Briefly

New Jersey: Contraceptive sponge on sale after 8 years

The Today Sponge contraceptive is on the market in Canada, eight years after it disappeared from U.S. drugstore shelves in an alarming turn famously depicted on a “Seinfeld” episode.

Allendale Pharmaceuticals, a start-up business in Allendale, bought rights to the Today Sponge from the drug company that discontinued it. Allendale began selling it this month through two Canadian Web sites.

More sponges, priced at the U.S. equivalent of about $2.90 each, will hit the shelves at 4,000 pharmacies, Wal-Marts and other stores across Canada, according to Allendale. The manufacturer is hoping for Food and Drug Administration approval within a year to sell them in U.S. stores.

North Carolina: Mexican teen who died after transplant buried

Jesica Santillan, the Mexican teenager who died last month after a bungled heart-lung transplant, was laid to rest Tuesday in a rural North Carolina cemetery as the ethical debate over her treatment continued to swirl.

The 17-year-old girl’s small white coffin was slipped into a mausoleum wall and covered with a slab of pink granite. Some 100 mourners gathered at a small graveyard east of Louisburg.

Plans to bury Jesica in Mexico were abandoned because there was no guarantee her illegal immigrant parents would be allowed to return to the United States afterward.

Critics have said American citizens should have priority for transplants. But transplant groups say it is only fair to give some organs to foreigners because they also donate organs to U.S. patients.

Washington, D.C.: Victoria’s Secret roses trademark case

The Supreme Court ruled against lingerie seller Victoria’s Secret on Tuesday, finding no proof that a small sex toy and adult video shop that wanted to call itself Victor’s Secret harmed the big company’s trademark.

Victoria’s Secret unquestionably has an interest in protecting its name, but federal trademark law requires more evidence that a competitor actually caused harm by using a sound-alike or knockoff name, a unanimous court ruled.

The ruling follows a 5-year-old fight over a Kentucky shop that advertised “everything for the romantic encounter.”

Victoria’s Secret asked the family-run store to change its name but sued when the store altered its sign only to read “Victor’s Little Secret.”

“Use of the name ‘Victor’s Little Secret’ neither confused any consumers or potential consumers, nor was likely to do so,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court.

Massachusetts: Supreme Court hears gay marriage case

The state’s highest court debated a case Tuesday that could make Massachusetts the first state to legalize gay marriages.

The Supreme Judicial Court is considering an appeal of a ruling that said the Legislature, not the courts, should decide whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.

Justices questioned attorneys about whether the state’s prohibition of gay marriage was comparable to past bans on interracial unions and how the laws could be changed without sanctioning other unions, such as polygamy.

“Why should we do something that virtually no other state has done?” Justice Judith Cowin asked attorney Mary Bonauto of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders.

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Bonauto responded.

Courts in Hawaii and Alaska approved gay marriage, but their legislatures later passed constitutional amendments limiting marriage to couples of the opposite sex. The Vermont legislature approved civil unions in 2000, giving domestic partnerships many of the benefits of marriage.