Escort of appeal

You know, a photo of an emaciated, probably drug-addicted woman leaning into a car like the one above is about as realistic a portrait of prostitution as is Breakfast at Tiffany's, the Audrey Hepburn classic based on a much-baser novella by Truman Capote.

The truth is, the lot of most sex workers is somewhere in the middle.

And while some may work at the low end of the business while others live the high life, a brand new study co-authored by researchers at Montreal's Concordia U. (my alma mater) and the University of Windsor paints a more accurate picture of sex work.

By most estimates, only 10 to 20 per cent of sex workers solicit clients off the street. The majority — 80 to 90 per cent — work from home, brothels and private establishments such as escort agencies, strip clubs or massage parlors.

After 450 face-to-face interviews with sex workers and 40 more with law enforcement and public health types, the researchers come to the conclusion that sex work has to be decriminalized -- and destigmatized.

“We must not only change our laws, we must also revamp our attitudes and implement policies that protect the social, physical and psychological rights of sex workers,” says first author Frances Shaver, chair and professor in Concordia’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. “Regardless of where and how they conduct their business, sex workers are left on their own to ensure their health and safety on the job.”

<SNIP>

The vast majority of sex workers are consenting adults who enter the field in order to pay their bills. “Most get into the business because they know someone who knows someone,” says Shaver. “It’s rare that boyfriends force girlfriends into sex work.”

The research explodes some of the most commonly-health myths about sex work, all of which appear to have arisen from judgemental tut-tutting and/or the conviction that sex workers "are in need of saving" and/or couldn't possibly have a will of their own.

The negative perceptions and behaviors behind these failures reflect
moral discourses that hamper good policy development ... and—as our informants reported—justify discrimination and marginalization of sex workers.

Which only puts them at greater risk.

Example:

As a public health worker noted regarding an attempt to get funding for
health-based outreach into strip clubs, ‘‘I was there when the United Way
said to us, you meet the criteria . . . but you don’t really think that the
United Way is going to want to be known for funding dancers’’

And:

In order to receive the highest attainable health services, health-care providers need to know all facets of a patient’s life, including their work life. However, a number of the
(sex workers) we interviewed reported that they prefer to keep their work ‘‘a secret’’ from health providers to avoid ‘‘being judged.’’ A combination of personal experiences and stories from colleagues and friends lead them to expect that most health providers are unprepared to accept the work they do. In order to avoid ‘‘discriminatory attitudes’’ they remain silent about their job.

Now, over the past couple of years, I have come to know some women in the trade and I can assure you that, unless they're flat out liars, and I doubt they are, they see themselves as independent business women or contractors for agencies. While I might not go down the same path -- although I have had tempting offers -- I respect their choices.

But whether on the streets or in Queen's Quay condos, all are in danger -- which is why sex work must be decriminalized.

Indeed, in a lengthy, thoroughly-considered decision rendered in December of 2010, Justice Susan Himel of Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice did just that.

Of course, the pearl-clutchers in Ottawa appealed and now everything is in limbo.

Meanwhile feminists are divided over the decision, with some saying sex workers are victims who must be protected from themselves, the johns and the sex traffickers (for which there are separate laws anyway.) Others (like myself) feel that prostitution will never go away and the state has no say over what consenting adults do.

Remember, prostitution is perfectly legal in Canada. What's not legal is the ability to engage in it safely.

That makes it a human rights issue.

Time for a Climate of Change

All last week, the bad news about climate change tore through science circles like a twister through Kansas.

First, the International Energy Association (IEA) reported that global greenhouse gas emissions hit record highs in 2010, threatening to catapult Earth over the 2 degree Celsius temperature rise that, scientists predict, will lead to cataclysmic changes.

Already we’re up about one degree – attributed to anthropogenic causes.

That doesn’t sound like much but it’s enough to melt glaciers, cause widespread drought, wildfires, flooding, famine and extreme weather.

Which we're seeing already. Russia and Pakistan last year. Manitoba and Mississippi this year.

Says meteorologist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State, “There is good reason to believe that, with as much as an additional 1C or so warming, we might set in motion the irreversible collapse of the continental ice sheets. Their eventual melting would lead to more than 20 feet of global sea level rise--by any assessment, a catastrophic outcome.”

And none of that counts what is already in the system – i.e. those emissions that we haven’t really measured or felt the effects of yet.

“We”  being the operative word.

It’s widely acknowledged that some of the worst polluters – including Canada and the U.S. – will be able weather the coming storms for a lot longer than those wretched millions living in low-lying coastal areas, in rapidly-drying up parts of Africa, South America and Asia and every place where the cost of food takes up the largest chunk of the household budget.

The IEA’s numbers were reinforced Tuesday when the US government’s Earth Systems Research Laboratory announced that 2011 world green house gas emissions were climbing even higher than last year.

Canada, on a per capita basis, has much to answer for. Population and economic growth, oil and gas exports and our love of light trucks have been among the key drivers of our rising emissions. Then there's Alberta oil sands mining which, according to Environment Canada, spews more greenhouse gases than all the cars on our roads combined.

“Unfortunately, far too many are in denial and political action is at a standstill,’’ observes  Kevin Trenberth, Distinguished Senior Scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research. “Once the problem is so obvious to everyone, it is far far too late to do anything about it.”

Simply put, although there is some political disagreement, the general scientific consensus is that, in order to head off mass extinctions, huge migrations of climate refugees and, yes, even global warring, carbon dioxide in the air should be cut back to 350 parts per million (ppm) from the current 390 ppm (or so). 

That sense of urgency is why many in scientific circles are advocating non-violent civil disobedience (NVCD) to shake up governments, industry and media.

Even climate change superstar Al Gore has called for NVCD, which involves breaking the law to protest or to call attention to laws or government policies perceived to be unjust.

Three years ago, he said in a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative, "I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration.”

Enough with the greenwishywashing, more and more scientists are saying.

Well-known American environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben founded the grass-roots group 350.org, which attempts to get people all over the world agitating for laws, regulations and policy aimed at reducing GHG (greenhouse gas emissions) reductions.

“We need to do (civil disobedience) on a mass scale," McKibben, author of many books including Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, tells me. “We need to do it in a way that makes one thing clear to all onlookers: in this fight, we are the conservatives. The radicals are the people who want to alter the composition of the atmosphere.”

The idea is spreading.

“Non-violent civil disobedience is justified when there is a history of long-standing harm or violation of people's fundamental rights; when legal and policy means have failed to reduce the harms and violations; and when there is little time remaining to address the problems,” University of New England professor John Lemons and Penn State’s Donald Brown wrote in last month’s Journal of Science and Environmental Politics.

“Simply put, people do not have the right to harm others who have not given their consent to be harmed, and this is exactly what the USA and other countries continue to do,” Lemons told me.

(For more on the theories of justice and civil disobedience, read this. And then read this, the case of one US activist who faces a possible 10 year sentence and up to $750K in fines, even though he never hurt a fly.)

Environmental activists have long engaged in civil disobedience.

Greenpeace, to name one group, has long specialized in it.

In 2009, 20 activists were arrested after they scaled Parliament’s west block, covered it with banners demanding government action on climate change. 

Last week, two members camped out in an 'Arctic survival pod' suspended from an oil rig off the coast of Greenland, in an effort to stop a Scottish oil firm from drilling. The activists demand to know how Cairn Energy would cope with a BP Deepwater Horizon-style disaster if something goes wrong in pristine Arctic waters.

Noted Australian climate advocate Clive Hamilton (Affluenza: When Too Much is Not Enough, Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist The Truth About Climate Change) insists that the moral obligation to act now trumps obedience to the law.

“Those who engage in civil disobedience are usually the most law-abiding citizens—those   
who have most regard for the social interest and the keenest understanding of the democratic process,” he emails from Cambridge where he is a visiting professor at Oxford.

Civil disobedience has a long and proud tradition, of course. It helped bring about civil rights in the US, end the Vietnam war, and kept loggers out of BC’s Clayoquot Sound. African-Americans boycotted bus lines and defiantly drank out of “whites-only” public water fountains, young men publicly burned their draft cards and thousands blockaded roads to keep pulp and paper companies out old growth forests.

The member-supported Council of Canadians has engaged in all sorts of civil disobedience, including sandbagging towns and provincial legislatures to point out how rising sea levels would affect them.

“It’s not an action to be taken lightly,’’ says Andrea Harden-Donahue, the Council’s Energy and Climate Justice campaigner. “We do believe that all other democratic means should be pursued first and continue to be pursued, even with a civil disobedience strategy.

“But we feel that it is justified to address climate change, especially given that the Harper government has refused to take action, and because of the urgency.”

Most lawmakers – and even most people -- don’t seem to think much of the tactic. Witness police actions against non-violent stunts such as teddy bear catapults at global summits, or citizen complaints of tied up traffic during protests and sit-ins. How many Canadians say that last year’s peaceful protestors at the Toronto G20 Summit should have just stayed home if they didn’t want to be tackled, cuffed with plastic cables and tossed into cages without charges?

“People from across the political spectrum love to praise civil disobedience-- as long as we're talking about past social movements,” observes US journalist Will Potter, author of Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement under Siege. “For instance, on the very same day that members of Congress were breaking ground for a new memorial honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his activism, a bill was passed labeling civil disobedience as ‘terrorism’ if it is done by animal rights and environmental activists.”

“Most people are divorced from the history of social change,” notes Greenpeace Canada’s climate and energy campaigner Mike Hudema, author of An Action a Day Keeps Global Capitalism Away. “From the eight-hour workday, to women's right to vote, to the end of slavery -- all of these involved good people willing to break the law.”

One much talked-about recent case of civil disobedience within the scientific community is that of NASA climatologist and Columbia University professor James Hansen who, along with others, was charged with obstructing police and impeding traffic in West Virginia, while protesting  mountain-top coal mining.

Here he is on Letterman a couple of years ago, talking about his then just-published book, Storms of my Grandchildren. It's a great interview.

Hansen, who calls climate change “the great moral challenge of this century,’’ has been helping other activists who get into legal trouble, including six Greenpeace members tried in 2008 for vandalizing a coal power station’s smokestack. With his expert testimony, they convinced the court that, despite all the expensive havoc they wreaked, even greater damage – climate change – was being prevented from hurting people.

The decision shocked both government and industry: The activists were found not-guilty by reason of "lawful excuse” -- a judgement which opens the door for more climate justice civil disobedience.

In Canada, we have a somewhat similar but different defence, the defence of necessity. Conceivably, it could be used like the defence of "lawful excuse" was in the UK.

 “We do believe that the law, and actions taken within the law, are ultimately necessary to addressing the problem of climate change,’’ explains Andrew Gage, acting executive director of West Coast Environmental Law in Victoria, BC.

Tomorrow the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change begins in Bonn.

Wait for a lot of blather and political positioning, but not much commitment for change – or even a commitment to make a commitment for change from developed nations. Meanwhile, the poor nations who will take the brunt of climate change will just have to take it.

Me, I am glad I am getting on in years so I won’t have to see what’s coming. I always felt and, as it turns out, scientist Michael Mann sees it the same way, that, well, here's how he in an email: "Of all the early 70s distopian movies, Soylent Green was actually the most prophetic in terms of providing a vision for a worst case anthropogenic climate future..."

 “I don’t think most people realize how little time we have left,’’ warns Lester Brown, founder of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute and author of the just-published World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse.  “The cliff is not that far away.’’

But hey, the disaster folks will make a buck.

JUST A NOTE: In order to do this post, I spoke to many distinguished and committed scientists. I just want to thank those that I cited, as well as those I didn't, including Scott Mandia and Ray Weymann.

HEATING UIPDATE: Well, here's a surprise.

The UN climate talks re-opened in Bonn on Monday with developing countries increasingly resentful that money promised 18 months ago to help them adapt to climate change has not been made available.

New research by the World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that the world's 21 developed countries and the European commission have publicly announced pledges of $28bn in "fast-track" money after a commitment made in Copenhagen in 2009. While this is close to the $30bn promised for the 2010-2012 period, only around $12bn has actually been budgeted for by countries and as little as around 30% has been delivered in some cases.

Shaken, not stirred

So it's International Women's Day tomorrow. Its 100th anniversary even.

So what?

Not to pick on him in particular, but here's one's man take on the matter:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff made the following statement on the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day:

"100 years ago tomorrow, the first International Women's Day was established in 1911 to campaign for women's rights to work, vote, hold public office and end gender discrimination.

"Today, International Women’s Day celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women across the globe..."

I wonder. Do women celebrate how far they've come in Congo, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, on the Highway of Tears, in low-income areas where single Moms live right here in Toronto ... ?

Meanwhile, in the US and, to a lesser extent, in Canada, there's a war on women's rights.

Sorry, but I can't get it up for International Women's Day.

So I'll let James Bond Judi Dench speak for me -- with James Bond (Daniel Craig) riding shotgun:

 

 

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Love this post by April Reign complete with added video goodness.

What she said

Journalist Sheryl WuDunn, co-author with her husband New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof of Half the Sky, says it all at a recent TEDtalk.

H/T to my longtime -- from high school! -- friend Mark Takefman, who walks the talk in India.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot. Under PM Stephen Harper's ''maternal health'' plan, women in these countries are not entitled to the reproductive freedom, including contraception, they would need to achieve equality.

Yahoo, Another reproductive Rights Round-Up

Onward Christian Soldiers, marching as to war ...

Let's begin in the Sunshine state of Florida where Southern Baptist theologian, father of eight and Republican rep Charles E. Van Zant proposes all citizens, especially of the wombanly persuasion, share his upright way of thinking.

Here's his way of thinking though: Rather than punish the maternal units, go after the doctors who perform the evil abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.

An expansive measure to make most abortions illegal in Florida has been filed for the 2010 Legislative session, challenging federal protections in place for more than 40 years.

Both anti-abortion advocates and abortion rights supporters agree the 53-page proposal is an attempt to directly challenge the 40-year-old Roe v. Wade U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortions in the United States in 1973.

“The Legislature finds that there have been 50 million abortions in the United States since the Roe decision,” the bill reads. “ The Legislature further finds that every life lost to abortion was sacred and of the highest value.”

Sponsored by Rep. Charles Van Zant, R-Palatka, HB 1097 would criminalize most abortions now allowed under state and federal law, increase penalties for physicians who perform such services and require pregnant women to receive more information on adoption. The bill was filed Wednesday, the same day that right to life groups made the trek to Tallahassee to meet lawmakers and rally support.

Except in cases where a woman’s life is considered in danger, doctors who perform abortions would face first degree felonies punishable by up to life in prison and civil fines.

Now, it's doubtful this bill will get very far. But you can bet Van Zant will have back-up in the House. And, if they don't succeed this time, they'll try another way to crack this.

By the way: You'll find the comments over at Feministing rather amusing.

Now to Oklahoma where a particularly invasive law was declared unconstitutional -- but only on a technicality.

On Friday an Oklahoma judge declared a controversial law unconstitutional that would have  enacted a host of new abortion regulations, including one mandating that detailed demographic and personal information about women seeking abortions be posted online. Though pro-choice activists are applauding the decision, it was not indicative of a dismissal of the regulations themselves. Instead, the judge knocked down the law due to the fact that it violated Oklahoma’s "single-subject" rule, which states that each law can only cover one subject.

The law, which was initially scheduled to go into effect on Nov. 1, 2009, would have required a woman seeking an abortion to fill out a 10-page questionnaire asking everything from her age and marital status to the date of the abortion to the county in which it took place. That information would then be posted on the state’s Department of Health website. Proponents of the law say that names would not have accompanied the statistics. But opponents say the law was a scare tactic that infringed on women’s privacy, and that people in small towns in Oklahoma could easily draw conclusions about identities from even seemingly anonymous information.

Undaunted, the forced birthers are back at the drawing board, drafting, count 'em, four new laws that will get around the technicality.

In other action, the panel passed four separate abortion measures that previously had been declared unconstitutional because they had been combined in one bill.

Bills must deal with only one subject.

The panel passed HB 3290 by Rep. Skye McNiel, R-Bristow. It would require a doctor to be in the room when the abortion pill RU486 is administered.

The panel also passed HB 2780 by Rep. Lisa Billy, R-Lindsay, which would require women who seek an abortion to have an ultrasound and have its contents explained to them.

Rep. Ryan Kiesel, D-Seminole, said the Legislature should focus on preventing unintended pregnancies rather than bringing further disgrace and shame to women facing the most difficult decision of their lives.

Billy responded: “This bill is about choice for women. It is an opportunity for her to understand what is growing inside of her and the consequences.”

The panel passed HB 3110 by Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, which would allow health-care providers who object to abortion not to participate in the procedure.

Peterson’s other abortion bill, HB 3284, also passed.

It would require women who seek abortions to provide a host of information about themselves to be posted on a public Web site.

As if there aren't bigger things to worry about in Oklahoma -- like how one in five actual children live in poverty.

Oh but it gets better in Utah.

A bill passed by the Utah House and Senate this week and waiting for the governor's signature, will make it a crime for a woman to have a miscarriage, and make induced abortion a crime in some instances.

According Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, what makes Utah's proposed law unique is that it is specifically designed to be punitive toward pregnant women, not those who might assist or cause an illegal abortion or unintended miscarriage.

The bill passed by legislators amends Utah's criminal statute to allow the state to charge a woman with criminal homicide for inducing a miscarriage or obtaining an illegal abortion. The basis for the law was a recent case in which a 17-year-old girl, who was seven months pregnant, paid a man $150 to beat her in an attempt to cause a miscarriage. Although the girl gave birth to a baby later given up for adoption, she was initially charged with attempted murder. However the charges were dropped because, at the time, under Utah state law a woman could not be prosecuted for attempting to arrange an abortion, lawful or unlawful.

The bill passed by the Utah legislature would change that. While the bill does not affect legally obtained abortions, it criminalizes any actions taken by women to induce a miscarriage or abortion outside of a doctor's care, with penalties including up to life in prison.

Never mind how desperate that 17 year old girl must have been to pay somebody to beat her up. (Can you imagine?)  Might it be a coincidence that there are no abortion providers in 93 per cent of Utah's counties? 

Nah.

To continue:

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by "reckless" behavior.  

Using the legal standard of "reckless behavior" all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn't intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

"This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder," says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, "there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident."

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

Because, Lady, when you're preggers your body is nationalized by the state.

Now to Africa where, if women aren't being raped, they're being denied access to legal abortions. So they have illegal ones. And then they die.

Take Kenya. For 20 years, Kenyans have been working fitfully to revise their constitution and are now mere weeks away from possibly finalizing the document. But this milestone in the nation's slow move towards real democracy may be marred by another human rights calamity. If the constitution is approved in its current form by the Kenyan Parliament sometime this year, Kenya will join the inglorious ranks of three nations -- Northern Mariana Islands, Uganda, and Zambia -- that have prohibited abortion within their constitution.

The most recent draft of the constitution had solid human rights protections for women. However, a review by a parliamentary commission resulted in the evisceration of many of the core democratic constitutional provisions. This included amending Article 25, which in its original language guaranteed that "Every individual has the right to life" (emphasis added).

The wording choice for Article 25 is hardly revolutionary. In fact, it reflects the values of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is consistent with the majority of national constitutions in the world. But conservative religious groups are not partial to international legal precedence and many lobbied Kenyan parliamentarians to amend Article 25. Which they did, and then some.

Article 25 still protects life, but life is now defined as beginning at conception. Moreover, Article 25 also outlaws abortion. Phrases in the draft guaranteeing the right to healthcare, including reproductive health care, and that no one may be refused emergency medical treatment (say, for an unsafe abortion) were also eliminated from the draft text.

Which brings us to Nicaragua, and this shocking story.

A pregnant 27-year old Nicaraguan woman, "Amelia," with metastatic cancer has been denied medical treatment on the grounds that it might harm her baby.

Nicaragua passed a draconian anti-abortion law in 2008 which criminalizes abortion even in the case of rape or incest or when the mother's life is in danger. Nicaraguan doctors are prohibited from treating pregnant women with cancer, HIV/AIDS, malaria and cardiac diseases, and threatened with prison sentences for providing health services or information related to abortion.

Amelia has effectively been handed a death sentence by her government. Each day she is denied treatment, she edges closer to death; in a tragic irony, she will most likely die before the baby is even born. Her 10-year old daughter will be left without a mother, since the Nicaraguan government values the life of an unborn fetus over that of a mother. 

And doesn't that just put the ''life'' in ''pro-life?'' (And if you want to do something to help, please go here.)

Jump to Dammit Janet! where Fern reminds us that this is what PM Stephen Harper and his theocratic vision of maternal healthcare looks like.

... it's not just the preventable deaths of these women, but the bloody suffering they go through. And their families. And their soon-to-be-orphaned children.

Yet this is the kind of no-family-planning, no-contraception, no-abortion, misogynist healthcare Steve is promoting.

It's unconscionable.

Indeed.

And, finally, something  completely different. Angie the Anti-Theist is having an abortion -- and is documenting it. (Follow the Twitter debate here.)

Here's an excerpt of Angie's guest post over at The Friendly Atheist:

Prior to conceiving my son five years ago, I was told I would never carry a child to term because of sexual abuse that happened when I was 7- and 8-years-old — and I barely did. I didn’t find out I was pregnant with him until the 21st week, roughly halfway through my pregnancy. When I did find out, I was underweight for the duration of the pregnancy, and I had several other high risk indicators. I did my best to gain weight (it helped that my ex-husband worked at a pizza store).

Even still, I made several trips to the emergency room throughout my last two trimesters. During my eighth month of pregnancy, I actually lost ten pounds due to a pretty horrible stomach virus. It was as if I had no immune system at all while pregnant. I went from having never received IV fluids in my life, to being intimately familiar with the feeling of cold fluids dumping into my veins. And let’s not even get into the other causes of dehydration.

When my son was born, I decided I didn’t want any more kids, in part because I’d learned during my pregnancy that I was a carrier for Cystic Fibrosis, a fatal and painful disease (of which my son was fortunately spared). I don’t regret that decision. My son is happiest when he’s getting one-on-one attention from an adult — he has even manipulated the system at school so that he gets to hang out with his teacher while she eats lunch and the other kids nap! I honestly don’t believe siblings are always a blessing, always friends, or always best for a family.

I know that I can be a damn good mom to the one special needs child I have — he had many health problems when he was younger and he is speech delayed and has a short attention span now — but I don’t know if I could be a good mom to two kids, one or both of whom would have special needs. I know my mom had more children than she could afford or care for, and I don’t want to make the same mistake. 

Now, considering all that, I think Angie is entitled to make her own decisions about her own health and well-being, as well as those of her son. But you can be sure that there are millions of people who believe that they have the right to colonize her body.

Reproductive rights are human rights.

End of stories.

Support Bros

One of the greatest things about PM Stephen Harper's sudden professed interest in women's well-being -- at least that of those women who don't live in Canada, of course -- is how it's making many men here owning up to being pro-choice. They're actually blogging about it.

Now, a quick look at the male opinionators listed in my blogroll will reveal that there were already many guys out there who got it. It's just that, now, even more are speaking out. (And, yeah, even if it's about scoring partisan political points, who cares? We women need all the Support Bros we can get.)

In the US, in the wake of that Tebow anti-choice uproar, feminist bloggers are cheering on the likes of pro-footballer Scott Fujita as well as these guys:

Which brings us to this post today by BCer in Toronto Jeff Jedras (I added the boldface):

In a story in Embassy Mag (behind a subscriber firewall, but I’ve pasted the relevant sections below) Canadian International Development Minister Bev Oda confirms safe abortions, and even contraception, will not be part of the Conservative push on maternal and child care:

Oda says no abortion, contraceptives support
   

But the WHO reports that lack of both contributes to unnecessary deaths.

CIDA Minister Bev Oda says the government's child and maternal health strategy will not address unsafe abortions in developing countries or support access to family planning and contraceptives. Rather, she said that to ensure the aid agency remains effective, "it's the lives of mothers and babies that we are focused on."

<SNIP>

When asked about support for contraceptives and family planning in an interview last week, Ms. Oda said: "In order to maintain our focus, again our focus is on maternal and child health and mortality rates.

"We want to make sure that mothers, pregnant women, are healthy and can have safe births, and that the birthing process is made safer because if you look at the number of births during the actual birthing process, that's where a number of maternal deaths happen," she added.

"We also want to make sure when babies are born, they are born as healthy as possible so that they can live through their early age, up to the age of five, with as strong and good health as possible."

Which is pretty much on the same HarperCon Wombs on Wheels message track she was on when she spoke to CBC Radio's Carol Off last week.

I won't belabour all the reasons why maternal healthcare includes contraception, family planning, AIDS prevention and, yes, abortion. I've done it so often. I just want to emphasize Jedras' point:

The idea of a major push to address maternal and child care is a noble one. But ideology can’t be allowed to dictate the program and the help we’re going to give to women in need. We should listen to the experts on the ground about what is needed and what will be effective to meet the goals we’re trying to achieve and let them direct the resources accordingly.

That has always been the Canadian policy, and the Conservatives desire to address this challenge is legitimate, it shouldn’t change it now. Sadly, though, it seems that the trend of the Harper Conservatives allowing ideology to guide development and aid decisions is ever expanding.

Jedras also dug up this video. It's from CBC News yesterday.

Please pay special attention to the note The Family Canada put up with it.

Your letters and emails to Members of Parliament has paid off! Shelly Glover confirms that Abortion will now not be included in the Canadian Government's plan to help women and children overseas.

Pray for the Conservative Party of Canada and our Prime Minister! Donate and volunteer your time at www.conservative.ca

Forward this video to all of your Christian friends!!!!!

Canada: Now Under OMG Management.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Joyce Arthur has more.

Of course, Ignatieff is a politician, and bringing up abortion is no doubt a political strategy in part – but it’s also the absolutely right thing for him to do. It is impossible to tackle maternal health without addressing unsafe abortion, which is a leading cause of maternal death in most developing countries. Given the critical importance of legal safe abortion in saving women’s lives, and the Conservative Party’s well-known anti-choice stance, Ignatieff would have been remiss not to make it a burning issue. The majority of women in Canada are pro-choice, and we are surprised, pleased, and hopeful to see Ignatieff stand up to defend the rights of poor women in other countries.

Conservative politicians and commentators have heaped scorn on Ignatieff’s concerns, however, and condemned him for turning women’s health into a “political football.” But most of the politicking is actually coming from Ignatieff’s critics, who have launched attacks without the benefit of any facts, and even less compassion for women. Some of the coverage is so shockingly ignorant that it qualifies as being misogynist.

Go to her page for a misogyny round-up.

If you can bear it.

No relief

I don't think I need to tell you about the horrors of Haiti, especially now as the media move on to the next shiny object.

Here's colleague Jennifer Wells, there now. I added the boldface.

A man opens his shirt to display a pussing, oozing chest. A young woman holds out her grotesquely swollen foot and says the slight treatment has had no effect.

Pastor Franck Jean holds out the box of supplies he has been given as medical aid: surgical gloves, Hannah Montana tattoo bandages, syringes.

Esther Nelson gave birth nine days ago. She has seen no doctor, no nurse, and when it rains the water comes through her sheet-for-a-roof.

There have been many stories of how the women of Haiti are bearing the brunt of this earthquake disaster. Just last week, the Star's Catherine Porter filed this dispatch.

It's the women who care for the children. And in Haiti, around 66 per cent of them are single mothers, says Carole Pierre-Paul Jacob, one of the country's leading feminists. She has lobbied for years for the country's first paternity law, which would have required fathers to financially support their children, as well as a law recognizing common-law relationships. Both died with the government buildings on Jan. 12.

"We have a saying here: the family rests on the back of the woman," says Jacob, the coordinator to a leading Haitian women's group SOFA, Solidarité Fanm Ayisyen (Solidarity with Haitian Women.)

"This will increase the poverty of women."

By other measures, Haitian women are poor, too. Their life expectancy is only 50 years. They claim the title for highest mortality rate during childbirth in the Americas. Medical personnel were present at only one in four births in Haiti before the quake. That number is likely to drop even further, as the hospitals are still jammed with trauma cases.

And they are regularly raped.

Like I said: horrible.

There's so much written about water, food, shelter, and how the relief efforts are going. Or not.

But here's something even I have never thought of, until I read this tonight. It's by internist physician Doc Gurley, on the ground in the middle of it all.

I read a Medscape article pointing out the extreme risk to Haitian women of reproductive neglect and violence, and the shocking lack of aid to women in these areas despite all our massive relief efforts. What kind of "special care" are we talking out for women? The Medscape article recommended, for example, that all visibly pregnant women should be given a "birthing kit." I didn't know what a "birthing kit" was, and when I looked it up, and found more references online, I discovered that a birthing kit is a heartbreaking collection of items: a ziplock bag containing two clean strings and a straight razor (for cutting the umbilical cord), a sanitary pad, and some cotton/cloth/plastic sheets for dealing with bodily fluids. Could the situation for women in Haiti be this bad, and this badly neglected? Especially after all those hundreds of millions of dollars?

<SNIP>

So I decided to ask my journalist friend who just left Haiti a couple of day ago what the current situation there is, keeping in mind that Haiti is a predominantly Catholic country, and wanting her advice on whether it would be insensitive to intrude or make assumptions about issues of sexual protection, birthing, and birth control.

My friend's response by email:

A number of women's groups have expressed concern about the general neglect of gender-specific needs and problems in the relief efforts. Women I spoke to in Haiti were concerned both about sexual violence and the omission of items like sanitary napkins, tampons, condoms etc among the relief supplies.

Women's -- and, by extension, their children's -- specific needs are almost never considered. (And here I am, always complaining about the GST on sanitary products here, as if they weren't a necessity.)

Maybe it's a function of how relief efforts tend to be designed and run by men. Or maybe it's because so many of the charities that get in there are associated with various churches. 

According to Gurley's blog post, at least one charity in neighbouring Dominican Republic is accepting donations for female-specific supplies.

Please send all supplies addressed as follows:

URGENT HUMANITARIAN RELIEF FOR HAITI

Ms. Sergia Galvan and Mayra Tavarez

Colectiva Mujeres Y Salud/CAFRA Calle Socomo Sanchez, No 64

Gazcue, Santo Domingo, DR

As Gurley concludes ...

... consider buying and sending a pack of condoms, a Plan B pack, some tampons, or pads to the address above. Sending a Care Package is something that can be done on an on-going basis (hey! maybe every month - a lunar schedule to share your sanitary support!). Besides the heart-breaking issues of human dignity around hygiene products, the last thing Haiti needs is an explosion of unwanted pregnancies, and/or new HIV infections, all for lack of supplies.

Only women bleed.

H/T: Help a Mother Out

Coming up short

The welfare of women continues to dominate the political agenda through the suspension of Parliament.

And so, a few items of note.

Over at Rabble.ca, Murray Dobbin nicely sums up how the Harper government has run "roughshod'' over women.

Nothing new there as regular Broadsides readers know. If I had the time, I would add in a lot more starting with the threats to our reproductive choices and the pending elimination of the long-gun registry.

By coincidence, Regina Mom today documented the dollar value of some of the cuts to programs that helped women achieve equal rights and economic parity.

Finally, NDP leader Jack Layton took advantage of the current political climate to issue a news release challenging party leaders to put Canadian women and children first.

Mr. Layton invited Mr. Harper, as well as Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe, to cooperate in 2010 to improve the lives of Canadian women and children. He outlined a series of concrete New Democrat proposals that, if embraced by the other parties, would mean real progress for women and children. Those proposals include:

• Employment Insurance rules that deny eligibility to six in ten women;
• adopting key recommendations of the 2004 Pay Equity Task Force;
• increasing support for women’s groups working to prevent violence;
• launching an inquiry into 520 missing or murdered Aboriginal women;
• launching a federal initiative to ensure every child has daily access to healthy food;
• boosting the Guaranteed Income Supplement to end poverty among seniors (overwhelmingly women).

It's stunning to me that, in this country, in this century, kids and seniors go hungry.

Who was it who said that, if you want to know the true measure of a man, watch how he treats old people, children and animals?

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Layton had an op-ed in today's National Post.

Canada is among the wealthiest nations in the world, yet 70% of Inuit preschool-age children live in homes where there is not always enough food. There are many mothers in Canada who live in unsafe places, who are going without food, electricity or heat because of persistent, deep poverty. These deprivations have a devastating effect on Canada's very youngest, evidenced by the fact that infant mortality rates in low-income neighbourhoods are almost double those in richer ones.

Mr. Harper acknowledges that the solutions to maternal and child health problems are "not intrinsically expensive." This holds true for Canadian women and children as well: Providing safe drinking water on reserves, addressing the affordable housing crisis, and funding organizations that support women and children are all relatively inexpensive compared to the health and social costs of poverty in Canada, which are estimated at more than $20-billion per year.

<SNIP>

To put the full consequences of (Harper's) indifference into perspective, imagine a city the size of Winnipeg full of children: That is the number of our kids who live in poverty in Canada today.

As a country, we have the ability to take decisive action to end this cycle of marginalization, and Mr. Harper has shown that he knows that investing in women and children will get the job done in the developing world. It will be pure hypocrisy if he refuses to make similar investments here at home.

Fertile ground

It's solid info like this (reg. req'd.) that reinforces my long-held contention -- now generally accepted wisdom by everybody but the Harper government -- that investing in women is just plain good business.

Those folks at McKinsey are not exactly lefties. Indeed, corporations hire their people at mind-boggling rates just to take advantage of their expertise.

Which is why, when they say something about economic growth, it's worth paying attention.

Here's the gist of their latest intel:

Few companies make social investments specifically aimed at empowering women in developing economies, but we believe that supporting this goal is good business and good practice for all companies. In the course of our work, we’ve uncovered a startlingly wide range of ways in which private-sector companies can offer sizable economic benefits not only to women and their societies but also to the companies themselves. The benefits to businesses come from enlarging their markets, improving the quality or size of their current and potential workforce (for instance, by attracting talent globally), and maintaining or improving their reputations.

Women in developing economies are hampered by many of the same concerns that face women in other countries, but they also deal with a number of additional barriers to economic security. In some cases, these problems are straightforward—girls getting less food and education than boys, for example. In others, they are as complicated as the difficulty women in many countries have in keeping control over money they may earn (because of regulations or long-standing cultural traditions that prevent them from having secure access to bank accounts), owning property, or acquiring loans.

Women’s unfulfilled potential significantly hinders economic growth. One recent study, for example, estimates that lower education and employment rates for women and girls are responsible for as much as a 1.6 percentage point difference in annual GDP growth between South Asia and East Asia. On the other hand, educated, income-earning women are especially powerful catalysts for development because they tend to invest more of their money in their families’ health, education, and well-being than men do.

Now pay extra special attention to this bit:

Nevertheless, only 19 percent of the respondents to a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey said that their companies had invested in economic-development activities specifically aimed at women in developing markets. Yet 83 percent said that economic growth there was at least somewhat important to their companies’ success over the next ten years.

Now, let me ask you, how freaking stupid is that? What do these companies expect? To expand their markets in countries where women have no money to spend on their products? 

Why yes. That's exactly right.

That despite:

Companies whose social investments do focus on women in developing economies, the survey and our other research show, benefit not only women and their societies but also themselves. Among survey respondents, 34 percent say that such investments have already improved profits, and a further 38 percent expect them to do so.

It's stuff like this that made me roll my eyes when I was getting my MBA.

Women overboard

Didn't want you to miss this by friend and colleague Olivia Ward in yesterday's Star.

It's about how women may be thrown under the bus if NATO types, ie. the US, decide to get out of Afghanistan by reinstating the Taliban.

Yeah, I know that's not how it's being phrased in polite circles. But let's not mince words here, okay? Because that's what they would really do. After all, didn't we install our man in Afghanistan Hamid Kharzai? Of course we did.

That said, the latest word from HellHolistan is that the Taliban isn't going to deal.

But that doesn't make the plain fact of how quickly NATO was prepared to give up women.

GENEVA (Reuters) - Any future peace deal between the Afghan government and the Taliban should include a clear commitment to respecting women's rights, a United Nations women's rights body said on Friday.

It also voiced regret at what it called the exclusion of Afghan women from the high decision-making level of the London conference on Afghanistan last week.

Anyway, to Olivia's piece:

Even now, young girls who dare to go to school have acid thrown in their faces, suicide bombers kill indiscriminately, beheadings and amputations await those who resist their resurgent rule and women activists receive dreaded "night letters" that mark them for death.

So it's not surprising that the rising chorus of Western voices in favour of reintegrating mid- and lower-level Taliban fighters into Afghan society – and whispers of reconciliation with top militants – have sent a shudder through liberal Afghans who long for peace, but have grave doubts about the return of a relentlessly repressive enemy.

"If you bring them back, it will push us back," says Homa Sabri, who heads the Afghan division of the United Nations women's fund UNICEF. "We will lose the gains of the past eight years."

With the Western leaders who supported the 2001 invasion now groping for the exit, thinking the unthinkable is creeping onto the agenda. War cannot rage forever, and, at the end of the day, peace is made with enemies.

<SNIP>

GIRLS, BARRED from school under the Taliban, now account for more than one-third of the 6.2 million children enrolled and female literacy rates have risen from single digits to about 13 per cent.

In employment, women have made gains in the civil service, and 75 per cent of the Women's Affairs Ministry is female. Women are no longer officially barred from the workplace, and numerous micro projects have allowed them to start small businesses.

In health care, soaring infant mortality has declined modestly and the percentage of women getting pre-natal care risen to more than 32 per cent.The government also set up a human rights commission where women can complain if they suffer violence or other abuses.

Women have joined numerous community groups across the country for social and economic support, as well as political action. The constitution reserves 25 per cent of seats in the lower house and 17 per cent of the upper house of parliament for women.

But today's Afghanistan is not a golden age for women. The Taliban's primitive interpretations of religious law, and the tribal culture from which they sprang, cast a dark shadow over their lives, and the ideals of the constitution are sparsely enforced outside of Kabul.

A recent law has undermined Shia women's rights, a warning to others that political expediency can trump their promised equality, and an unsettling hint for the future. Under international pressure, Karzai allowed the law to be amended. But doubts remain about how far the West would be prepared to support women's rights once its troops have departed.

Even now, the Western military presence has done little to improve the lot of women, and some argue that it has worsened it by exposing them to bombs and bullets.

In addition, a Human Rights Watch report found that, more than eight years after the fall of the Taliban, women and girls are still targeted for violence and discrimination, and have little access to either justice or education.

At least half of Afghan women experience violence, it found. More than half of marriages are of girls under 16 and up to 80 per cent take place without the bride's consent.

Hundreds of girls' schools have been destroyed by the resurgent Taliban, and hundreds of schoolgirls wounded or killed. Only 11 per cent of secondary school-aged girls are still attending school. A mere 4 per cent make it to Grade 10.

Meanwhile, women in public life suffer threats, intimidation and assassination attempts — or death. Women who want to work outside the home face threats and discrimination. There are numerous reports of despairing women attempting suicide by setting themselves on fire.

"The situation for Afghan women and girls is dire and could deteriorate," warns Reid. "It's critical to make sure that (their) rights don't just get lip service while being pushed to the bottom of the list by the government and donors."

When the fog of war clears in Afghanistan, women and progressive thinkers hope that they will have a place to stand. But they know much depends on what the peacetime landscape will look like, and what tradeoffs are made to arrive there.

Yeah. Trade-offs.

Bargaining chippies.

Women have always been a commodity.