According to new US Health Department guidelines, women should no longer bother to get mammograms until they're 50 (previous guidelines said we should start at 40). They also said, and this blows my mind—women should stop doing breast self-exams because the "harm outweighs the benefits."

What "harm" is the health department trying to protect us from?

Anxiety.

That's right, ladies: Don't trouble your pretty little heads getting tested for a disease that might kill you. Because as everyone knows, anxiety is way worse than, say, catching a life-threatening illness in time to treat it.

Yes, finding a lump in my breast, or getting a positive on a mammogram, would make me anxious. The thing about anxiety, though, is that it alerts you that something may be wrong . Something like, say, having breast cancer, which affects 1 in 69 women between 40 and 49 (odds that are far worse for black women, whose risk of death from cancer between 35 and 44 is twice that of white women.)  Personally, I'd rather deal with a little anxiety than assume I'll beat those odds.

However—as much as I'd like to be outraged by the patronizing, infantilizing attitude of the American medical establishment—I don't actually believe the health department gives a shit about whether women are feeling "anxious." Mammograms, biopsies, followup appointments—all those things are expensive, and insurance companies don't like paying for things that are expensive. In their view, it's better to have a few thousand more women die of detectable breast cancer every year than spend a few million bucks on tests and treatment that turn out to be unnecessary.

In somewhat better news for women, the Senate just unveiled a health care bill that ditches the reviled Stupak amendment, which would eliminate abortion coverage over time for all women , not just those participating in the government-run "public option" plan. That's better than nothing, but it doesn't mean health care reform is great for women. That's because the Senate version reverts back to the existing Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman's life is in danger. And the Senate version still has to be reconciled with the far more draconian bill passed by the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi built her majority by throwing women's rights under the bus.

One footnote on the health care bill: Part of the funding for the Senate version would come from a 5 percent tax on cosmetic surgery. And while it's true that most plastic surgery is performed on upper-middle-class and upper-class people, it's also true that 91 percent of all cosmetic surgeries are performed on women—in part because women are under tremendous societal pressure to remain thin, large-breasted, attractive, and young at every age. Taxing plastic surgery, in other words, would disproportionately impact women, who are under disproportionate pressure to get plastic surgery.

It's like a sin tax that only impacts one gender.