Tag: Death

Rest in Power: Urvashi Vaid, the Queer Movement’s Legendary Firebrand

There has never been a queer leader like Urvashi Vaid. Until her death of metastatic breast cancer on May 14 at age 63, she spent the better part of five decades fighting injustice. Principle drove Urvashi in almost everything she did. She exploded onto the scene with a dynamism that has never been equaled since.

“The lesbian agenda is the reconstruction of families … the reimagining of power … the reorganization of the economic system … the reinforcement of civil rights and dignity for all people … the end of the oppression of women, the end of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia … the reestablishment of a proper relationship to our environment. … When I list this laundry list of oppression, it does not overwhelm me; it tells me how far I have to go in my struggle; it tells me who my allies are.”

It’s Time to End Discrimination in Crash Testing

Men’s bodies and women’s bodies behave differently in collisions due to differences in size, muscle structure and bone density. But the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which issues five-star safety ratings, does not crash test cars with dummies that accurately represent women. The tests strictly prioritize men’s safety and offer only hope that women may stand a chance. Too often, we don’t. 

Crash test dummies that accurately represent women are available today, and other countries are already planning to require them in crash tests. The U.S. should do the same.

How Solitary Confinement Harms Women

Every day in the U.S., women endure the torture of solitary confinement, kept in cells the size of small closets for over 22 hours a day, isolated and alone, wondering if the state will execute them. Women are uniquely affected by lengthy incarceration; at least 75 percent of the women currently serving death sentences are mothers.

Sabrina Butler-Smith spent six and a half years behind bars—almost three of them on death row—before she was exonerated and set free. She may have been proven innocent, but after being caged in a six by nine foot cell, Butler-Smith told Ms., “You’re never the same.” 

SCOTUS Claims Abortion Proponents Are Motivated by Eugenics and Eliminating the ‘Unfit’—But History Says Otherwise

Tucked away in a footnote of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court proclaims that some “proponents of liberal access to abortion…have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population.” It thus implies that overturning Roe v. Wade will turn the tide away from this genocidal impulse.

But history tells a different story.

A Death Penalty Lawyer Grapples With the End of Roe

Conspicuously absent from the talking points promulgated by abortion opponents is what happens to girls and women who are forced to proceed with unwanted pregnancies. And what becomes of those children—the unaborted? Does being unwanted “cause” people to become criminals? No. But people navigate life with the tools they have. When trouble mounts for those kids, sweeping them into the school to prison pipeline, it is often the conservative, pro-life camp, who lead the charge to “lock them up and throw away the key.”

Where additional supports are absent, the trajectories of unwanted children should be of concern to us all, regardless of religious or political affiliation.

The Fight to Secure U.S. Abortion Rights Is Global

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Overturning Roe v. Wade will unleash devastating rollbacks on abortion across the United States, while also impacting U.S. foreign policy. Already, the Helms Amendment, Siljander Amendment, global gag rule and other restrictions form a collective—and deadly—U.S. foreign policy package that has had disastrous impacts on global health, including an increase in maternal mortality, unsafe abortions and HIV infections, as well as a decline in the overall quality of healthcare.

While the forthcoming decision, and its catastrophic fallout, is not likely to have an immediate global impact, it will undercut efforts to remove these restrictions and embolden the anti-abortion lobby to further instrumentalize U.S. foreign policy to promote its ideology.

Photographer Natalie Keyssar Illuminates the Plight of Women in Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Award-winning, Brooklyn-based photojournalist Natalie Keyssar says the six weeks she spent in Ukraine and at the Poland-Ukraine border gave her an opportunity to see the best of humanity. But she also admits that she saw absolute horror. Her photos depict grit and determination, as well as sorrow, and offer vivid testimony to the resistance on display in much of Ukraine.

Melissa Lucio Granted a Stay of Execution in Texas

Melissa Lucio, who was set to be executed for the death of her 2-year old daughter Mariah, was granted a stay of execution and a new hearing on Monday by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The court ordered a new hearing to consider whether her conviction was based on an unreliable false confession which Lucio, a victim of sexual abuse and domestic violence, offered in response to threatening, hostile questioning by investigators.

“The court’s decision paves the way for Melissa to present evidence of her innocence that should have been heard by the jury that condemned her to death 14 years ago,” said Professor Sandra Babcock, director of the Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide and one of Lucio’s attorneys.

Bipartisan Groups Urge Reconsideration of Melissa Lucio’s Death Sentence

Bipartisan Group Urges Reconsideration of Melissa Lucio’s Death Sentence

The state of Texas plans to put Melissa Lucio to death by lethal injection on Wednesday, April 27, which would make her the sixth woman executed in the U.S. in the last decade and the first Hispanic woman in Texas history.

But new evidence of Lucio’s interrogation reveals how unlikely it is that she is guilty—which is why a bipartisan group of Texas state lawmakers is asking authorities to reconsider the scheduled execution. They join hundreds of other Texans—including 225 anti-domestic violence groups, 130 faith leaders and 30 Latino organizations—in urging the Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Abbott to grant Lucio a reprieve.

17-Year-Old in Iran Murdered by Husband and Cousin for Fleeing Domestic Violence

Mona Heydari was forced to marry her cousin as a 12-year-old and birthed his child at 14. At 17, after fleeing the country and attempting to escape the abusive marriage, her life was ended by her husband.

Honor killings involving young women in Iran have become an all too common occurrence over the last two years, with a long list of victims. The lasting oppressive patriarchal and misogynistic ideologies prominent in law enforcement, government and Iranian society has allowed the killing of young women to become a crime without punishment.