In August, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a ruling requiring all insurers to cover contraception without a co-pay starting next year. Good news for women, right? So it’s no surprise that those who have been pushing woman-unfriendly reproductive policy–namely the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops–are lobbying for exemptions. They want leeway not [...]
This week, feminist globe-hoppers can say their farewells to Wangari Maathai, storm the U.S. Senate to demand jobs and more! Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and London: This week The Green Belt Movement is hosting three memorials for their Nobel prize-winning founder Wangari Maathai, who passed away this fall: – on Tuesday, November 15 in Washington, [...]
International outcry arose this September when, just a day after Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah announced a commitment to women’s rights and granted women voting rights in 2015, a woman named Shaima Jastaina was sentenced to 10 lashings for driving to the hospital. There is no specific law making it illegal for women in Saudi Arabia [...]
Yesterday, voters in Mississippi overwhelmingly rejected a personhood amendment that would have defined fertilized eggs as people and given them the full legal rights and protections of real humans. Polling shows that 55 percent of voters voted against the initiative, which would have: potentially outlawed birth control pills, IUDs, emergency contraception and other forms of [...]
Tomorrow, Mississippi will vote on a personhood amendment that would declare fertilized eggs to be “people.” Frighteningly, a Public Policy poll conducted over the weekend shows that this measure–which could ban Plan B and birth control and lead to investigations into miscarriages, in addition to criminalizing all abortion–really might pass. According to Mother Jones, the [...]
When a guy who can’t even talk about fetal rights without getting all misty-eyed says an initiative to give “personhood” to fertilized eggs goes too far, you know it really goes too far. On Wednesday, outgoing Republican Governor Haley Barbour said on Fox and Friends that, though he believes life begins at conception, Unfortunately, this [...]
But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison. I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon. Genesis 40: 15-16 On Thursday, November [...]
On October 24, the International Women’s Media Foundation honored four women journalists for risking their lives to cover the news. Adela Navarro Bello, general director of Tijuana’s weekly news magazine Zeta, reports on Mexico’s drug cartels despite the fact that her former colleague and editor, Héctor Félix Miranda, was murdered for doing so. Chiranuch Premchaiporn [...]
Folks, we’ve got a situation in Mississippi. In September, the state’s Supreme Court decided to allow a so-called “personhood” amendment to appear on the ballot this November 8. In addition to electing a governor, a secretary of state, an attorney general and members of the state legislature, voters will be asked to decide whether to [...]
Amanda Marcotte posted an interesting rant at Double X yesterday about the cognitive dissonance between the desire of anti-choice individuals to make abortion illegal and their unwillingness to address the legal issues that would arise if that happened: The widespread delusion that advocating for bans on abortion won’t mean that abortion is, you know, banned, runs so [...]
