The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[femmeInterrupted]

This is infuriating. Victim blaming bullshit.

http://samuel-warde.com/2012/11/amer...tim-is-blamed/


"We have heard a lot this year about the so-called “War On Women”. Conservatives on the one hand want to say there is no war, liberals strongly state the opposite.

Personally, I find it incredible that anyone c0uld deny such a war exists with all the recent legislation regarding women’s reproductive healthcare services, comments by bloviating ignoramuses such as Rush Limbaugh, Richard Mourdock and Todd Akins. Hell there is even a website now showing how many days it has been since a Republican mentioned “rape” while campaigning.

The official Republican National Committee Platform presents the harshest take on women’s issues in decades and their candidate for president, Mitt Romney, refuses to say where he stands on women’s pay – even after repeated questions regarding the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

In the midst of this misogynistic frenzy, one recent news items stands out from all the rest when last week in California, the Moraga School District, alleged that a 12 year old girl, who suffered prolonged sexual abuse spanning years at the hands of two middle school teachers was “careless,” “negligent” and “was herself responsible for the acts and damages of which she claims”.

Let’s think about this one for a minute. A school district, a branch of civic government is saying that a young girl – 12 to 13 years old – is herself responsible for prolonged acts of sexual abuse by 2 of its teachers?

And their response? What about their response?

They did for whatever idiotic reason feel compelled to issue a response, as if anything they could ever write or say could justify their intent.

In their statement they wrote: “We certainly empathize with Ms. Cunnane and did not intend to cause her further distress in filing our formal Answer to her Complaint. However, this is a significant case that could have serious consequences for our school district. She is demanding several million dollars in damages. As a result, at this point in the proceedings we have an obligation not to waive any potential legal lines of defense. … Ms. Cunnane and the media have seized on only one of the nine potential areas and over-exaggerated its importance.”

Now how in the hell does one “empathize” with what essentially amounts to the unprovoked rape of a child? [And for those of you fond of splitting hairs - I write unprovoked because there is no way anyone can reasonably state that a 12 year old child can provoke a sexual act.]

And what about the talk of serious consequences to the school district and millions of dollars in potential damages? What about the serious consequences to a 12 year old child, who as it turns out foolishly thought she was safe at school in the care of teachers? What about the damages to her spirit and body?

And with all due respect, what the hell is this talk about their claim the victim “seized on only one of the nine potential areas and over-exaggerated its importance”? WTF?!?

Are these people serious?

And what about the victim, Ms. Cunnane?

“It’s hard to see that I’m ‘seizing on’ something,” she told KTUV, “because this is my life.” She told the KTUV reporter that she felt the school district response tells rape victims everywhere that they are the ones to blame.

“It felt like I got punched in the stomach, and I stood up and thought about how young I was when I was 12 to 13 years old at the school,” said Cunnane. “For them to use words like ‘negligent’ and ‘responsible’ just broke my heart.”

As reported by the Oakland Tribune, the school district’s attorney stated that the language used in their response was “appropriate” and “necessary” for a civil case with significant ramifications and went on to note that “every potential defense” must be raised in such legal filings, “since failure to do so results in a waiver of the defense.”"It is imperative that all possible defenses be raised at this point in time. As more facts become known, the district will then reassess its defenses”.Ms. Cunnane’s attorney and noted youth law expert, Paul Llewellyn noted: “That (the) defendants would go so far as to blame a child victim of sexual abuse rather than admit or even examine their own wrongdoing is offensive and appalling”.

Again, as reported by the Oakland Tribune “Cunnane was sexually abused by two Moraga middle school teachers in the 1990s, one of them over a four-year period. She sued the district, retired Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School principal Bill Walters, retired assistant principal Paul Simonin and retired superintendent John Cooley in Contra Costa Superior Court, saying they repeatedly ignored allegations of abuse, allowing her and other students to be victimized. The lawsuit alleges negligence, fraudulent concealment, conspiracy to commit fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress, and cites an investigation by this newspaper as revealing for the first time the district’s knowledge of the alleged abuse.

Former Joaquin Moraga P.E. teacher Julie Correa pleaded guilty to rape and sexual battery against Cunnane over a four-year period beginning in 1996, when Cunnane was an eighth-grader. Cunnane said Correa groomed her after she confided in her that Joaquin Moraga science teacher Daniel Witters had molested her. Witters committed suicide shortly after a group of girls came forward with allegations in 1996, and police stopped investigating him criminally after that.”

[femmeInterrupted]

I've been going through a massive feminist crisis lately. My own politics and a belief in non-violence is being tested, as I ponder the gendered nature of forgiveness. Instead, I am thinking about UNforgiveness and IRreconciliation.
I am starting to think about forms of resistance and what those may mean to our women's communities. I see tiny pockets of women globally, literally picking up sticks and resisting. And when I see how many of our girls and women are chewed up and crunched alive in the jaws of gender oppression, I feel less and less like 'nurturing' and 'teaching' and 'talking' and more and more like creating change through some serious ass kicking. Seriously.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/21/wo...r.html?hp&_r=0




NEW DELHI — Hundreds of demonstrators besieged New Delhi’s police headquarters on Saturday to protest the kidnapping, rape and torture of a 5-year-old girl last week.


The injured girl was moved Friday evening to New Delhi’s finest public hospital on a gurney covered with stuffed toys, and by Saturday she was alert and in stable condition, according to doctors there. She was being given fluids and intravenous antibiotics to fight a blood infection, the doctors said, and further operations will have to wait until the infection has abated.

Meanwhile, the police arrested a 22-year-old garment worker early Saturday morning in Bihar, said Rajan Bhagat, a Delhi police spokesman. The police identified the suspect as Manoj, who, like many Indians, uses only one name. He had recently married and was tracked down with the help of cellphone records in the town where his in-laws live, according to Indian news reports.

The suspect had an apartment in New Delhi in the same building as the girl, whom he is accused of abducting, raping and torturing last Sunday night. The Times of India reported that he told the police he fled his apartment shortly thereafter because he believed that the girl had died. The girl’s parents discovered her on Wednesday in the man’s apartment.

“This is the first time I have seen such barbarism,” R. K. Bansal, medical superintendent of Swami Dayanand Hospital, said Friday in a televised interview. “There were injuries on her lips, cheeks, arms and anus area. Her neck had bruise marks suggesting that attempts were made to strangle her.”

He said a bottle almost eight inches long and pieces of candle had been inserted “into her private parts.”

In December, a woman was gang-raped and tortured and her companion beaten in a case that shocked the nation and led to weeks of spontaneous protests by Indians demanding better security for women. That case led to changes in the country’s rape laws, but horrific sexual assaults continue to be reported around India with regularity. Whether women are less safe in India than in other emerging countries is uncertain, but rape and police competence have become burning political issues.

On Saturday, demonstrators sought to reawaken the outrage that convulsed India in December, but the day’s protests were far smaller and seemed less spontaneous.

Anger at the authorities began to build after the parents of the 5-year-old said that the police had failed to take their complaint seriously, failed to carry out an adequate search and then offered them 2,000 rupees — about $37 — if they would keep quiet about the case. Then on Friday, television news channels showed a large mustachioed police officer slapping a small female protester in the face.

The government’s concerns about the case ratcheted up so quickly on Friday night that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed regrets about the episode. And on Saturday, the president of the Indian National Congress Party, Sonia Gandhi — whose house was also the site of protests on Saturday — released a statement condemning the rape and saying that “action and not words are required to ensure that such incidents never happen again.”

Two police officers, including the lead investigator on the case and the one seen slapping the protester, were suspended. The lead investigator is being investigated after being accused of trying to bribe the child’s family to remain silent, said Mr. Bhagat, the police spokesman.

The quick arrest of the suspect may do little to calm the anger surrounding the case since fairly quick police work also led to the arrests of five suspects in the December rape case. Such rapid resolutions are not the norm in India, where highly politicized police forces and a backlogged and inefficient judiciary often mean that cases remain unresolved for years.

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.

[femmeInterrupted]

[femmeInterrupted]

http://www.womenundersiegeproject.or...0ZlRcg.twitter



By Michele Lent Hirsch/Associate Editor — March 29, 2013

It’s a euphemism we still haven’t shaken. “Comfort women” refers to the women and girls—usually foreign, from countries like Korea, the Philippines, and China—forced by the Japanese military to do sex work mainly during World War II.
Armed groups from various countries have done this too, although perhaps without the euphemism, choosing a group of individuals to use for repeated sexualized violence. Then combatants and high-up generals rape them. Again and again.

Euphemisms, and terminology in general, are tricky in the context of war. As I wrote in November 2012, “ethnic cleansing” is a phrase that may, at this point, successfully connote Hitlerian violence, but it’s been up for debate.
“Comfort women,” however, sounds cozy where it should be horrifying. It sounds like the archetypal mother who holds her infant on a cold night, quilt tucked in neatly and the radiator on.
It sounds like the opposite of the brutal enslavement and sexualized torture of a young woman.

That brutality is what photographer Ahn Sehong’s new exhibit, featured on The New York Times’ “Lens” blog, aims to capture. Sehong’s show, currently on display at the Korea Press Center Gallery in New Jersey, zooms in on the faces and daily lives of a handful of the estimated 200,000 women held as sex slaves during the war.
Sehong shows the faces of 80- and 90-year-olds, their faded maps of home, and the poor conditions they live in 70 years later. Only three of the women he photographed are still alive.

At one point, these elderly women were young and living in Korea, then held captive by the Japanese army in China. After the war, the Times explains, they were stranded there.
When Sehong first visited them, hoping to document their memories, “most lived in hovels, often in the same dusty rural towns where they had endured the war,” he said.

Each of Sehong’s subjects has a grueling story. One, Bae Sam-yeop was just 13 when a “high-ranking” Japanese officer raped her, she says.
Yet for a long time now, politicians have had trouble acknowledging the violence.
Just before the end of 2012, the Times reported that Japan’s new government might be “revising” an official apology given nearly two decades earlier to the victims of sexual slavery.
And in May last year, Japanese diplomats visited a small monument honoring these women in New Jersey and asked to have it removed.

The photographer is pairing his project with activism, hoping to raise aid for the aging survivors.
But even his images have been controversial: Sehong had to battle in court last year in order to display them at a Nikon gallery in Tokyo.
The company tried to cancel his show after receiving complaints.

For the survivors still holding on to a poor daily existence in China, Sehong’s efforts may matter more than politics.
Of the women he’s documented, Sehong said, “We couldn’t take care of them after the war. But now we have money and power to help them.”

As far back as their suffering during World War II may be, these women are still struggling to scratch out a living now, Sehong said in a local news story. And regardless off what term we use to describe the violence perpetrated long ago against them, they continue to be burdened by their memories.

“Their broken hearts are not in the past,” Sehong said.

[Kobi]

President Barack Obama on Friday defended Planned Parenthood—the largest source of reproductive health care for women, as well as an abortion provider—against its opponents, and warned critics that the organization remains steadfast.

"Planned Parenthood is not going anywhere," Obama told the 1,000 people at the group's annual national conference in Washington. "It’s not going anywhere today. It’s not going anywhere tomorrow." He is the first president to address Planned Parenthood.

The organization has long been a target of abortion opponents, who in recent years have fought to cut off its federal funding—despite the fact that that money, by law, is not applicable toward abortions. (Abortions make up an estimated 3 percent of the organization's budget.)

The president on Friday lauded Planned Parenthood's work “providing quality health care to women all across America."

Obama added, "We are truly grateful to you.”

He noted that 1 in 5 women in America have sought services from Planned Parenthood, which is the primary source for health care for many women. When politicians attempt to turn it into "a punching bag," Obama said, they are shutting out women who need health care and communities that may need health care services the most.

"When it comes to a women's health, no politician should get to decide what's best for you," Obama said. "The only person who should get to make decisions about your health is you."

Obama used his appearance to champion his health care law, which he said promotes many of the same principles as Planned Parenthood. Obama said his law supports health care for women by allowing young women, for example, to be covered by their parents' health care insurance plans, and by preventing women with pre-existing conditions from being denied coverage.

The president did not say the word "abortion" during his remarks, but did reference a woman's "right to choose."

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recently targeted the organization with a scathing op-ed for conservative news site Red State accusing Planned Parenthood and Democrats of supporting infanticide. Priebus wrote that testimony from a Planned Parenthood lobbyist in Florida indicated the organization supports the killing of infants.

Planned Parenthood later released a statement on the lobbyist's testimony, saying, "As a trusted health care provider, Planned Parenthood strongly condemns any physician who does not follow the law or endangers a woman's or child's health. And while HB 1129 addresses a situation that is extremely unlikely and highly unusual, if the scenario presented by the legislation should happen, of course a Planned Parenthood doctor would provide appropriate care to both the woman and the infant."

The president's appearance at the conference comes at a time when infanticide has been in the national news due to the murder trial of former abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell, of Philadelphia, is charged with murder in the death of a woman in 2009 during an abortion procedure and in the deaths of four babies.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/o...145150867.html

[Soon]

Welcome to a pro-life world

By Jill on April 30, 2013

In El Salvador, a young mother pseudonymously called Beatriz is pregnant and dying. She has lupus and is facing renal failure; the fetus she’s pregnant with is anencephalic, meaning it has no brain and will not survive once born. If she dies, she will leave behind a husband and their toddler. With each passing day, she gets sicker and sicker, and the chances of death increase. She needed a termination weeks ago; more delays could pose significant hardships, as the probability increases that she will have to be on dialysis for the rest of her life — not a reasonable possibility for a poor woman living in rural El Salvador. But because El Salvador outlaws abortion under any circumstance, Beatriz cannot terminate the pregnancy that’s killing her.

This is what a “pro-life” world looks like. And indeed, even in this extreme case, religious and pro-life groups in El Salvador oppose allowing Beatriz to terminate:

The Archbishop of San Salvador José Luis Escobar, said, “it is my understanding that the mother of the child is not in an intensive care situation… For me, it is the baby in utero that is in more danger because there is a movement to terminate its life. Only God knows how long this baby that they want to kill will live.”

Anti-choice groups in the U.S. who are currently raising hell about late-term abortions supposedly killing babies are notably silent on this case, where pro-life laws are slowly killing a woman.

You can sign the petition at RH Reality Check to encourage the government to move quickly and save Beatriz’s life.

[Kobi]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration's decision to appeal a court order lifting age limits on purchasers of the morning-after pill set off a storm of criticism from reproductive rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for women's health.

"We are profoundly disappointed. This appeal takes away the promise of all women having timely access to emergency contraception," Susannah Baruch, Interim President & CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said in a statement late Wednesday.

"It is especially troubling in light of the Food and Drug Administration's move yesterday to continue age restrictions and ID requirements, despite a court order to make emergency contraception accessible for women of all ages. Both announcements, particularly in tandem, highlight the administration's corner-cutting on women's health," Baruch said. "It's a sad day for women's health when politics prevails."

The FDA on Tuesday had lowered the age at which people can buy the Plan B One-Step morning-after pill without a prescription to 15 — younger than the current limit of 17 — and decided that the pill could be sold on drugstore shelves near the condoms, instead of locked behind pharmacy counters. It appeared to be a stab at compromise that just made both sides angrier.

After the appeal was announced late Wednesday, Terry O'Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, said, "The prevention of unwanted pregnancy, particularly in adolescents, should not be obstructed by politicians." She called it a "step backwards for women's health."

Last week, O'Neill noted, President Barack Obama was applauded when he addressed members of Planned Parenthood and spoke of the organization's "core principle" that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about their health.

"President Obama should practice what he preaches," O'Neill said.

In appealing the ruling Wednesday, the administration recommitted itself to a position Obama took during his re-election campaign that younger teens shouldn't have unabated access to emergency contraceptives, despite the insistence by physicians groups and much of his Democratic base that the pill should be readily available.

The Justice Department's appeal responded to an order by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in New York that would allow girls and women of any age to buy not only Plan B but its cheaper generic competition as easily as they can buy aspirin. Korman gave the FDA 30 days to comply, and the Monday deadline was approaching fast.

In its filing, the Justice Department said that Korman exceeded his authority and that his decision should be suspended while that appeal is under way, meaning only Plan B One-Step would appear on drugstore shelves until the case is finally settled. If Korman's order isn't suspended during the appeals process, the result would be "substantial market confusion, harming FDA's and the public's interest" as drugstores receive conflicting orders about who's allowed to buy what, the Justice Department concluded.

Reluctant to get drawn into a messy second-term spat over social issues, White House officials insisted Wednesday that both the FDA and the Justice Department were acting independently of the White House in deciding how to proceed. But the decision to appeal was certain to irk abortion-rights advocates who say they can't understand why a Democratic president is siding with social conservatives in favor of limiting women's reproductive choices.

Current and former White House aides said Obama's approach to the issue has been heavily influenced by his experience as the father of two school-age daughters. Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius have also questioned whether there's enough data available to show the morning-after pill is safe and appropriate for younger girls, even though physicians groups insist that it is.

Rather than take matters into his own hands, the Justice Department argued to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that Korman should have ordered the FDA to reconsider its options for regulating emergency contraception. The court cannot overturn the rules and processes that federal agencies must follow "by instead mandating a particular substantive outcome," the appeal states.

The FDA actually had been poised to lift all age limits and let Plan B sell over the counter in late 2011, when Sebelius overruled her own scientists. Sebelius said some girls as young as 11 were physically capable of bearing children but shouldn't be able to buy the pregnancy-preventing pill on their own.

Sebelius' move was unprecedented, and Korman had blasted it as election-year politics — meaning he was overruling not just a government agency but a Cabinet secretary.

More than a year later, neither side in the contraception debate was happy with the FDA's surprise twist, which many perceived as an attempt to find a palatable middle ground between imposing an age limit of 17 and imposing no limit at all.

Any over-the-counter access marks a long-awaited change, but it's not enough, said Dr. Cora Breuner of the American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports nonprescription sale of the morning-after pill for all ages.

"We still have the major issue, which is our teen pregnancy rate is still too high," Breuner said.

Even though few young girls likely would use Plan B, which costs about $50 for a single pill, "we know that it is safe for those under 15," she said.

Most 17- to 19-year-olds are sexually active, and 30 percent of 15- and 16-year-olds have had sex, according to a study published last month by the journal Pediatrics. Sex is much rarer among younger teens. Likewise, older teens have a higher pregnancy rate, but that study also counted more than 110,000 pregnancies among 15- and 16-year-olds in 2008 alone.

Social conservatives were outraged by the FDA's move to lower the age limits for Plan B — as well as the possibility that Korman's ruling might take effect and lift age restrictions altogether.

"This decision undermines the right of parents to make important health decisions for their young daughters," said Anna Higgins of the Family Research Council.

If a woman already is pregnant, the morning-after pill has no effect. It prevents ovulation or fertilization of an egg. According to the medical definition, pregnancy doesn't begin until a fertilized egg implants itself into the wall of the uterus. Still, some critics say Plan B is the equivalent of an abortion pill because it may also be able to prevent a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus, a contention that many scientists — and Korman, in his ruling — said has been discredited.

http://news.yahoo.com/womens-groups-...071825445.html

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Was trying to find the words to comment on this but all I can come up with is....huh?