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..."
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.
Longtime readers -- and I do appreciate your loyalty and patience during my absence from the blogosphere
-- know that I have bitched loud and often about how US/Canada/NATO have used and abused women and their (human) rights as an excuse to continue the war in Afghanistan.
Oh, it's never about the oil, the pipelines, the mineral rights, the regional hegemony, or anything like that. No no. It's always about the women. Save the women. Think of the women. Even though Afghan women themselves have decried the current corrupt regime as well as the continued oppression of women which appears to have been stepped up because of the war.
Even though there have been numerous occasions when NATO has allowed women to be sold out.
The Taliban pounded on the door just before midnight, demanding that Aisha, 18, be punished for running away from her husband's house. Her in-laws treated her like a slave, Aisha pleaded. They beat her. If she hadn't run away, she would have died. Her judge, a local Taliban commander, was unmoved. Aisha's brother-in-law held her down while her husband pulled out a knife. First he sliced off her ears. Then he started on her nose...
Now you would think I would be all for the exposure of the terrible treatment of women in Afghanistan, and that I would be cheering on the NATO foot soldiers who are dying because they believe they are fighting to make things right in that blighted country.
The thing is that I am all for these things and more. Much more.
But here's the other bigger thing. If the west gave a rat's tail about women's rights, it would also be in the Congo where women are being gang-raped daily in the fight for, among other things, the minerals that go into our iPods and mobile phones. It would not be in bed with the Saudi Arabian sexist apartheid state where women are chattel. It would not be bombing Afghan women and children, making the occupation worse and worse for them everyday.
And besides, wasn't the ostensible real purpose for going there in the first place to find the terrorist masterminds behind 9/11? (And let's not forget Prime Minister Stephen Harper's March 2006 speech about how our soldiers were also there to halt the drug trade.)
I don't know what the answer to Afghanistan's problem is but I do know that it doesn't come in the form of drones, tanks and fighter jets.
My principle -- and principal ;-) -- objection to this cover story is how it EXPLOITS the mutilation
of a beautiful young woman to promote the continued war that really,
let's not kid ourselves, has nothing to do with women's rights. I mean,
come on. And I am not the only one who says that.
... worth mentioning: the girl on the cover was attacked not in long
ago days of Taliban rule but with tens of thousands of U.S. troops in
the country.
I have to ask: In Time's mission to really "illuminate
what is actually happening on the ground" has it ever put on its cover
close-up images of 1) a badly wounded or dead U.S. soldier 2) an
Afghan killed in a NATO missile strike 3) an Afghan official, police
officer or military commander accepting a bribe from a Taliban war
lord. Alison Kilkenny has her own examples here.
No one makes light of the plight of women and children in Afghanistan
under the Taliban--and, contrary to (Time editor Rick) Stengel's claim, many Americans do
know about it. Indeed, liberal women's groups in the U.S. have raised
the issue often and expressed mixed feelings about staying (or even
escalating) in Afghanistan because of it. It's a serious issue. And
please see the response to Time by the Feminist Peace Network. Jezebel with another good take here.
Something tells me that no one at a the magazine's editorial meeting suggested a "What Happens if We Stay in Afghanistan" cover headline, which would have been accompanied by a photo of the corpse of an Afghan child killed in an airstrike or a house raid.
Finally a few words from, you know, an actual Afghan woman, Sonali Kolhatkar, author of Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence. She is also co-director of the Afghan Women's Mission, a U.S.-based nonprofit that supports women's rights activists in Afghanistan. (via The Institute for Public Accuracy).
This is the same type of justification that the Soviets used (among
others) to explain why they should remain in Afghanistan: to save Afghan
women from the 'backward' fundamentalists. Foreign armies have always
sought to protect Afghan women from violence by fomenting violence
themselves. But in the end, just like the Soviets did backroom deals
with radical misogynist groups, the U.S. has been empowering non-Taliban
misogynist fundamentalists since the start of this war. There are
incidents happening every day in Afghanistan of women and girls being
harassed, raped, flogged and killed by pro-U.S. warlords and local
commanders that are not working with the Taliban -- these incidents are
rarely covered by the Western media. In many ways the U.S. occupation
has actually made things worse for Afghan women. Afghan women activists I
work with prefer to resist two threats to their security (the Taliban
and the U.S.-backed central government) instead of three (the third
being the U.S./NATO occupation) and have long called for U.S. forces to
leave. Time magazine is playing to age-old racist stereotypes: that
brown women need a foreign white army to save them from their men.
What a difference it would make in Afghanistan if, instead of spending hundreds of billions on bombs, we just gave all the money to the women and let them build a better society for everybody there.
Ah yes. The hate mail continues to pour in over today's treeware take on the Harper government's It-Makes-Me-Gag-Rule, its refusal to connect the dots between contraception and maternal healthcare.
For two months now, the Conservative mouthpiece on all this, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda, has steadfastly refused to acknowledge the need for women to have choices, let alone suggest that the HarperCons will back family planning support in its oh-look-we-discovered-women maternal healthcare initiative.
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."
Oda's unwavering inability to concede on contraception has been repeated by Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis and just the other day by Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon.
It's been a political firestorm, which got diverted by the abortion debate -- which took the focus off contraception, a necessary component of any maternal healthcare program.
The government's ridiculous and backward stance started getting international attention this week. Examples are here, here, here and here.
Extraordinary events in Canada over the last couple of days with the potential to embarrass mightily the G8,
meeting in Ontario in late June. The host government's "legacy
initiative" is on maternal and child health. The entire GB is expected
to sign up to a package intended to save the lives of women and their
dependent young children. But - and prepare to rub your eyes now -
Stephen Harper and his ministers appear to want to exclude family
planning from it. And it's not even just unsafe abortion (which kills thousands every year) that appears to be in their minds.
“We are not closing doors against any options including contraception.
But we do not want a debate here or elsewhere on abortion.”
So why did you allow your ministers to say what they did for as long and as often as they did?
Here is today's column, in toto, with some added linkage.
Did Prime Minister Stephen Harper put a condom instead of
a thinking cap on his head when, two months ago, he announced his now
internationally ridiculed policy on "maternal and child health" that
he's going to promote at the coming G8 summit?
How else to
explain his intransigence on women's access to family planning – as if
a mother's ability to have no more babies than she can feed, clothe and
protect has nothing to do with either's health?
Has he never heard the expression AIDS orphan? Obstetric fistula? High-risk pregnancy?
And
we're not even talking about abortion here. This is about the pill,
IUDs, diaphragms – and education.
For all the statistics Harper has spouted on
the 2 million women and children who die every year due to lack of
proper care during pregnancy and delivery, has he not looked at a
medical book instead of the Good Book?
Because, make no mistake, his dismissal of good maternal health practice is purely ideological, not gynecological.
Consider the support this contraception-free initiative has received from religious groups that are anti-reproductive rights.
For
example, both the hardline LifeSiteNews and R.E.A.L. Women of Canada,
which back every anti-choice move any Conservative MP makes, no matter
how unscientific or misogynistic, are cheering on this "maternal
health" policy.
Never mind that doctors and medical groups, not to mention health workers in the field, contradict the HarperCon position.
On
Thursday, the Ottawa-based Federation of Medical Women of Canada, was
the latest to denounce the government on this issue. "By excluding
family planning, there will be even more pressures on already
vulnerable health systems, devastating consequences on any attempts to
implement maternal health programs, and tragic loss of millions of
lives that could otherwise have been saved," its member physicians said
in a statement.
They were reacting to what Foreign Affairs
Minister Lawrence Cannon said Tuesday during a meeting of the House of
Commons foreign affairs committee, in response to questions on the
direct correlation between access to contraception and women's deaths.
"This
(policy) does not deal in any way, shape, or form with family
planning," said Cannon. "Indeed, the purpose of this is to be able to
save lives."
What's worse is that, as Cannon would later suggest to reporters, he personally is pro-choice.
Then
there are International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda and Status Of
Women Minister Helena Guergis – neither of who has ever practised birth
control, right? – who also parrot the party line.
Said
Guergis in the status of women committee Monday, in reply to a question
on what she will do for maternal and child health care, both here and
abroad: "I will play whatever role it is that the Prime Minister is
defining for me in this process, happily, and I'm very proud and
honoured to be a part of that process."
As
for Oda, on Wednesday she told the House that the government will be
"providing clean water, vaccinations, better nutrition, as well as the
most effective way (in) the training of health care workers and
improving access for those women, that is what we are going to do."
Sure all that is important, but as one friend cracked on Facebook, "Dead women can't drink clean water."
Besides,
research shows that when it comes to health care in impoverished
nations, women – as they often are in everything else – are
second-class citizens, always at the back of the line.
So, while improving the medical infrastructure will definitely help these societies as a whole, it may not do that much more formothers and newborns.
Two, it's been suggested to me by Facebook friend Alexandra Mandelis that the only family planning the HarperCons might support are condoms and the good ole rhythm method.
Now taking bets on how long before the HarperCons issue a statement saying that because they are not interesting in reopening the abortion debate, the only family planning devices their "signature" initaitive will include are all those that can't cause "very early abortions" - also called "abortifacients" by the anti-choice. "Abortifacient" methods include the Pill, emergency contraception, the patch and the IUD - all hormonal methods.
Alexandra is probably correct in her prediction
Consider the Pill, which prevents ovulation. True, every once in a huge while, mostly because a woman forgets to take her daily dose, an egg can slip by and get fertilized. The Pill would prevent that zygote from implantation, BTW.) But the risk of that is insignificant. Still, that doesn't stop the PillKills posse from shrieking that the Pill evil and kills babies.
Funny how they are more concerned about theoretical single-celled embryos than starving orphans who lost their mothers because their exhausted and undernourished bodies couldn't pump out that 10th baby.
It is totally worth 94 minutes of your time to get to know New Zealand political economist Marilyn Waring. Her ideas, boiled down to their most basic, relate to how what women do and contribute count for nothing in a world measured by leading, lagging and other economic indicators.
For example, activities which involve monetary transactions count as production even when they involve the degradation of the earth's resources, such as strip-mining. A sunset has no value, nor a mountain, and trees only count when they have been chopped down and sold. At the same time, Waring criticizes traditional economics for not finding a way to value community well-being. By current thinking, war and disaster are 'good for the economy' because they create jobs such as arms production and clean-up.
As Gloria Steinem wrote in the introduction to Waring's book, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth, she will change your worldview. She certainly helped me crystallize many inchoate ideas I have had about women's work and place in the world.
But Waring's about so much more than that. My young economist friend Aaron Braaten tweeted back at me the other day that Waring, one of his idols, was years ahead of her time when this film was made in 1995.
Unfortunately, she still is years ahead of her time.
But at least, now, there's a realization that, while it's still a man's world, women make it go round.
If you have an iPhone, get the free NFB app and watch it on your
commute or in bed or wherever you are. Or sit at the computer.
Now, let me see, if I were 22 years old, with seven or eight kids to feed and clothe, with miles to walk every morning to just get water with which to wash clothes and cook some rice, the last thing my exhausted body and fragile family would need is another pregnancy -- or a dose of HIV.
I've hit on this topic before, here, here, here, etc., about PM Stephen
Harper's announcement two months ago on supporting maternal health at the
coming G8 summit, and how he and his handmaiden
international cooperation minister Bev Oda refuse to connect maternal
health to family planning, access to contraception and condoms -- which
means freedom from dying in childbirth, freedom from AIDS, which means, uh, maternal health. (Read this, if you have a sec.)
But they don't make those connections in TheoConWorld.
In the Commons on Wednesday, International Co-operation Minister Bev
Oda pointedly left birth control off the list of aid projects the
government intended to support, saying that “saving lives” was more
important than family planning.
“We have chosen to focus the
world’s lenses on saving the lives of mothers and children,” Oda said.
“When we know what we can do by providing clean water, vaccinations,
better nutrition, as well as the most effective way is the training of
health care workers and improving access for those women, that is what
we are going to do.”
And on Tuesday, during a Commons committee
hearing, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon made clear that the
maternal-health priority “does not deal in any way, shape or form with
family planning.”
Liberals and New Democrats are incredulous,
saying that this is a direct copy of the foreign aid policies of former
U.S. president George W. Bush, who banned any support for aid
organizations that supported abortion in developing countries for the
eight years he was in office. Barack Obama reversed that ban within
days of taking power last year.
Liberal MP Keith Martin, also a doctor, said without providing
access to a “full array” of family planning options, women and men
can’t protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted
pregnancies.
“As a result, you have higher abortion rates, more disease, more maternal deaths and more maternal injuries,” Martin said.
He
said he was “shocked” that the government took family planning off the
table and accused the Conservatives of being hypocritical.
“They
can’t say on the one hand they want to save lives . . . yet on the
other, deprive people of having the tools to be able to reduce the
death rate,” he said.
“The government is slaughtering good
medical practice on the altar of ideology,” he said, adding that the
government’s medical plan “defies science.
“In fact, it violates the ethics of good medical practice,” said Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca).
But, with this government, it's not about good medical practice. It's about making women be fruitful and multiply, even if multiplying kills them and their children.
Status of women mannequin minister Helena Guergis is not standing up for real maternal health either, judging from this message track exchange with NDP MP Irene Mathyssen at Monday's committee meeting.
Ms. Irene Mathyssen: What role will
you play in the Prime Minister's G8 maternal and child health initiative, if any,
and are you at all concerned by the fact that money for women and children in
this country has not appreciably increased in regard to maternal health and
child health?
Hon. Helena Guergis: I will play
whatever role it is that the Prime Minister is defining for me in this process,
happily, and I'm very proud and honoured to be a part of that process.
Memo to the HarperCons: Read a book, maybe a science book, or a medical text.
There's been plenty of emailing, tweeting, Facebook posting, blogging and more about International Women's Day, now marking its 100th anniversary. No question women in the west have considerably advanced from being nothing more than chattel to citizens ostensibly enjoying equal rights. (Although, the fight really never ends.)
But the human race and the planet would be far better off if women everywhere had access to reproductive choices and maternal healthcare, education and land and property rights. Instead, they suffer forced marriage, devastatingly early pregnancies, multiple births, crushing burdens of having to look after small children while also walking miles for food, water and kindling ...
Over the past couple of years, since this blog was birthed, I've been pleased to see some of these notions gain traction beyond the usual NGOs. There's a lot of talk. But there seems to be little political action.
Political action is what is needed.
And so, for International Women's Day, I would like to propose you do one thing to help women in one country where we already investing so much blood and treasure.
Orzala Ashraf, a women’s rights activist in Kabul, blames the government: “Laws are clear about crimes but we see big criminals thriving and being nurtured by the state for illicit political gains,” she told IRIN, pointing to the government’s alleged failure to address human rights violations committed over the past three decades of conflict.
“Because no one is put on trial for his crimes, a criminal culture is being promoted: violators have no fear of the law, prosecution and a meaningful penalty,” said Ashraf.
Deep-seated ambivalence to women’s rights is evident from a law signed off by President Hamid Karzai in early 2009: The Shia Personal Status Law, dubbed a ‘rape legalizing law’, was amended after strong domestic and international pressure.
“The first version [of the law] was totally intolerable,” said Najia Zewari, a women’s rights expert with the UN Fund for Women (UNIFEM). “Despite positive changes in the final version, there are articles that still need to be discussed and reviewed further,” she said.
Another example of this ambivalence is the case of the men who threw acid in the faces of 15 female students in Kandahar city in November 2008: Karzai publicly vowed they would be “severely punished” but court officials in Kandahar and Kabul have said they are unaware of the case and do not know where the alleged perpetrators are.
“Judges say the men were wrongly accused and forced to confess,” Ranna Tarina, head of Kandahar women’s affairs department, told IRIN.
Today RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan put out this statement:
Today, on the 8th of March, Afghan women are mourning for the gang-rape of Bashiras and Saimas, for being flogged by most lowed elements, for being auctioned in open market and for their young daughters who put an end to their miserable lives by self-immolation. But the perpetrators of all these crimes are forgiven; therefore they enjoy complete immunity, are still holding their official positions and tightening it through plundering our people and country.
Though we don’t expect anything different from the most corrupt and dirty puppet regime of the world, the pain of Afghan women turns chronic when the world believes that the US and NATO has donated liberation, democracy and human and women rights for Afghanistan; whereas, after eight years of the US and allies’ aggression under the banner of “war on terror”, they empowered the most brutal terrorists of the Northern Alliance and the former Russian puppets – the Khalqis and Parchamis – and by relying on them, the US imposed a puppet government on Afghan people. And instead of uprooting its Taliban and Al-Qaeda creations, the US and NATO continues to kill our innocent and poor civilians, mostly women and children, in their vicious air raids.
<SNIP>
RAWA is eager to get united in solidarity with individuals and forces that are ready to fight for democracy in an independent front against the occupation, the Taliban, Jehadi and Khalqi and Parchami homeland-sellers.
While women of Afghanistan are experiencing a new era of captivity and are in the grip of the fundamentalist monsters, RAWA sends it heartfelt salutations to struggling brave women of Iran, Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nepal, India and the rest of the world and announces solidarity with them.
So, this is the kind of thing our tax dollars are supporting.
Do I advocate abandoning these people? No. But I do think that we can let our politicians know that this is not acceptable, not under Canada's flag.
I don't like to give politicians free reign rein but I have to say that I endorse every word of this Liberal party of Canada news release, posted here without any edits. I did add some links.
Today, Liberal MPs Carolyn Bennett, Maria Minna and Anita Neville released the following open letter to International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda:
Dear Minister Oda:
We are writing today to urge you to reconsider your ill-advised decision to not include Canada’s longstanding support for contraception and reproductive health services as part of your recently-announced maternal and infant health initiative for some of the world’s poorest countries.
By refusing to fund programs that respect women’s reproductive rights – including contraception and reproductive health services – you are allowing ideological differences to get in the way of good health care and gender equality.
While immunization, access to clean water, better nutrition and improved training for health-care workers are all important to the health and safety of women and girls, addressing the real issues underlying poor maternal and infant health requires that the full gamut of options be made available to promote educated family planning and gender equality. Anything less is a mere bandaid solution.
We are particularly concerned when we see members of your government spreading false information on this issue. In a recent editorial, Conservative MPs Maurice Vellacott and Brad Trost tell readers that there is “no evidence” to back up claims that proper education, resources and support would reduce maternal death and complications – when in fact there is substantial factual evidence.
Just an excerpt from that editorial, penned by two TheoCon MPs who are clearly experts on what is good for women:
As Ian Gentles, research director at the deVeber Institute for
Bioethics and Social Research, noted in a recent National Post article,
Poland virtually prohibited abortion 20 years ago. Since then, maternal
mortality has decreased by 75 per cent, infant mortality by almost 66
per cent, and the rate of premature births by more than 50 per cent.
According
to the World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2009, Ireland,
the only other European country where abortion is illegal, has the
lowest maternal mortality ratio of any country, with one death per
100,000 live births.
A 2006 International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) report ("Death and Denial: Unsafe Abortion and Poverty") demonstrates that women who can’t access reproductive health services are more likely to obtain an unsafe abortion, and more likely to die as a result of pregnancy, childbirth or unsafe abortion.
The report states that satisfying the unmet need for contraceptive services in developing countries would avert 52 million unintended pregnancies annually, which, in turn, would save more than 1.5 million lives and prevent 505,000 children from losing their mothers.
The key findings of the report are that maternal deaths in developing countries could be slashed by 70 per cent and newborn deaths cut nearly in half if the world doubled its investment in family planning and pregnancy-related care. It states that “investing in both family planning and maternal newborn services can achieve the same dramatic outcomes for $1.5 billion less than investing in maternal and newborn services alone.”
The risk of maternal mortality increases with each pregnancy. Yet research shows that 215 million women who would like to delay or avoid childbearing do not have access to modern contraception. Providing contraception to those who want it would avert about one-third of maternal deaths.
About 20 million women have unsafe abortions every year. About 8.5 million of those women need hospital care for complications, but that is not available to about three million of these women.
According to the UN Population Division, 61 percent of the world’s population live in countries where abortion is permitted. Providing safe abortion services where abortion is legal would prevent many of the estimated 68,000 deaths of women each year from complications arising from unsafe abortions.
But this issue goes beyond adequate health care. International human rights law states very clearly that maternal mortality constitutes a violation of the right to life and is linked to or results from violations of many other human rights, including the rights to health, education, equality and non-discrimination.
Canada is a signatory to several agreements that commit to providing a full range of safe and reliable family planning methods and reproductive health services. The Development Assistance Accountability Act, for example, requires that any assistance provided by Canada be consistent with international human rights standards. In June 2009, a UN Human Rights Council resolution also committed Canada to provide “the effective promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls” which includes “sexual and reproductive health.”
Getting beyond addressing the symptoms of poverty means giving women the resources they need to make decisions about their lives, which is the key to lifting entire communities out of destitution.
Based on what we’ve seen from your government thus far, we have every reason to be concerned. Your government has launched a systematic assault against women’s equality here in Canada. You have banned the words “gender equality” from the lexicon of the department of Foreign Affairs and Status of Women Canada. You have cut funding to Status of Women and scrapped the Court Challenges Program. And you have downgraded pay equity from a non-negotiable right to a bargaining chip.
In conclusion, we once again urge you to reverse your position around your maternal and infant health initiative. We ask you to fight for what is right and reasonable, and in the best interests of all women. It is only when women and their families are given access to all family planning and reproductive health options that we will truly be successful at helping to lift them out of poverty.
Sincerely,
The Hon. Dr. Carolyn Bennett, Liberal Health Critic and former Public Health Minister
The Hon. Maria Minna, Chair of Liberal Women’s Caucus and former Minister for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA)
The Hon. Anita Neville, Liberal Status of Women Critic and former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister Responsible for Status of Women
Meanwhile, the National Post thinks I am ''hyperventilating'' over the Harper government's attacks on women's rights.
IMAGE: Lifted from this spoof site mocking Vellacott and Trost for their stance on same sex rights.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
... 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.)
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.
The U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) estimates that out of nearly 1,000 sexual abuse and over 1,500 domestic violence cases reported in Sierra Leone last year, there wasn't a single conviction.
"By the end of her lifespan, nearly all Sierra Leonean women will suffer some form of sexual or gender-based violence," says UNDP's deputy country director Samuel Harbor.
At the same time, nearly 250,000 child soldiers have been recruited in various conflicts worldwide, with girls at particular risk of becoming sex slaves, says the U.N. children's agency UNICEF.
"Violence against women and girls is found in all countries," he says, pointing an accusing finger at all 192 U.N. member states.
Let's just focus on Congo, shall we?
KAIROS has fought long and hard to help rape victims in Congo, pushing for counselling and medical treatment while advocating for the distribution and use of emergency post-exposure contraception as well as anti-retroviral treatment for HIV.
But the Harpocrats fail to see the connection between contraception -- never mind abortion -- and maternal health.
So, as far as they are concerned, those women and girls in the Congo are just going to have to stand and deliver, even if it kills them.
But yeah. Canada's government really cares about maternal health.
Antonia Zerbisias has been a Star columnist since 1989 but has been telling people what she thinks ever since she could open her mouth. Her career ambition as an opinionator dates back to Grade 9 when a cartoon commentary on a teacher resulted in her suspension from high school. The principal sent her home with a note calling her "rude, obstreperous and bold." Her parents were neither amused, nor surprised. Once she was punished for being that way. Now she makes it pay. And, because she can take it as well as dish it out, she wants to hear what you have to say. Fire away!
TheStar.com
Copyright Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Toronto Star or www.thestar.com. The Star is not responsible for the content or views expressed on external sites.
Distribution, transmission or republication of any material is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. For information please contact us using our webmaster form. www.thestar.com online since 1996.
Recent Comments