Recommended Reading — Mostly Women’s Rights Edition

• A Proposed Small Step For Womenkind — Buttercup @ Buttercup & Bean writes about the problem of unwanted attention from men and how the real problem is not that women are putting themselves in situations where they could become targets but that men feel that they are entitled to any “piece of female ass that shows up in their vicinity.” Excellent post.
• To iPod or not to iPod (or, See the Person!) — Colleen @ For All the World to See wonders if technology isn’t creating a society of isolation and anti-social individuals.
  

  We pass people in the grocery, on the street, at school, at work, in the car and they’re just people. The plural, the generic, the masses.

  But they aren’t. Each person is a person.

  And what a difference we would make if we saw each one of those people as a person , not as one of a mass.

  As an individual, who maybe had a bad day, woke up on the wrong side of the bed, their coffee maker didn’t work this morning, they got in a fight with their kid, they got some unexpected money, they passed a test, they finished a big project, have a headache, found out their mom has cancer, found out their wife was pregnant….

  You get the idea.

  What if we each did that, maybe not to every person we came in contact with, but made an effort to really see the person we pass on the grocery aisle or who serves us our coffee, or who takes the parking place we had our eye on? What if?

  What if we didn’t wear our iPods so as to be lost in our own little world, but instead had the earphones out of our ears, so we heard the little old lady behind us in the grocery ask for help getting something down…or we actually talked to the server who takes our order, instead of talking to them in short, one-word comments while our cell phone is pressed to our face?

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Tags: Women's Rights, iPod, technology, anti-social, outsourcing, India, IT, AIDS, JonBenet Ramsey, Bob Herbert, violence against women

3 comments See also in My Life, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Featured, Women's Rights

Work Your Brain — 09/04/06

Women’s Rights

• Class warfare at Starbucks — lambert @ CorrenteWire writes about how class warfare starts over breast milk. Companies are far more likely to be accomodating to executive mothers who need breaks during the day to pump breast milk, but the women who work in the stores and “on the line” have to “barricade themselves in small restrooms intended for customers, counting the minutes left in their breaks.” There’s a lot of pressure to breast-feed in this day and age, but it’s easy to get discouraged and give up under less than ideal conditions.
• A Mystery From the Time When Abortion Was Illegal and Dangerous — olvlzl @ ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES remembers a horrible, deadly practice from the pre-Roe era — infanticide.
  

  The woman who owned the trunk was in her 60s in 1983. The papers say she was called a “pillar of the community” when she lived in the area. People who remembered her said that at the time the babies had been killed she often appeared to be pregnant but she never had children. The authorities found her but she wouldn’t say anything about the trunk. I don’ t know of any legal pressure put on her to talk. The fact that there were five corpses of infants wrapped in newspapers from different years certainly suggests serial infanticide, not a misdemeanor in anyone’s book.

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Tags: Starbucks, Women's Rights, breastfeeding, class warfare, abortion, baby snuffer, infancticide, Islamofascism, propaganda, War on Terror, WWII, Osama bin Laden, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq, Domino Theory, Hitler, whistleblowers, Russell Tice, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, Department of Justice, 101st Fighting Keyboarders, Fox News, David Warren, Debbie Schussel, Kathleen Parker, Mark Steyn, Glenn Greenwald, hypocrisy

More Women Brainiacs But Still Less Dough

According to a new 379-page report released yesterday, women “now earn the majority of diplomas in fields men used to dominate — from biology to business — and have caught up in pursuit of law, medicine, and other advanced degrees.”

Federal statistics released yesterday show women now also earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in business, history, and biological and social sciences . The same is true for traditional strongholds such as education and psychology.

And in disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground, earning larger numbers of degrees in math, physical sciences, and agriculture. [“Degreewise, women dominate in once-male bastions” (The Boston Globe)]

But don’t get too excited gals, we still have a long way to go. We still are only earning 76% according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. We are also underrepresented in the workforce, particularly in fields such as math and engineering.

Tags: Women's Rights

1 comments See also in The World, Featured, Women's Rights

Kuwaiti Women Vote For First Time

Yeah, Baby! Vote!

Polling is taking place in a Kuwaiti council by-election in which women are allowed to vote for the first time.

Two women are also among eight candidates running for the seat in the Salmiya district, south of the capital.

The 28,000 eligible voters, 60% of whom are women, are voting in segregated polling booths, a condition demanded by Islamist and tribal MPs.

Women were granted equal political rights last year and will vote in full legislative polls in 2007.

[…]

Kuwait’s first women candidates are 32-year-old Jenan Boushehri, a chemical engineer at the Kuwait Municipality, and 48-year-old Khalida Khader, a US-educated physician and a mother of eight.

“I am so pleased that I have become one of the first Kuwaiti women candidates to run in elections,” Dr Khader said in an interview with AFP news agency.

“I have broken the ice and hope this will benefit the cause of women.”

Historic moment

Women voters quoted by news agencies reflected the years of frustration which this election finally dispels.

“They have given us some attention. We became equal,” said voter Iman al-Issa talking to AP.

“It’s certainly a historical moment for me. I felt very happy while casting my vote,” Afaf Abdullah told AFP outside a polling station.

“I had participated in co-operative society elections before, but the feeling here is totally different. I feel that justice has been achieved for Kuwaiti women.”

Despite the segregated voting, women were required to show their faces to judges supervising the elections for the purposes of identification.

There are reports of at least one woman refusing to remove her Islamic veil and leaving the polling station without voting.

The Salmiya seat of the Kuwait Municipal Council fell vacant when incumbent Abdullah al-Muhailbi was named a minister in the Kuwaiti cabinet formed in February.

Attempts by the ruling Sabah family to change the male-dominated legislative structure succeeded in May 2005 - after being blocked for six years by tribal and Islamist members of the National Assembly.

Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Muhammad al-Sabah said on Tuesday that women suffrage boosts Kuwait’s international standing.

“We say to our Kuwait sisters, ‘Forward, and take your place with your Kuwaiti brothers’,” he said in a statement. [”Kuwaiti Women Vote For First Time”(BBC News)]

Tags: Kuwait, Women's Rights, vote

A Conversation With My Mother

I’ve actually been meaning to write about this for several days but at first I was too frazzled about getting lost for over an hour and then I was distracted by other things. Life happens that way.

I have a fairly good relationship with my mother now that we’ve got a country between us. What I mean is that when we lived in the same city, we hardly ever spoke or saw each other, I guess because it was always there that we could do so anytime we wanted so we put it off. When they moved to New Mexico, that kind of changed. we got in the habit of talking far more often on the telephone. Now that I’m in Maine, hardly a week goes by without a phone call or two. The time difference is a little troublesome, but somehow she still manages to find a way to call early enough to wake me up on a Saturday on occassion.

However, this Saturday, I thought I’d surprise her and call her at 8am my time. Hah! They were barely out of bed! Kind of odd for them as they’re early risers. By 5am their time, they’re usually up and have the coffee going and are anxiously awaiting the newspaper while catching CNN’s headlines. My father was raised on a farm and my mother was an army brat — they never outgrew that early morning schedule for some bizarre reason, though I tried to break them of it for 18 years or so.

Anyway, Saturday, I called my mom bright and early from the comfort of my bed, beneath my covers piled high with kitties. I wanted to talk to her about the incident on the bus.

O.K. That’s not true. I don’t really care about the incident on the bus. I know there’s some women’s rights women who might be angry or horrified by the thought that I don’t really care about the fact that I was victimized by two little boys on a bus fifteen years ago. By all means, include me as a statistic somewhere, but the truth is that I don’t actually feel anything toward those two boys who probably don’t even remember the incident, the bus, or me. They probably didn’t even remember it the next month, which is probably where the true crime is. Probably they never really knew what they did wrong.

What I am upset about is how I became a victim after the bus. How I did everything I was supposed to to. I told a grownup, my parent. I told an authority figure, my principal. My life was the life that changed. I lived in fear though not the shame that many victims reportedly fall into. I lived in a kind of punishment as my priviliges were the ones that were stripped and my movements were the ones restricted.

I discussed this all with my mother. She doesn’t really recall a lot of these changes though she does recall the incident. She did admit that these sorts of things do happen to victims of sexual assult and rape afterwards as a result and it’s a shame.

So then I wanted to know if she recalls if I started to withdraw more after this event. Did she notice a significant change? Really this is what the phone call was about for me. I really want to know what happened to me in my childhood. When did things go wrong? Maybe if I can figure out the when, I can figure out the why and maybe then I can start working on fixing it. I don’t know.

Well, she didn’t think that I did withdraw after the bus incident and for some reason, this lead me to comment that I thought that I had been fine until we moved to New Orleans. Suddenly, she said, “Yeah!” This lead her to tell me that when we lived in Florida before I was seven, I was a bright and sunny kid, completely different and I thought everyone loved me and I would walk up to complete strangers and talk to them. Once I scared her because I walked up to a complete stranger in a grocery parking lot and started talking to him and when she tried to tell me that it wasn’t a good thing to do, I wanted to know why and she told me that not everyone would love me; apparently I refused to accept this as fact.

Something changed between Florida and New Orleans. Where that bright and sunny kid went, I don’t know.

However, she pointed out that the other really big personality shift she noticed in me was when I came home from college. She said a friend of a high school friend of mine had called to ask me out or ask me to do something and I had said no and when asked why not, I told her that I didn’t know where he’d “been” or what he’d been doing the last three years. Now, I don’t exactly remember this incident, but it has the sting of truth to it. It kind of sounds like how paranoid I felt about people when I first got back to New Orleans, how I sometimes still am.

So, having had plenty of time to mull this over, particularly while I was lost on the backroads of Maine, I got to thinking about the really “hard times” in my life, the times when I think I was having life crises or depressive episodes or I maybe was going through some sort of personality shift as my mom described it.

• There was the move to New Orleans when I was Six/Seven. We moved away from everything I knew where everyone loved me into a neighborhood where no one else lived and the great unknown where I started a fundie private Christian school.
• Started a new private school (leaving new friends twice) after not adjusting to public school after nearly getting expelled from fundie private Christian school — mom agrees I shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place — plus I was held back a grade to catch up with my age group.
• Went away to college (once again leaving everyone behind) which was not the grand adventure I thought it was going to be.
• Returned to New Orleans (leaving friends behind) without a real job to live at home with parents and work at video store.
• Parents move 2 states away.
• Six years of abusive job stress to be fired and leave work friends.
• Move 1700 miles and leave behind all friends and everything I’ve ever known.

So it’s kind of possible that this is the pattern. I’m not saying it is. I’m saying it’s possible. Maybe each school change and move was just reliving the move from where I was loved by all into exile subconsciously. It’s something worth exploring, I guess.

I haven’t discussed the moving theory with my mother, I kind of developed it after I talked with her.

I do want to say that I think she’s been much more supportive this last year and a half of therapy than she was when I started therapy ten years ago. She’s been willing to help me analyze and review and explore and that’s been very helpful to me this time around. Though I wish she’d stop pointing out that I have a lot of quirks just like my bipolar grandmother. That’s just too helpful. She’s also been telling me a lot how much she loves me and how proud she is of me and trying to be supportive of my ideas rather than critical and I appreciate that too. Then again, maybe my negative hearing is dimming a little too. Either way, this is much easier knowing she’s with me.

Though I still don’t have the courage to bring up the subject that maybe there’s some mental illness on her side of the family too.

Tags: dysfunctional family, depression, rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

I Lost Something On That Bus

I’m having the strangest morning. Somewhere in the back corner in the shadows of my mind dwells a memory from my childhood that I ignore. Every now and then it peeps it’s head out as if to ask me to reconsider examining it but I never do because I’ve long dismissed it as much ado about nothing, just too much attention over too little, just a lot of embarrassment for a sixth grader.

For some reason, this morning in traffic, I couldn’t ignore it. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the therapy. I’ve been questioning and exploring my childhood quite a bit the last few days, trying to revisit the events that might have pushed me over the edge into this ball of anxiety and paranoia I am today.

And there it was.

I was nine years old and in the sixth grade. I’d started a year early. I’d also done a pretty good job of nearly getting expelled from an expensive private fundie Christian school so I was attending a public elementary school while my parents looked for another non-Catholic private school in New Orleans that would have me. The teachers either loved me or hated me and whereas one would ask me to keep an eye on her 2nd grade class, another would keep me from taking the tests for the gifted classes “just because” — and don’t give me that crap about how teachers aren’t like that, my mother discovered later that I was always right about my teachers ‘tudes.

Anyway back to the memory, I had become a crossing guard or bus monitor or somesuch. Whatever it was, I got to leave class early in the afternoon and wear a nifty orange vest and make people walk not run in straight lines to their buses. It was important work and it was a great honor and I took it quite seriously and I was proud of the honor. I wore that vest like a badge of courage and privilige. I was special, and since I wasn’t exactly the prettiest or the smartest or an athlete and since I was younger than everyone and didn’t live in the same neighborhood, I kind of needed that feeling of special beyond being the absolute smallest.

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Tags: rape, Women's Rights, therapy, wellness, Me

Abdul Rahman Vs. The Women Of Afghanistan

You know, I’ve been thinking the last couple of days about Abdul Rahman, the Afghan man who converted to Christianity from Islam. The Muslims in Afghanistan, that country we freed from the restrictive Taliban, want to kill him for this “crime” against Islam.

Apparently, while we were cheering about all of those changes we brought to the country, no one was paying attention to the fact that there weren’t any real changes being brought to the country. We ousted the Taliban and we’ve had those nifty elections where we forced the Afghan men to let the Afghan women vote for our PR cameras, but as I’ve written here before, almost nothing has changed for women in Afghanistan — they still have to wear burqu, they are still held hostage in their own homes, they still find it next to impossible to get a divorce, even from an abusive husband, etc.

The fact is that the Afghan people built their Constitution on Islamic law. Imagine that. So much for Freedom and Democracy being on the march.

But what really got me thinking about Abdul Rahman is the outcry on both the right and the left. I mean, I’m glad that we could come together on this and join in the outrage over a man’s right to practice his religion of choice, but it pisses me off to no end that there’s no outcry over the fact that the women of Afghanistan still aren’t free after four years after President Bush told us, “The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school – today women are free.” They aren’t free! Where is Michelle Malkin’s outcry posts and articles over their rights? Where is the pressure from the leaders of the world’s nations to release the women imprisoned for running away from their abusive husbands? Where is President Bush’s condemnation over their loss of freedom?

Why is Abdul Rahman so much more important than all the women in Afghanistan?

Tags: Abdul Rahman, Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush

Recommended Reading

There’s so much going on in the news and on the web that I really wanted to comment on it all today but it’s got my brain buzzing. Still I didn’t want some of these things to slip away without sharing because they really are worth a good read.

• Iraq through the Prism of Vietnam - a nice comparison of the two wars by Retired Gen. William Odom. “He lists striking similarities and asserts that only after it pulls out of Iraq can the U.S. hope for international support to deal with anti-Western forces.”
• To the Inequality of Men and Women - Matsu wrote an excellent history of the modern day fight for equality of the sexes and how maybe it wasn’t exactly everything we thought it was going to be and what it might take to get it right.
• It’s about damn time! - Kevin brings up the question that if a woman has the right to choose whether to abort, give a child up for adoption or raise a child, shouldn’t the father have the right to choose whether or not he wants to be financially responsible for the child? Currently, our legal system makes that choice for men.
• What’s Good for the Wiretapped Goose Is Apparently Not Good For the Wiretapped Gander — the writers at Wonkette feel that if Bush can listen into their calls, they should be allowed to drop in on enator Rockefeller’s conference calls.
• The nattering nabobs of…patriotism? — this is a very creative editorial by Paul Lewis, a what if, if you will. It’s an amusing mismatch of 1776 and 2006.

Tags: politics, Iraq, Vietnam War, Women's Rights, warrantless wiretapping, patriotism, Men's Rights

Why Does Congress Hate Women?

(Note: Icky personal ahead, but bear with me for the point…)

Over the past sixteen years I’ve been very vocal on the subject of insurance and contraceptives — mostly I’ve been a walking billboard for proponents fighting to force insuance companies to cover contraceptives as part of universal basic coverage.

Why? Didn’t I just confess to the blog world the other day that I am the world’s oldest living virgin?

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Tags: Women's Rights, birth control, contraceptives, Senate, HIMMAA, Mike Enzi

Every Two & A Half Minutes

Every two and a half minutes, somewhere in America, someone is sexually assaulted.

One in six American women has been the victim of an attempted or completed rape, and 10% of sexual assault victims are men.

In 2003-2004, there were an average annual 204,370 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault. In 2004 alone, there were 209,880 victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assaults according to the 2004 National Crime Victimization Survey (pdf). Of the average annual 204,370 victims in 2003-2004, about 65,510 were victims of completed rape, 43,440 were victims of attempted rape, and 95,420 were victims of sexual assault.

About 44% of rape victims are under age 18, and 80% are under age 30.

Since 1993, rape/sexual assault has fallen by over 64%.

Because of the methodology of the National Crime Victimization Survey, these figures do not include victims 12 or younger. While there are no reliable annual surveys of sexual assaults on children, (pdf) the Justice Department has estimated that one of six victims are under age 12.

In 2002, according to the 2002 National Crime Victimization Study, 86,290 women were raped. According to medical reports, the incidence of pregnancy for one-time unprotected sexual intercourse is 5%. By applying the 5% pregnancy rate to 86,290 women, RAINN estimates that there were up to 4,315 pregnancies as a result of rape.

Source: Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network

National Sexual Assault Hotline • 1.800.656.HOPE • Free. Confidential. 24/7.

One in six women? How many women do you know in your social circle? In your family? I know of two people in my life who’ve confided to me that they’ve been raped, but I certainly know more than 12 women. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

5% might get pregnant as a result of such an attack — I pray to God none of them live in South Dakota…

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Tags: rape, sexual assault, Women's Rights, incest

The War on Women in Iraq

Between 1999 and March of 2003, in Iraq there were 22 attacks on women and one death where the victims were attacked for not wearing the traditional headscarves and veils. That’s before the U.S. invasion.

According to the Women’s Rights Association (WRA), a local NGO in Baghdad, the number of attacks has trippled; there have been 80 attacks to date against women and reports of four women being killed by their families in 2005.

“It’s difficult to say how many women wear headscarves and veils,” [WRA spokeswoman Mayada] Zuhair added. “But, before 2003, roughly, seven out of 10 were wearing scarves and coverings, whereas now, four in 10 do.”

The three recent deaths happened in and around the capital, according to Zuhair. Two of them were single girls found walking in local markets without the covering, while the other two were married women who had abandoned their scarves and veils after marriage at the request of their husbands, Zuhair explained. [“IRAQ:Women attacked headscarves, NGO says” (Reuters.com)]

It’s hard to believe there’s that much fuss over what someone chooses to wear or not to wear. What’s worse is that this violence against women is not really considered violence against women. The Iraqi Penal Code actually allows for abuses against women; it states that “the penalty for killing a woman should be reduced if a crime was committed for reasons of honour”. A so-called “honour killing” is where a woman’s relative kills her for supposedly bringing perceived dishonour on the family. Not wearing the veils and head dress can be considered just such a dishonour.

Police won’t get involved because they say it’s family religious business. Women are being murdered by their own relatives for expressing their own independence or even for obeying their husband’s desires for them to step forward into the 21rst Century.

Rahman Ala’a, a senior official in the interior ministry, blamed the constitution for not setting down women’s rights more clearly. “For the police to interfere in women’s rights issues, we need to have it well explained in the constitution, which at present doesn’t address such issues,” he said.

Zuhair concluded that the challenge was therefore left to Iraqi women to assert their rights for themselves.[“IRAQ:Women attacked headscarves, NGO says” (Reuters.com)]

Tags: Iraq, Women's Rights, Honor Killings

That Gray Area Between Pro-Choice & Anti-Abortion

There’s a lot of hoopla about the abortion fight lately. There’s a lot of name-calling and word-twisting going around. It’s almost dangerous to join into a conversation and express your opinion because the truth is very few people are 100% extremely for or against abortion and the people in the middle are in a mosh pit of sorts.

The Blogsphere, especially the feminist-leaning ’sphere, is filled with a whirlwind of terms and phrases — War Against Women, Women-Haters, Women-Opressers, Pro-choicers, Pro-lifers, Anti-abortionist, Anti-lifers. Personally, I’m not fond of the “pro-life” and “anti-life” versions as they really don’t reflect the groups labeled as such. I think “pro-choice” and “anti-abortion” are probably the best fits I’ve heard or read so far.

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Tags: pro-choice, anti-abortion, abortion, War on Women, Women's Rights

Arizona’s Battle of the Sexes

Jill @ Feministe pointed me to an article at azstarstarnet.com about a ridiculous battle of the sexes, reproductively speaking.

Apparently, last Monday the Arizona House of Representatives voted to make it illegal for a woman to sell her eggs, but they refused to impose similar restrictions on men selling their sperm.

Talk about your sexism and inequality of the sexes!

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Tags: Women's Rights

Women’s Right’s In Afghanistan Almost As Bad Now As Under The Taliban

Three years ago, President George Bush told us, “The mothers and daughters of Afghanistan were captives in their own homes, forbidden from working or going to school – today women are free.”But very little has changed. Most women still wear the burqu, not because it’s all the rage, but because they fear they have to. A third of Afghan women in Kabul are forbidden from leaving the house by the male members of the family. It is still next to impossible for a woman to get a divorce in Afghanistan, even from an abusive husband.

Just because we swept in and knocked back the Taliban, doesn’t mean that we instantly changed social attitudes and traditions that have been around probably since before there was tea in Boston Harbor.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Women's Rights, George W. Bush, Taliban, Dr. Massouda Jalal

The War on Women

If you don’t think Women’s Rights in America are in jeopardy, check out these stories:

• The Bush Administration is quietly fighting to limit women’s access to birth control
• Mississippi is following in South Dakota’s footsteps and a committee in its state House has voted through a bill that would ban most abortions
• A judge threatened to send a woman to jail for refusing to view the videotape of her rape
• A town can force a woman to kick out her children or their father based on it’s definition of “family”

Tags: Women's Rights

Quote of the Day: The War on Women

MJS at Corrente writes that, in view of recent proposals that would hand over ownership of women’s lady parts to the state, a terminology change is in order. The Jivester suggests that rather than using the negative “anti-choice” label for those who not only want to force unwanted pregnancy on all females, including rape and incest victims, but also to thwart access to emergency contraception and, yes, even the good ol’ birth control pill, we instead accentuate the positive and call this new confiscatory policy what it is: a War on Women (WOW).

May this latest US declaration of hostility be as successful as the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Terror have been. [The War on Women: A Modest Proposal (Tennessee Guerilla Women]

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Tags: Quote of the Day, Women's Rights, birth control, War on Women, abortion, unwanted pregnancy

comments See also in Politics & Causes, In the News, Geekery, Blogging & Other Blogs, The World, Quote of the Day, Women's Rights

Women Vs. Morally Righteous Pharmacists

The last few days, there’s been quite a buzz about how Target now is backing its pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for emergency contraception. Personally, I’m alarmed, because like AMERICAblog’s John in DC, I’m concerned about where the line will be drawn if this continues.

I particular like the opinion piece of Dr. Erik Steele, chief medical officer of Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems, that appeared in the Bangor News:

The reluctance of a pharmacist morally opposed to abortion to do anything that might result in an abortion is certainly understandable. However, a pharmacist pursing his or her moral and political agendas in the pharmacy makes a bull running amok in the china shop looks like a neurosurgeon operating in the brain by comparison. The idea is not just a slippery slope; it’s a greased chute to pharmacy chaos for three key reasons.

First, once we establish the precedent that a pharmacist can refuse to fill a legal, properly prescribed medication for personal reasons there is no place to set a limit on the practice; a pharmacist could conceivably refuse any prescription based on some ethical objection.

With such a precedent, a pharmacist could refuse prescriptions for narcotics because he or she thinks patients who use them long term are junkies, or prescriptions for medications derived from stem cell research because the research cells came from human fetuses. One might object to the dispensing of pork insulin because it was derived from animals, or in the past to growth hormone because it once was derived from human cadavers. Misoprostol is an ulcer medication which can be used to cause abortion; could a pharmacist refuse to dispense that? One pharmacist might refuse any prescription for emergency contraception, while another might agree to dispense it for prevention pregnancy after rape.

Once this line is crossed, there is no other place to draw a new line, and any of us might be the next target of the pharmacist putting his personal agenda between us and our medications.

Second, allowing pharmacists to refuse legitimate prescriptions on ethical grounds means there is no protection for the patient from a pharmacist pursuing any ethical agenda at the public setting of the prescription counter. That is among the last places in the world one ought to be able to pursue such an agenda. Why would this privacy-loving society allow a pharmacist to force a woman standing at that counter in front of other customers to be subject to a moral debate about her need for emergency contraception, especially in a country in which one half of all women will experience an unplanned pregnancy? [“Pharmacy is a health care setting, not a public forum”]

After all, I’ve spent quite a bit of time with my doctors discussing my situation and my choices where my health is concerned. I’ve already established a relationship so to speak and I trust my doctor to help me make the best choice. It’s been a long time since I’ve known a pharmacist or his staff as well or rather, since they’ve known me. Not to mention, it’s none of his or her business unless I care to share why I might be taking a particular drug that he or she might find some moral or religious reason to disapprove of.

For example, I do get the Depo Provera shot every three months. Heck, I’ve been on birth control for most of my adult life. However, I take it because I have a medical condition that would render my life pretty damned miserable otherwise. My physicians have helped me to make the decision as to which medicine would be best to control my condition and I would be pretty damned pissed if I went to fill a prescription and the pharmacist wouldn’t because of a predetermined religious judgement on my personal life that he or she knows nothing about. If that happened, I’d likely take all of my pharmacy business elsewhere and since I have quite a bit wrong with me, that’s quite a bit of pharmacy business.

And as many people have suggested, what if a pharmacist decides not to dispense HIV meds because they opposed homosexuals and drug users? Will a person have to prove that he or she got the illness from tainted blood in a transfusion or from an accident while he or she was working at a hospital?

Finally, most pharmacists cannot refuse emergency contraception on moral grounds without having to confront the hypocrisy of working in a retail setting that sells lots of things that harm and kill. The typical retail pharmacy sits in a store that sells cigarettes, liquor, alcohol, acetaminophen and the decongestant pseudoephedrine, just to name a few products which can kill people.

Cigarettes cause more than 400,000 premature deaths a year in this country, and pregnancy complications including low birth weight and premature labor. They also cause Sudden Infant Death syndrome. A pharmacist cannot refuse emergency contraception prescriptions in a store that also sells cigarettes without overdosing on his own hypocrisy.

Pseudoephedrine can be cooked up into methamphetamine, aka speed, a ruinous drug that is taking the country by storm. Acetominophen is commonly used by depressed patients to commit suicide. Alcohol is social mayhem and death in liquid form, causing an estimated 100,000 deaths in this country each year, and untold human misery. It is also our most common preventable cause of mental retardation, because it causes fetal alcohol syndrome. One has to wonder at a shield law for pharmacists that would allow them to refuse to dispense a product that might cause fetal abortion and still work in a store that sells a product that causes fetal brain damage.

At the pharmacy counter that all sounds like this: “OK, that’s $4.25 for your death-dealing and pregnancy-harming cigarettes, $7.95 for your fetal brain-damaging beer, $2.29 for your potential suicide agent acetominophen, and $1.95 for your methamphetamine-precursor decongestant. Anything else? Oh, you want emergency contraception? No, sorry, you can’t get that from me because I think it might harm a human life.” [“Pharmacy is a health care setting, not a public forum”]

John in D.C. takes it a bit further in wondering what the next step is.

So let’s ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:

• Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
• Pharmacists who don’t want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
• Pharmacists who don’t want to help customers who worship a “Satanic counterfeit” (read: “The Pope,” in fundie-speak).
• Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to “innocent victims” of AIDS.
• Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn’t “deserve it.”
• Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
• Pharmacists who won’t sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn’t want people spilling their seed.
• Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles? [“Target now saying ’screw you’ if their pharmacist doesn’t want to fill your prescription because ‘you’re a sinner’ “]

You know what? I’m a sinner, but that’s between me and God, not me and my pharmacist. I’ll have a long conversation with God when I die about whether or not he approved of my lifestyle choices and all. I shouldn’t have to explain to someone who’s whole purpose in this life is to fill my doctor-prescribed prescriptions.

Planned Parenthood has a handy email form that does most of the work for you to voice your opinion to Target, Safeway, Giant, Duane Reade, and Piggly Wiggly regarding this issue.

And now that I think about it, why is this a women-only issue? Why aren’t we hearing complaints from men who are being refused their viagra or condoms?

Tags: Women's Rights, Pharmacies, birth control, Plan B

The Elephant Has A Short Memory

I find it amusing that less than a month ago, when Democrats were agonizing over the nomination of now Chief Justice John Roberts and they were nitpicking over important questions like Robert’s positions on the woman’s right to choose and minority rights and all the big Supreme Court issues, Republicans were indignantly telling Democrats to just sit down and vote “yes” and let the President have his chosen man.

Now just weeks later, the President’s second nominee is out there and the conservative Right aren’t so sure about where she stands on those same important issues and now they’re agonizing over the choice they’re same lord and chief has made.

It would serve them right if the Left told them to just lay down, close their eyes, and imagine they’re somewhere else until it’s over.

Tags: politics, Women's Rights, Supreme Court, Democrats, Republicans

More On The Decline of Women’s Rights in Iraq

Thanks to brilliant at breakfast for the link to the following first hand account of one woman’s observations on the decline of women’s rights in Iraq since the occupation began. Clearly, this is a step backward for the women of Iraq. This is what Bush bragged about freeing the Afghanistani women from. Why isn’t more being done to protect the women of Iraq?

Across the country, a steady clampdown on women’s rights has been going unreported and unchecked by the government. Islamic terrorism is killing and injuring Iraqi women daily, employing among other weapons, acid attacks.

My women’s rights group, the Organisation of Women’s Freedom in Iraq, has been documenting part of the upsurge in violence against women. In March this year, for example, followers of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr targeted an outing of students from Basra University. Playing football and listening to music, the mixed group was attacked in Basra Public Park. One male student was killed trying to defend his female friends against Islamists who literally tore the women’s clothes off their bodies. Sadr’s men photographed the dishevelled, half-dressed women, and told them that their parents would receive the photos if they didn’t refrain in future from “immoral” behaviour.

More widely, professional women have been deliberately targeted and killed - notably in the city of Mosul - and, recently, anti-women Islamists in Baghdad have taken to throwing acid in women’s faces and on to their uncovered legs.

So-called “honour killings” are rife, as is the kidnapping and rape of women. Beheadings have occurred and women have been sold into sexual servitude. When I was in Baghdad a few months ago, I couldn’t go anywhere without a bodyguard. The sense of danger and threat was tangible.

Islamist repression against women is a campaign of “moral” terror. Leaflets, graffiti and verbal warnings in their thousands warn women against going out unveiled, against putting on make-up, and against shaking hands or mixing with men. Female doctors have been prevented from treating male patients, and male doctors warned not to attend to women.

This is a recipe for future gender enslavement, second-class citizenship and ignorance. Thousands of female university students have now given up their studies to protect themselves against Islamist threats.

Islamist hostility is contagious and echoed daily in high-level political debate. Currently there is a drive over the “right” of men to have four wives, to make divorce a male preserve and for custody of children to be given to men only. Even women on Iraq’s National Assembly - the country’s parliament - have been calling for resolutions to allow for the beating of women by their guardians (males relatives, such as husbands or fathers).

This is all the outcome of the occupation of Iraq. This has been pursued under the name of liberation, but what we actually see is women increasingly losing their freedom, while political Islamists feel free to terrorise them. The Islamicists pour into this invaded, so-called Muslim land in order, they say, to liberate it; but in reality, neither the US nor the Islamists are our liberators. They both really fight for power and influence in Iraq and in the region. [“Houzan Mahmoud: Iraq must reject a constitution that enslaves women”]

Tags: Women's Rights, Iraq, Afghanistan, Islam

600 Saudi Women Will Vote For The First Time!

According to the Middle East Times:

Saudi women to vote in chamber poll
UPI
July 29, 2005

RIYADH — Some 600 Saudi women are expected to participate in the elections of the chamber of trade and industry in eastern Saudi Arabia for the first time.

The Saudi daily Al-Yawm said on Wednesday that the chamber of commerce and industry in the eastern province decided to allow businesswomen to take part in the elections of its board for the first time in the kingdom’s history.

The paper said that the elections would take place before the end of the year and ballot boxes for women would be placed under the supervision of a female committee representing the ministry of trade and industry, which oversees the elections of trade chambers in the kingdom.

Saudi women were banned from participating in the kingdom’s first municipal elections earlier this year.

Women in the Muslim-conservative kingdom are deprived of many social and political rights, including the right to travel alone and drive cars.

Every little step forward is a good step. I find it fascinating that the Bush administration keeps pushing democracy and women’s rights in the Middle East but our “allies” the Saudis have been exempt to that kind of pressure…not that our peer pressure has done that much good.

Anyway, I really do hope this proves to be a victory for Saudi women.

Tags: Saudi Arabia, Women's Rights, vote