Mary Jo Kilroy won a tight race for Ohio’s 15th congressional district by a 2,311 vote margin and officially declared victory last night. Kilroy faced Ohio state Senator Steve Stivers, a Republican, in her second bid for a House seat. Provisional ballots put Kilroy over the top against Stivers, who was leading by 594 votes […]
The Kansas State Supreme Court issued a ruling Friday in a lawsuit related to former Attorney General Phill Kline’s conduct in an ongoing case with Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who is one of the few late-term abortion providers in the US that serves women with troubled pregnancies and complicated health problems. The lawsuit […]
Uruguayan President Tabare Vazquez resigned from the Socialist party last week after disagreement with the party over abortion legislation that he vetoed in November. The legislation would have legalized abortion in the first trimester due to hardship on the basis of economics, family, age, health, or risk to the mother’s life, according to Agence France […]
A new review published in the journal Contraception by Johns Hopkins researchers found no link between abortion and psychological trauma or long-term effects on mental health. The review also found that “studies with the most flawed methodology consistently found negative mental health consequences of abortion [and that] scientists are still conducting research to answer politically […]
New York Governor David Paterson has refused to accept a state commission’s list of recommended candidates for chief judge of the state Court of Appeals because the list does not include a single woman. In a press conference on Wednesday, Gov. Paterson strongly criticized the bipartisan Commission on Judicial Nomination, saying, “I don’t accept that […]
Two Iranian women have been sentenced to death in the past week, one by stoning. According to a Women’s Forum Against Fundamentalism in Iran (WFAFI) press release in Iran 14 women currently face execution by stoning in Iran, a punishment faced only by those accused of adultery. According to Agence France Presse, Afsaneh R. and […]
The Pittsburgh School Board and the non-profit Women’s Law Project announced yesterday that a Title IX audit will be performed on the City League’s nine high school athletic programs. The decision comes after the Women’s Law Project’s initial assessments found alleged Title IX violations at two area high schools, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The […]
The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) released a report this week that found unions generally have a positive impact on the salaries and benefits of women workers. The study, Unions and Upward Mobility for Women Workers (see PDF), found that all other factors controlled, women who joined a union were more likely to […]
Ten Taliban insurgents have been arrested in the case of an acid attack against schoolgirls that took place in November outside of the Mirwais Nika Girls High School in the southern city of Kandahar. In the attack, two men on motorcycles sprayed at least 15 Afghan girls and teachers who were walking to school with […]
A new study finds that access to emergency contraception has improved since the 2006 ruling by the FDA allowing the morning after pill to be sold without a prescription to women 18 and older. The FDA approved prescription-only sales of the morning-after pill or “Plan B” in 1999, but attempts to make the drug available […]
The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati made a landmark decision last week by allowing a class-action lawsuit involving alleged sexual abuse by clergy against the Vatican to proceed. The lead attorney on the case, William F. McMurry, told The Wall Street Journal that “what the court has allowed us to do is proceed […]
This past year, Basra, one of Iraq’s largest cities, has seen the number of women murdered in honor killings nearly double. So far, 81 women have been murdered in so-called honor killings this year, compared to the 47 women who were killed in 2007, according to Reuters. An anonymous Basra lawyer told the Observer that […]
Planned Parenthood of Indiana will offer gift certificates for their services this holiday season. The Indiana state vice president of PPFA told Indiana’s CBS 10 that the decision to offer the certificates is in part because of the economic downturn: “People are making really tough decisions about putting gas in their car and food on […]
Worlds AIDS Day is being commemorated globally today with HIV/AIDS testing initiatives, awareness drives, and fundraising efforts. Since its discovery in the early 1980s, AIDS has killed over 25 million people and today 3.3 million are living with HIV worldwide. A United Nations report (see PDF) released earlier this year indicated that the percentage of […]
A demining team of 15 women, which is the first all-female demining team in the Middle East, began work yesterday detecting and removing landmines in northern Jordan. A second team of women will begin in February 2009. The women, who were trained and contracted by Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA), will work alongside all male teams […]
Ellen Moran, Executive Director of Emily’s List since 2005, was named as the next White House Communications Director by President-Elect Barack Obama Saturday. Obama also revealed who will fill other key positions on his communications team. Robert Gibbs, the Obama campaign’s communications director, will be Press Secretary and Daniel Pfeiffer, an Obama campaign spokesman and […]
A circuit court judge ruled Tuesday that a law banning gay and lesbian people from adopting children in Florida is unconstitutional. Judge Cindy S. Lederman ruled that the law violated the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution as well as the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, a federal law that seeks to […]
A new bill was just approved unanimously by the Czech Republic cabinet that would extend abortion privileges and other health services to all European Union (EU) citizens. The bill is being met with strong resistance by deputies of the Christian Democratic Union (KDU-CSL), a junior governing party, who have concerns the Czech Republic will become […]
An “embryo adoption” service was founded earlier this month through the Cedar Park Assembly of God Church in Seattle by Maria Lancaster, whose daughter Elisha was conceived after an embryo donation. Nationally, there are close to 400,000 frozen embryos currently in storage left over from in vitro fertilization procedures. According to the Seattle Times, brochures […]
Today marks the United Nations’ (UN) International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. According to the UN, at least one in three women worldwide “has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime.” The economic costs of domestic violence in the United States alone exceed more than $5.8 million each […]
