights has been heavily developed by Israel and now many Israelis regard it as indispensable. For at least a decade, Israeli polls have shown strong popular resistance to a withdrawal from the Golan Heights, with nearly two-thirds of Israeli Jews in opposition.

An irony of American free speech law is that it provides more protection for ranting on a street corner than speaking out at a public meeting. This is partly a quirk of the United States Supreme Court’s complicated First Amendment jurisprudence and partly a recognition that such meetings are venues for administrative business and not just citizen engagement. And yet all across the country, city councils, school boards, planning commissions, and other public bodies provide time for members of the public to speak at their meetings. Sometimes the comments are relevant and persuasive, sometimes no one from the public shows up, and sometimes officials are besieged by hostile gadflies who seize the platform to create a spectacle. Officials concerned about such abuse are allowed to quiet speakers if their comments would derail a meeting. However, such power is limited to quelling speech that is disruptive, not merely disfavored.

Not surprisingly, judges and local officials have struggled to draw this fine distinction, as exemplified by the recent Ninth Circuit opinion, Norse v. City of Santa Cruz. In Norse, a divided panel held that city officials did not violate a citizen’s First Amendment rights by ejecting him from two municipal meetings—one in which he paraded around the city council chambers in protest and another in which he silently gave a Nazi-style salute. The majority found both ejections acceptable, although the panel was split on the silent salute. A dissenting judge deemed that ejection to be impermissible viewpoint discrimination. The Ninth Circuit announced on March 12 that it would rehear the case en banc, setting the stage for an important reexamination of the law governing citizen speech at public meetings.