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"Many people need a morning "fix." For some, it's coffee. For others, it's "SportsCenter." For me, it's Feministing.com." Katie Stone, The Denver Post
"Feminism is fun again! Every bit as edifying as your women's studies books from college, but with a biting sense of humor that keeps things punchy, not preachy." Marie Claire, December 2006
Supreme Court decision a win for violent anti-choicers
The Supreme Court ruled today that federal racketeering and extortion laws can’t be used to stop anti-choice extremists from obstructing access to clinics, damaging property or using violence. (Legal Momentum has a history of the case, Scheidler v. National Organization for Women)
This case has been going on since 1986, when the National Organization for Women (NOW) brought a class action suit against violent anti-choice groups in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Unfortunately, violent protests are not a thing of the past. From NARAL:
Among other acts, in the past year there has been an attempted firebombing at a Louisiana clinic and one incident of arson in Florida. In the past decade approximately two murders, one attempted murder, two bombings, 18 incidents of arson, 298 acts of vandalism, 642 anthrax threats, 121 bomb threats, and 27 blockades have occurred at clinics. Since 1993, three doctors, two clinic employees, a clinic escort, and a security guard have been murdered. In addition to these seven murders, 17 attempted murders have also occurred since 1991.
This is a huge loss for women and choice, even if it is--as Broadsheet points out--largely symbolic: "[The] ruling will likely do little to change the situation on the ground. But it is the symbolic victory -- coupled with South Dakota's recent anti-abortion vote -- that may further embolden a pro-life movement eager to test the country's more conservative Supreme Court."
After years of newsreports that male birth control is on the way, now there's some support for what feminists have always suspected. It's not science that's holding up the creation of a Pill for men-- it's society.
The original developer of male birth-control pill says they stopped work on it because men wouldn't use it.
"It would be possible to make a male pill today. We know how hormones work and we could use the same principles that are used to make the female pill," Carl Djerassi, 82, told weekly news magazine "Sabado".
"The problem is that men are afraid to lose their virility. Even if taking a pill carries only a remote chance of impotence, they won't take the chance," he added.
Give it up for Effa Manley, the first female Baseball Hall-of-Famer. She co-owned a Negro League team with her husband, and ran the business end of the team for more than a decade.
Manley used baseball to advance civil rights causes with events such as an Anti-Lynching Day at the ballpark. She died in 1981 at age 84.
"She was a pioneer in so many ways, in terms of integrating the team with the community," said Leslie Heaphy, a Kent State professor on the committee. "She's also one of the owners who pushed very hard to get recognition for Major League Baseball when they started to sign some of their players."
Rachel Kramer Bussel at the Village Voice takes on the question of hetero dating and who pays--is it sad that I really didn’t know this was still a dating issue? I thought at least with younger folks this wouldn't really even be a question. (My boyfriend insists that I must live in an alternate universe.)
Apparently--and I really do feel kind of foolish admitting that I thought otherwise--it’s still considered pretty standard for the guy to pay for dates.
Most women claim the guy should pay, regardless of who asked whom out or who makes more money. Like it or not, the tradition's a stubborn holdover from past eras when women couldn't afford to go halfsies. Lauren Henderson, author of Jane Austen's Guide to Dating (Hyperion, 2005), believes paying is a sign of respect. "Symbols are important, and a man who can't buy a woman dinner on their first date is a man who will be emotionally deficient at making a woman feel cared about," she elaborates. "Men need caretaking, but their need doesn't express itself in having dinner bought for them. Men want their ego bolstered by feeling strong, capable, and necessary."
(Puke.) I just don’t get it. Do guys agree with this? How does spending cash make someone feel necessary?
The only situations where someone has paid for my dates on a semi-regular basis has been when I was seeing someone who made significantly more money than I did and wanted to go places that I just couldn’t afford. But otherwise, I can’t really imagine not paying. It seems so weird. I also find it kind of insulting--I’m not a child, I can manage to feed and entertain myself.
I suppose it’s easier--as Bussel points out--when you’re actively dating someone and can just go by the I’ll-get-this-one, you-get-the-next-one way of paying.
Seems to me that even having to think about something like this kind of ruins the fun of dating.
Development linked to women’s rights, says UN official
At the opening of this year’s CSW, Louise Frechette, the deputy secretary-general, said that“the world is starting to grasp that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women and girls.”
“Study after study has taught us that no policy is as likely to raise economic productivity or to reduce infant and maternal mortality,” she continued.
A cool thing: Featured in one of the UN buildings (to help celebrate CSW) are pictures and bios of 1,000 women activists from around the world. This project is a part of 1000 Peacewomen Across the Globe, which was started to demonstrate how many women worldwide are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize. The campaign also recently came out with a book featuring all the women--it’s amazing.
Dahlia Lithwick has a great op-ed about how pharmacists who refuse to fill emergency contraception prescriptions are different from doctors who won't participate in executions.
The similarities between the doctors and the pharmacists are striking: Both are refusing to participate in the performance of services acknowledged to be lawful -- capital punishment and abortion/contraception. Both cite as grounds for refusal their professional interest in promoting, as opposed to ending, human life.
Then she notes two reasons why the pharmacists can't refuse but the doctors can. One is that doctors have taken a Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm." The other?
One reason doctors have generally been kept away from lethal injections is the historical anxiety about the past participation of physicians in state executions, from the guillotine to Nazi experiments. When medical expertise was pressed into aiding government murder, physicians became accomplices of the worst sort. Pharmacists, on the other hand, have no such history.
Octavia E. Butler, considered the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, died after falling and striking her head on the cobbled walkway outside her home, a close friend said. She was 58.
A friend and colleague, Leslie Howle, noted that Bulter’s work explored issues like race, poverty, politics, and religion. "She stands alone for what she did," Howle said.
One of Butler’s many awards was from the MacArthur Foundation (the “genius” award); she was the first science fiction writer to be granted the honor.
Enhanced participation of women in development: an enabling environment for achieving gender equality and the advancement of women, taking into account, inter alia, the fields of education, health and work.
Equal participation of women and men in decision-making processes at all levels.
More than 60 bills concerning EC have already been filed in state legislature this year, some seeking to increase access and some seeking to limit it.
..."The FDA made this a major issue for state legislatures," said Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, a women's health research organization. "For the first seven years Plan B was on the market, this largely didn't happen."
Click here for a timeline of the FDA’s (non)action on emergency contraception.
After an extremely successful (and well publicized) girlcott of Abercrombie & Fitch, the clothing company has come out with some new and improved shirts.
It was quite a dreary week for abortion rights, with South Dakota passing a flat-out ban and the Supreme Court agreeing to hear the "partial-birth" abortion case. On that note:
Deanna Zandt at AlterNet offers some tips on how to discuss the issue.
Also, everyone interested in understanding how the federal "partial-birth" abortion ban became law should definitely read Cynthia Gorney's 2003 piece in Harper's, Gambling with Abortion.
SCOTUSblog has the details on a recent 6th circuit ruling regarding RU-486, in which the court applied Ayotte.
Bad news for all of those programs that encourage gay people to "leave the lifestyle." Scientists may have discovered a common gene in mothers of gay sons.
Slate examines the "Aryan sisterhood" of female news anchors.
France now grants same-sex couples joint parental rights.
And because we haven't linked to Slate enough today (and because Margaret Cho is awesome), I give you The Passion of the Cho.
After the FDA's continual neglect of reviewing emergency contraception, advocates are looking to state governments to make EC available to women in (as of right now) about 12 different states.
Under the proposed Maryland law, pharmacists who volunteer to receive special training may dispense the pills. The law does not require all pharmacists to furnish the pills, and the State Board of Pharmacy estimated 5 percent of Maryland's 5,331 licensed pharmacists would initially participate.
Legislation in other states would allow pharmacists to provide Plan B directly to women under an agreement with a doctor giving the pharmacist blanket permission to sell the drug or require emergency rooms to provide it to rape victims, said Elizabeth Nash, a public policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion-rights group that is tracking the efforts.
Abortion-rights groups have been lobbying state lawmakers to increase access to the morning-after pill since 2000, and 16 states, including California, have passed laws that do so in some form.
I am curious to see how state elections will influence passage of Plan B.
via Baltimore Sun.
What does the near ban on abortion in South Dakota mean for the abortion battle ahead?
Nothing pretty. This past week when South Dakota passed one of the most restrictive anti-choice, anti-abortion bills seen in the last ten years, some anti-choicers jumped for joy at the prospect of overturning Roe. The question is, could this tragically regressive move hurt the anti-choice movement?
New York Times discusses,
The South Dakota strategy itself has already splintered the anti-abortion movement. One faction is chafing at the timing of this campaign, wondering aloud whether the court — and, perhaps more important, the American public — will really embrace a complete reversal of Roe just yet.
Some, like Daniel McConchie of Americans United for Life, which did not take part in the South Dakota effort, said they would have preferred to reduce abortions by continuing to press for restrictions like waiting periods, parental and spousal notification laws, and the prohibition of certain types of abortion — quieter measures that draw less attention and strike a less head-on blow to Roe.
"There is tension," Mr. McConchie said, between those who agree with him about abortion but not about strategy. "A lot of those people — what we tend to think of as the purists — in essence think that people who would push a more incremental approach are sellouts. I understand that type of zeal, but there is a severe penalty you can end up paying."
In the coming weeks as the Supreme Court reviews "partial-birth abortions" we will see exactly how far the damage has gone, but I will say I am not feeling optimistic. In terms of whether or not this drastic move in South Dakota will help or hurt the anti-choice movement (one can hope) is yet to be seen. What I can say is that I feel so so sorry for the women of South Dakota.
I put the rest of the article (and I can't believe that Leslee Unruh of National Abstinence Clearinghouse had the audacity to compare their tactics to Martin Luther King's, biznatch is trippin!) after the jump cuz you have to register to read it...
