We did it! On November 7, Californians defeated a dangerous parental notification initiative for the second year in a row. Proposition 85 suffered an even greater defeat than last year's Proposition 73, proving once again that when voters understand the dangerous consequences of notification laws and the anti-choice motives behind them, they vote "No."
As a member of the Campaign for Real Teen Safety, PPGG was part of an incredible coalition of doctors, nurses, teachers, civil rights, labor and LGBT groups.
California was not alone. Pro-choice voters across the nation came out to protect women's health and rights.
Speaking of abortion as a human rights issue, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights has recently released a landmark statement condemning Nicaragua's therapeutic abortion ban. Calling the ban a threat to women's lives, as well as a violation of their physical and psychological integrity, the statement points out that "therapeutic abortion has been internationally recognized as a specialized and necessary health service for women, its ultimate purpose being to save the life of the mother when threatened during pregnancy." It also highlights the fact that criminalizing a life-saving medical procedure such as therapeutic abortion "hinders the work of health care professionals, whose mission is to protect the lives of their patients and provide them with adequate treatment."
Right on. The Inter-American Commission's statement echoes what Nicaraguanwomen and their doctors have been saying since the beginning: banning abortion violates the human rights of women.
Usually when we think of the HIV pandemic, we think of one big health crisis, and a lot of "mini-pandemics" under its umbrella, many of which are based in social "ills" of some sort. Crises in immigration. Under-resourced or even failing health care systems. Millions of kids who have or will lose their parents to AIDS. But we too infrequently think of HIV as part of *another* pandemic - that of the universal and seemingly un-abating crisis of gender-based violence (GBV) And, more to the point here, we (I understand this "we" to be quite broad: activists, policymakers, researchers, academics, health care providers, teachers, etc.) - "we" writ large - have not paid close enough attention to the ways these social and health crises are linked. HIV and gender-based violence, and violence against women in particular, are mutually reinforcing. In too many circumstances, they invent each other, as cause and consequence.
Marcy Bloom does U.S. advocacy and capacity building for GIRE - El Grupo de Informacion en Reproduccion Elegida/The Information Group on Reproductive Choice.
[img_assist|nid=1642|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=99|height=100]Over the years I have contemplated and written about the critical importance of destigmatizing abortion in US culture. That mission has now expanded to the international realm. So, when I discovered a 2005 document from the Polish Federation for Women and Family Planning, "Contemporary Women's Hell: Polish Women's Stories," I was intrigued.
A sad and tragic title, but one that all too accurately describes the current painful abortion situation in Poland, as well as in far too many parts of the world.
Gloria Feldt is a leading expert in women's rights, women's health, and politics from where the personal meets the political.
With W, up is down and down is sideways. We've grown inured to the duplicity, the sleight of hand, the wink while Halliburton profits as our sons and daughters die in Iraq, the ruthlessness with which the 1 percent get richer while the rest of us get a burgeoning national debt and fewer of us get health insurance.
So it's no surprise that the man talks piously about creating a culture of life while taking funding from lifesaving prevention programs like family planning and giving it to abstinence only preachers. This makes the U. S. the laughingstock of the world's public health organizations and in the end paradoxically increases disease, unintended pregnancies, abortions, and deaths.
Just in time for the Christmas season, there's a hideous little movie being advertised online by the Gunn brothers, the celebrated cinematic duo that brought us Shaky Town (on how marauding bands of San Francisco-based gay terrorists want to burn your churches and eat your children). The film is The Monstrous Regiment of Women and the title is just the beginning. With the stated goal of "blasting feminism" and "extolling femininity" (since they are mutually exclusive, natch), The Monstrous Regiment of Women seeks to set the record straight on feminism, which, in case you hadn't heard, has "restricted choices for all women, brought heartache to the lives of many, and perpetuated the largest holocaust since the beginning of time."
The signs are everywhere: wreaths and lights decorate lampposts and buildings, shoppers scurry to and fro in search of gifts, the "do nothing" Congress is finally over... yes, the holidays are here and not a moment too soon. I don't think it is an overstatement to say that this was another difficult year. Once again, reproductive rights were under attack in America, from Supreme Court nominations to parental notification, from funding for the Title X family planning program to the hopefully overstated war on contraception.
Lest I seem too "Bah, humbug," however, I should point out some of the bright spots of 2006. Plan B was finally approved for over-the-counter sales, the South Dakota abortion ban was defeated, the first-ever HPV vaccine hit the market, and a handful of states turned down federal abstinence-only-until-marriage program dollars in recognition of the dangers inherent in these programs.
Uganda's First Lady Janet Museveni sounds a lot like President Bush and his minions in the Christian right.
Mrs. Museveni is on a mission to ensure that the only method of preventing HIV and AIDS in her country is through strict adherence to abstinence-only education for everyone. Sound familiar?
The First Lady of Uganda is a Born-again Christian who equates condom use with murder. She also offers scholarships to girls in her country who can prove they are virgins; something to which George Bush can only aspire.
On World AIDS Day this year, Mrs. Museveni told students at the Uganda Christian University, Mukono, "I would not be caught advising you to take any shortcuts or compromise your lives by using any device invented by man, such as condoms, in order to facilitate any desire to go against God's clear plan for your life."
Elizabeth Nash is a Public Policy Associate in the Guttmacher Institute's WashingtonDC office.
It's only been about a month since the midterm election that brought significant prochoice victories, including the defeat of South Dakota's draconian abortion ban and the rejection of ballot initiatives in California and Oregon that would have required parental notification before a minor could obtain an abortion. And yet, it is already time to go back to work as antiabortion advocates are gearing up once again to continue restricting access to abortion services.
Stephanie Simon reported in the LA Times shortly after the election that one of the antichoice movement's primary goals will be to "expand or rewrite ‘informed consent' laws" - a favorite and perennial tactic. According to a recent analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, written counseling materials often contain medically inaccurate, out-of-date or biased information - violating a core tenet of the principles of informed consent.
Informed consent - the concept that individuals have a right to receive relevant, accurate and unbiased information prior to receiving medical care so they can make sound decisions regarding treatment - is a bedrock principle of medical ethics. Moreover, the obligation to provide such information is mandated by statute or case law in all 50 states.
Muslim scholars from around the world have called for female circumcision (also called ‘female genital mutilation' or FGM) to be banned. They have unequivocally claimed that Islam offers no justification for the procedure and that those who carry it out should face punishment. At the recent conference on the subject, the religious scholars went so far as to assert that governments should make and enforce legal consequences for those who continue the practice.
A little background: Female circumcision is the removal of all or part of the external female genitalia. With some of the most severe practices, a woman or a girl has all of her genitalia removed and then stitched together leaving openings for intercourse and menstruation. According to Amnesty International, an estimated 135 million girls have undergone the procedure.
Last week, the gathering of Muslim scholars claimed that the practice amounts to violence against women and Islam forbids people from inflicting harm on others. They held that those who circumcise their daughters were doing exactly that.
