Noor Zia Atmar, one of the first female members of parliament in Afghanistan and an outspoken leader for women’s rights in the country, has requested asylum after fleeing from her abusive husband.
Atmar was in office from 2005 to 2010 and championed reforms to benefit Afghan women and girls. However, after fleeing from an abusive husband and being disowned by her family, Atmar has lived in a shelter for the past two years. Now she has requested asylum, citing that she is no longer welcome in her home country.
“Women are in a worse condition now. Every day they are being killed, having their ears, noses cut. It is not just women in villages – it is also people like me,” Atmar told the Sunday Telegraph. She elaborated to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “I was the victim of abuse. I had a very bitter life while I was with that man. He was getting drunk and hitting me every day. That was his routine. It reached the point where he threw a knife and other sharp objects at me. [That’s why] I’m currently in a women’s shelter.”
Atmar also fears what will happen to women like her if shelters are closed. Recently, the Parliament failed to pass the End Violence Against Women act (EVAW) when the decision was tabled. If EVAW had come to a vote and been rejected, it could have forced women’s shelters across the country to close their doors. “I’m worried that if these shelters close, my sisters [Afghan women] and I who have suffered from domestic violence won’t have anywhere to go. This is our worry,” she told reporters. “If a woman has had her arm or leg broken or has had her nose or ears cut off, should we throw them on the street? In the current situation in Afghanistan the shelters are the only places of refuge for women.” The British embassy has refused to grant Atmar asylum, citing that they do not give asylum for domestic violence alone.
Tensions continue between Russia and the United States in light of an anti-gay law that could jeopardize athletes during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
American Olympic athletes have pledged that they will still attend the Olympics despite calls for a boycott from activists. Nick Symmonds, a 800-meter runner and supporter of gay rights, posted on his blog that if he races against a Russian athlete, “I will shake his hand, thank him for his country’s generous hospitality, and then, after kicking his (butt) in the race, silently dedicate the win to my gay and lesbian friends back home.” Johnny Weir, Olympic figure skater and openly gay, has said he is prepared to be arrested at the Olympics. “In Russia, just the sheer fact that you could be gay, you can get arrested, fined, and it’s a terrible thing to even think of,” he said. “Myself, even, just walking down the street, going to get Starbucks in the morning, and somebody could arrest me just because I look too gay.” But he resolved that despite the threat he will go “Because [this is] what I’m trained to do and [this is] what I’ve devoted my life to.”
While the Olympics are putting the country in the spotlight, Russia’s anti-gay laws are an example of a trend that is spreading in Eastern Europe. Earlier this year, Poland’s former president Lech Walesa told reporters that LGBT members of Parliament should have to sit in back “and even behind a wall.” On the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnel, Stuart Milk, LGBT activist and nephew of Harvey Milk, told Lawrence “This is what we’re seeing not just in Russia, but throughout eastern Europe. You know, I just got back from the Baltic states, from the backyard of Moscow, and we’ve seen these law come up for a vote. And even in the European Union. At the heart, these laws reflect some of the societal attitudes that we have been working on.”
After being shut down in mid July, a local radio station devoted to women is back on the air in the Afghan province of Sar-e Pol.
The radio network, “Voice of Women,” owner alleged that it was shut down after they refused to pay the police $400 a month in bribes. Though the police refute the claims, owner Shafiqullah Azizi took the case to the governor of the province. The radio station came back on the air earlier this month.
The shutdown and subsequent relaunch of the radio station highlight the precarious situation of women’s rights in Afghanistan. The Afghan government has pledged that women’s rights are non-negotiable in the peace negotiations with the Taliban. However, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has voiced concerns that without international support women’s rights could be rolled back in Taliban sympathetic areas or even by the government in order to reach a peace deal.
Afghan Senator Rouh Gul Khairzad and her family were ambushed by Taliban on Wednesday in the Ghazni Province of Afghanistan. Khairzad’s daughter as well as her driver were killed, and Khairzad and her husband were seriously injured and taken to Muqur District Clinic for treatment. There is no word about the senator’s condition in the hospital. Senator Khairzad with her husband and family attempted to go to their home province Nimroz from capital city Kabul for Muslin holiday Eid. The ambush took place between Nimroz and Kabul on the main highway in Ghazni province. Ghazni is one of the provinces where the Taliban has a strong present.
Zabiullah Mujahid, Taliban’s spokesman could not confirm or deny the responsibility of this attack and “saying it was hard to obtain information from the area.” On Tuesday, Mullah Mohammad Omar, a Taliban leader, publicized a massage related to Eid and said that he wants a better relationship with the world and would support “modern” education and will respect ethnic and religious communities in Afghanistan.
Nicholas Haysom, the UN Secretary-General’s Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and acting head of the UN Assistance Mission of Afghanistan, said in a statement “We condemn this attack in itself – but what makes it worse is that it took place on the eve of Eid-ul-Fitr, a time of peace and goodwill.” According to Associated Press, Khairzad was elected in upper house in 2010, and she is also the head of the defense and internal security commission.
We’re in the midst of a clinics crisis. State by state, regulations and legislation make it harder for clinics to stay open. And make no mistake: though headlines focus narrowly on only the abortion care provided at these clinics, the regulation of health centers means we’re losing much more than one procedure.
Not everyone who steps inside an abortion clinic is seeking an abortion: clinics offer basic gynecological services, STI and UTI testing, cancer screenings, pregnancy tests, contraception, family planning counseling, and educational resources. Some patrons of these clinics aren’t even women: Planned Parenthood provides health care and sexual and reproductive education to nearly five million women, men, and adolescents worldwide each year, preventing more than 684,000 unintended pregnancies annually. (And that’s just Planned Parenthood.) Clinics are valuable resources for people of various gender identities, sexes, sexual orientations, ages, racial and ethnic backgrounds, and religious affiliations. They provide well-rounded, complete reproductive and preventative care and often offer special services for LGBT folks and other marginalized populations such as low-income women. These clinics are safe spaces for people in often scary and unfamiliar situations, and they do work that is handled with serious care.
The care provided by clinics – be they local or part of a national network – is as comprehensive as it preventative, and without clinics it would be largely unaffordable. The women and men losing out when clinics close are predominately low-income and from urban or rural areas, and often find that without their local clinics, there are no accessible alternatives for necessary health care.
Mark Zuckerburg, Facebook CEO and 29-year-old billionaire publically announced his support for comprehensive immigration reform in America at an event geared towards building momentum for immigration reform among members of the House of Representatives on Monday night. The event featured the debut screening of Undocumented, a documentary created by immigration reform activist Jose Antonia Vargas. Until last night, Zuckerburg had not made any public declarations regarding his political stance on the issue of immigration.
Zuckerburg’s reasons for supporting immigration reform stemmed from both his personal and professional experiences. He remarked, “someone did a study and it showed half of tech companies are founded by immigrants” to demonstrate Silicon Valley’s need for comprehensive reform. In addition, he narrated his experiences tutoring young students, “I asked the kids what they were worried about” said Zuckerburg, “One raised his hand and said ‘I’m not sure I can go to college because I’m undocumented,’ it touched me.”
Immigration reform that creates a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants currently living in America illegally has been an issue Zuckerburg has taken on personally through advocacy endeavors in the past, though never in the spotlight until now. The website FWD.us was co-created between Zuckerburg and his Harvard University roommate, Joe Green with the intentions of pressuring Congress to pass comprehensive reform.
A female veteran reacted to a Air Force base victim blaming sexual assault awareness poster that was posted in the women’s restroom by posting a rival flier with actual resources for survivors.
Jennifer Stephens, a federal employee and a veteran in the Ohio Air Force, was outraged over a poster about sexual assault by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base sexual assault coordinator she found in a women’s restroom. The poster featured victim blaming slogans such as Pay attention to your surroundings. Be prepared to get yourself home. Socialize with people who share your values. After Stephens saw this poster, she reflected to reporters I think this is part of the reason victims are afraid to report incidents. If you are a victim and you have done one of the things on that list, you now feel like it is your fault that you were sexually assaulted.
Stephens responded by creating a poster detailing what information should victims of sexual assault know. She wrote an email to the office of sexual assault in the base, urging them to promote culture change and support victims as opposed to tearing victims down by plastering these types of posters all over the base. Stephen concluded with please take a moment to think about how you would feel if you had been assaulted and you went to a Sexual Assault Response Coordinator of Victims Advocate and one of the first questions they asked you was what you were wearing, or if you were alone or if you were drunk. Stephen who is a 10-year veteran of armed forces and a commander in the Ohio National Guard told the reporters that it can create a problem of putting the responsibility on sexually assaulted victims.
Even though sexual assault is under-reported crime in the military, the estimation on sexual assault of last year is 26,000 . According to the Service Women’s Action Network , 37% of female veterans said that they were raped and 14% said they were gang-raped. Outraged lawmakers have introduced different pieces of legislation to combat the epidemic. Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-N.Y) has been leading the push by calling for sexual assault cases to be taken out of the chain of command.
In April 2013, Rosemarie Smead was ordained a Catholic minister. One of many members of a dissenting faction of the Catholic church who are tired of waiting for it to welcome women in leadership, her ordination came with an almost inevitable guarantee of excommunication. Smead wasn’t troubled at all. “It has no sting for me,” she said. “It is a Medieval bullying stick the bishops used to keep control over people and to keep the voices of women silent. I am way beyond letting octogenarian men tell us how to live our lives.”
Smead follows almost 150 other Catholic women who have been ordained all over the world since the modern-woman priest movement began in Austria back in 2002. Their movement comes as a direct response to a 1994 declaration by Pope John Paul II that the Catholic priesthood was reserved only for males—a decree which many feel to be regressive, and for which many have been excommunicated. While the new Pope Francis may lean more liberal when it comes to social issues in the church, his statements recently in an interview with Vatican remains rather close-minded on the issue.
“We cannot limit the role of women in the Church,” he said, “…but with regards to the ordination of women, the Church has spoken and says no.” He added: “That door is closed.” The question of which doors will be opened in the future still remain unanswered.
The lack of women in ecclesiastical leadership, whether consciously or unconsciously, sends a clear message that religious authority is still a man’s arena whereby women must follow in good faith and more supportive roles. That’s why individuals like Smead are so important: even in the face of explicit and implicit gendered pressures, they are pushing the barrier and providing much-needed role models for religious women looking to provide spiritual guidance and influence. They are standing against the argument of tradition for the sake of a new one.
Last March, Harlem ordained their first Southern Baptist minister, Eva Duzant. When asked why it has taken this long to happen, she replied honestly that she didn’t know but admitted own ordination was a slow moving realization. “I decided I wanted to answer the call in 2003, but because you did not see a lot of woman ministers, I held back,” she said. “I had to first identify who I was before I would be able to fulfill not just my needs but the needs of others. But the older I got, the louder he called me.”
And while feminism may continue to be framed by the Pope and others as a dirty word, it’s about time the church started acknowledging the influence patriarchal culture has on their ability to reach out to and uplift all God’s children. Though many Christian denominations continue to obsess about the threat to religion tradition and what it will cost them to adopt women into the priesthood, what they should really be looking at is how much it will cost them to not allow women into the priesthood.
Aside from stunting progress, the choice to ban women from ecclesiastical leadership is bad business. Ordination rates are on the decline – in variousdenominations of Christianity – and valuable human resources are being wasted. The church’s patriarchal desire to maintain gender hierarchy limits its ability to reach out and connect to all of their congregants, or to relate to their congregations’ full spectrum of experiences and needs. It restricts the demographic of those who come to the table with innovative ideas and mutes important voices in their work to solve global inequity issues.
Ultimately, if we really all are created in God’s image and equal in his eyes, all must be equal in representing him as faithful servants in his church – whichever that may be.
The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women has voiced concerns that the rights of women in Afghanistan may be compromised in the interest of peace negotiations.
The Afghan government has pledged that women’s rights are non-negotiable in the peace negotiations with the Taliban. However, the committee is concerned that without international support women’s rights could be rolled back in Taliban sympathetic areas or even by the government in order to reach a peace deal.
At a news briefing, the chair of the committee, Nicole Ameline, told reporters, “We have had official assurances … I would like to consider a government’s word as credible. But she suggesting that women’s rights may be compromised. We are worried about Afghanistan because we’re at a decisive moment. If we don’t manage to preserve the rights of women after having devoted so much energy, resources and support in all forms in this country, it will mark a failure by the international community,” she said.
The committee cited high prevalence of domestic violence, forced marriages, and an increased number of Taliban attacks on girls’ schools. Ameline explained, Afghanistan displays a concentration of forms of violence which for the most part are linked to patriarchal and ancestral systems, and which are exacerbated when they occur in zones which are not necessarily under direct state control.
At a political rally on Friday, an unknown person threw bananas at Cecile Kyenge, Italy’s first black minister. This act comes after a fellow politician, Roberto Calderoli, commented earlier this month that the new minister reminded him of an orangutan. Although Calderoli did apologize after negative public reactions to his comment, he remains in office.
Before the rally police found mannequins covered in red paint with signs that said “Immigration kills.” The right-wing extremist party Forza Nuova has admitted involvement with the mannequins, but no suspect has been identified for the bananas.
Kyenge has been the target of much racial hostility since her appointment in April. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but naturalized as an Italian citizen, the new minister for integration aims to reform laws to grant citizenship to all persons born on Italian soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status. Her opposition comes from right-wing extremists who find fault with her race and political agenda.
Kyenge has spoken out against the racist attacks , declaring the banana incident “sad” and a “waste of food.” She has called for change in national opinions about race and immigration, declaring that “the courage and optimism to change things has to come above all from the bottom up to reach the institutions.”
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published a report Monday saying that 30 million girls are at risk for female genital mutilation (FGM), despite a global decline in the practice. The report (PDF here) covers data from over 20 years in 29 countries across Africa and the Middle East where the practice is still prevalent.
The report cites cultural acceptance as a reason for the practice’s persistence in some areas. Some countries have shown a promising decline in FGM, yet in others, like Somalia, Guinea, Djbouti, and Egypt, 9 out of 10 girls are subjected to the practice. In places where FGM is in decline, both men and women oppose its practice. About 125 million women in the world have already undergone the procedure.
FGM is widely recognized as a violation of human rights, including by the United Nations. According to UNICEF Deputy Executive Director Geeta Rao Gupta, “FGM/C [sic] is a violation of a girl’s rights to health, well-being and self-determination. What is clear from this report is that legislation alone is not enough. The challenge now is to let girls and women, boys and men speak out loudly and clearly and announce they want this harmful practice abandoned.”
From 2004 to 2010, the prices that insurers paid for childbirth — one of the most universal medical encounters — rose 49 percent for vaginal births and 41 percent for Caesarean sections in the United States, with average out-of-pocket costs rising fourfold,according to a recent report by Truven that was commissioned by three health care groups. The average total price charged for pregnancy and newborn care was about $30,000 for a vaginal delivery and $50,000 for a C-section, with commercial insurers paying out an average of $18,329 and $27,866, the report found.
Women with insurance pay out of pocket an average of $3,400, according to a survey byChildbirth Connection, one of the groups behind the maternity costs report. Two decades ago, women typically paid nothing other than a small fee if they opted for a private hospital room or television.
In most developed nations, maternal care is relatively cheap and often covered by state healthcare; in the US, however, many women are without healthcare, and even those who do have general coverage often don’t have maternity coverage. During delivery, services must be purchased individually – each ultrasound for $1,000, an epidural for an additional $1,000 – and hospitals sometimes can’t even offer accurate estimates of the cost of giving birth. One would think that the huge cost of pregnancies in the US would mean decent maternal care, but that is unfortunately not the case: the rates of infant and maternal mortality in the US are incredibly high for an industrialized nation. In the US, 21 mothers die out of every 100,000 live births, compared to Sweden’s 5 out of every 100,000.
When women get pregnant in America, they pay more and die more than women in other industrialized nations. Reproductive justice is not yet a reality for women, as reproductive health services and maternal care are quite simply unaffordable for many. And while women cannot afford to become parents, they are also being denied their right to end unwanted pregnancies, gradually, state by state. It seems as though women are being put in a tighter and tighter bind, and one which may be financially impossible to navigate in this economy. Many women who absolutely cannot afford the tens of thousands of dollars that it takes to safely give birth child to a healthy child are losing their other options every day. Now, women cannot access or afford the health services they need, regardless of whether they choose to keep the child or to end the pregnancy.
Taking away vital health services and restricting a woman’s right to choose does not lead to a happy and healthy family, and the difference between a child who survives and a child who struggles may be as high as a $45,000 bundle fee for delivery. Policy changes need to be enacted that give women a full spectrum of family planning resources and choices – starting with comprehensive sex education and lasting through a mother’s time of child-rearing. With children come unexpected costs and sacrifices – but your life savings, and even your life itself, shouldn’t be on the table.
Under the Taliban rule, women faced serious restrictions that regulated their dress, conduct, education, economic participation, health, and activities. While there have been some improvements in women’s rights since the fall of the Taliban rule in 2001, many are concerned that the withdrawal of US troops next year will result in a regression of those advances as well as halt further improvements. According to a Human Rights Watch report, “half of all girls are still not in school and female literacy remains extremely low. Child marriage and forced marriage are common, with 39 percent of girls married before age 18.”
It is estimated that international donors will contribute another $200 million to the program, bringing total funding for the program to $400 million. Head of USAID in Afghanistan, Rajiv Shah, stated that“It is a unique effort to ensure that women are a major part of Afghanistan’s social, economic and political fabric over the next decade, because if they’re not Afghanistan is not likely to be successful.”
Today Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) will sign a strict anti-abortion bill into law that will jeopardize 37 of the state’s 42 clinics.
Abortion rights organizations have vowed to challenge the law. Both the ACLU and Planned Parenthood Action Fund are currently evaluating their legal options. Similar laws and provisions have been ruled unconstitutional by state and federal courts in Arizona, Idaho, North Dakota, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Many other states currently have stays or temporary injunctions against anti-abortions laws such as Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Kansas.
The Texas law, passed by the full state legislature late last week, requires all abortions to be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, abortion providers to have transfer agreements with local hospitals no more than 30 miles away from the facility, and that providers remain in the room for the entirety of a procedure even when medication-induced. The legislation will also ban abortion after 20 weeks with no exception for rape or incest.
Recently, abortion rights advocate Sarah Slamen revealed that Perry’s older sister, Milla Perry Jones, could represent a conflict of interest for the governor regarding the legislation. Jones is currently a board member of the Texas Ambulatory Surgical Center Society and vice-president of government affairs for United Surgical Partners International. Slamen and other critics believe that by forcing all abortion care to be provided in ambulatory surgical centers will financially benefit Jones and potentially Perry.
Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia Attorney General and Republican Gubernatorial candidate, launched a website yesterday defending his state’s unconstitutional anti-sodomy law.
Cuccinelli’s new website, www.vachildpredators.com, equates sodomy and oral sex with pedophilia, claiming that 90 child sex offenders — found guilty under Virginia’s anti-sodomy Crimes Against Nature law — will be released if the Supreme Court does not restore the legislation. The Crimes Against Nature law bans oral and anal sexual acts, even between married, heterosexual consenting adults acting in the privacy of their own home.
The Supreme Court deemed Virginia’s law unconstitutional in 2003, following the Lawrence v. Texas ruling against anti-sodomy legislation. Virginia’s law has stayed on the books and Cuccinelli used it to charge a 47-year-old man for soliciting oral sex from a 17-year-old in March.
A federal appeals court rejected the sodomy charge, but Cuccinelli filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, in hopes of overturning Lawrence v. Texas.
Cuccinelli is using the website to attack his Democratic gubernatorial opponent, Terry McAuliffe, saying he is “playing politics” instead of “protecting our children.” McAuliffe said Cuccinelli’s anti-sodomy stance is another example of the Attorney General’s extreme, anti-gay social agenda.
Cuccinelli is one of the only U.S. elected officials to believe homosexuality should be punishable by law and should result in jail time. He told the Virginian-Pilot in 2009 that homosexual acts are “intrinsically wrong.”
Cuccinelli, along with the attorney general of Indiana, wrote an amicus brief opposing gay marriage in the recent California Proposition 8 case, which was struck down by the Supreme Court in June
House Votes to Delay Key Obamacare Provisions The US House of Representatives voted yesterday to delay two key provisions of the Affordable Care Act — marking the 38th and 39th times the House has voted to repeal or amend all or some of President Obama’s landmark legislation.
Wednesday, the House voted for a one-year delay on the requirement that most Americans insurance by 2014.
Legislators also voted to delay the requirement that employers with 50 employees or more to provide health coverage, even though Obama already announced that implementation of this provision will be delayed one year.
The senate does not plan to vote on either piece of legislation. Democrats are calling the votes another attempt by Republicans to weaken the Affordable Care Act and waste time.
Today, Obama will discuss the health care law in a speech at the White House, focusing specifically on a provision that will require insurance providers to refund customers when they spend less than 80% of premiums on medical care. Obama said the provision will result in 8.5 million Americans receiving $500 million in refunds this summer.
A compromise Tuesday between Senate Democrats and Republicans will, at least temporarily, reduce the gridlock of executive appointments. Republicans agreed to move several confirmations through in exchange for Democrats halting their plans to dramatically alter the rules of the Senate, especially the filibuster.
The compromise allowed the appointment of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to move through the Senate with a vote of 66 to 34 immediately after it was announced. The Senate also approved the appointment of Tom Perez as the Secretary of Labor, who has been supportive Several other nominations are expected to be confirmed soon, including the Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s Issues and positions in the Environmental Protection Agency.
In exchange, Democrats withdrew two nominations made by President Obama to the National Labor Relations Board that Republicans contested were illegally made during recess and bypassed the Senate. President Obama has announced two new nominations for the positions that Republicans have said will be confirmed.
Fix the Senate Now, a coalition that “advocates for sensible change to the rules governing the U.S. Senate,” said that this was an important step but that there is still a lot of work to be done to streamline the legislative process. “Until the Senate raises the costs of obstruction to make gridlock for gridlock’s sake a less viable strategy, we will continue to work to fix the broken Senate,” they said.
On Monday, the Bangladesh Parliament approved a new law aimed at expanded worker rights, especially in the garment industry. The law grants factory workers the right to unionize, as well as requires insurance for factory workers.
An important part of this law is that workers in the factory do not need approval from the factory owners for trade union, which previously was a major barrier to labor rights. In addition, all structure changes to factories must be approved by governmental inspectors before beginning construction. The law also requires that 5% of annual profits be deposited in employee welfare funds.
Many lawmakers hailed the legislations as a major advancement. The head of the parliamentary sub-committee on labor issues, Israfal Alam, told reporters “the new laws are historic.” However, labor leaders are reluctant to praise the measures just yet. Labor leader Wajedul Islam told reporters “We had raised some concerns. We hope they have addressed those issues. Otherwise this legislation will be a futile exercise.” The president of the Workers Party of Bangladesh and a member of parliament, Rashed Khan Menon, said “They have made progress but the government rushed with it. They should have spent more time to deliberate on the issue of compensation for the injured and dead, maternity benefits and rights of domestic workers.”
The legislation comes after Bangladesh received international scrutiny in the wake of a garment factory collapse that killed over 1,000 workers, mostly women. Approximately 80% of the garment factory workforce in Bangladesh are women who are often responsible for providing for their families. Under grueling working conditions, workers in garment factories can make as little as $26 a month. Last month, President Obama revoked trade privileges with Bangladesh, citing the poor working conditions in factories.
Last week, the UN Women, the UN body charged with advancing gender equality, announced that Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka from South Africa would take the position of Executive Director. The announcement came on Wednesday from the office of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was the first woman to become the deputy president of South Africa, after climbing the political ladder from her role as a member of parliament in 1994. Prior to that she was the first president of the Natal Organisation of Women, which aimed to increase women’s rights in the country. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, Mlambo-Ngcuka said
“I would like to take this work to a much larger constituency so the work of the woman is embraced by a larger constituency, beyond the traditional constituency for women… The issue of human rights is definitely at the top of the agenda.[For] women in areas where there is conflict and women in areas where there is peace, domestic violence is huge problem across the board and in different parts of the world. Poverty, poverty, poverty – this is one of the biggest challenges facing women.”
Mlambo-Ngcuka will start in her new position in August. She will replace former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet, who resigned in March to begin another presidential campaign in her home country.
Early Friday morning, Irish lawmakers passed a bill allowing abortions if the mother’s life is in danger. For the first time the Roman Catholic country approved a bill in the lower house of the parliament (Dail) in a 127 to 31 vote. The controversial bill will allow a woman to terminate her pregnancy if two physicians can verify that there is a “real and substantial” risk to the mother’s health in continuing with the pregnancy. Only one physician’s verification is necessary if the health risks to the mother are immediate. One of the more controversial aspects of the bill is the provision that allows three physicians to approve a termination if the woman is in danger of committing suicide due to the pregnancy.
This legislation was prompted by the preventable death of Savita Halappanavar in November 2012. Halappanavar was 17-weeks pregnant when she arrived at University Hospital Galway complaining of severe back pain. Doctors determined that she was miscarrying, and despite serious threats to her health, the physicians refused to remove the fetus because there was a heartbeat. After the heartbeat stopped, she was transferred to intensive care where she died three days later of a condition similar to blood poisoning.
Many countries in the world are now facing debates on abortion laws. Most recently, an 11-year-old Chilean girl who was raped and faces serious health risks if she chooses to continue the pregnancy has sparked serious debate in her country. And a woman from El Salvador was forced to challenge the country’s Supreme Court in order to receive an abortion that would save her life, in which the court rejected.
