Entries in Planned Parenthood (21)

Wednesday
May302012

US Child Poverty Rate | French President Hollande's Gender Parity Cabinet | Women's Strike Force in VA Hits Home

French Roast News

Anne is reading …

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Global spending cuts are certain to impact child poverty rates, putting children’s future health, education and employment prospects at risk, the UN’s children’s charity UNICEF warns.

Poverty rates are determined by whether a child lacks two or more of a list of 14 basic items such as three meals a day, a quiet place to do homework, educational books at home, or an Internet connection. The highest rates of deprivation are found in countries that include Romania, Bulgaria and Portugal (with more than 70%, 50% and 27% respectively), though even some richer countries, such as France and Italy, have deprivation rates above 10%. The Nordic countries have the least deprivation among children, all with rates below 3%.

The second measure scrutinized in Report Card 1/0 looks at relative poverty, examining the percentage of children living below their national “poverty line” – defined as 50 per cent of median disposable household income.

The combined analysis results in a lineup of countries in which the United States ranks second from last among developed countries with a child poverty rate of 23.1%.

The top five positions in the league table are occupied by Iceland, Finland, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Norway (with Slovenia and Denmark close behind). All of these countries have relative child poverty rates below 7%. Read on at UNICEF

More reading from AOC

Status vs Money | A Third Look At Happiness, Gender Equality & Taxes

More French Roast News

Women’s Strike Force Soars

“Our organization is not even three months old, yet activists across Virginia are clamoring to get involved and help raise money,” the group’s director, Rebecca Gellar, boasted recently. “In our first two weeks, we raised a breathtaking $100,000.” According to public documents, that includes $20,000 from a single donor in Charlottesville — as well as four-figure contributions from as far afield as Massachusetts and California.

Anne’s ‘Operation Spittin’ Out the Pitts’ is watching the new VA-based Women’s Strike Force, a political PAC formed after VA infamous vaginal ultrasound bill probed the private parts and public conscience of a few too many American women.

WSF is gaining such momentum that the Richmond Daily saw a need to write a critical op ed piece, deriding a PAC that would form around the single issue of women’s reproductive health.

Related Reading:

Ronald Regan, The Silent Scream and the Slow Rise of Fetal Pain The Daily Beast

Anti-Sex Ed Curriculum Makes the List: Don’t Blame Obama, Blame the System RH Reality Check

Republican Rep. tries to save Planned Parenthood Politico

Conservative bishops court the disdain of Catholic Women LATimes

Gender Parity in Hollande Ministers

VOA News writes that France’s newly-elected president Francois Hollande has ushered in the country’s first gender-balanced cabinet. Olivia Cattan, journalist and founder of the feminist organization ‘Paroles de Femmes’ or ‘Words of Women’ advises Hollande on women’s issues. A new ministry of women’s rights is headed by 34-year-old Najat Vallaud Belkacem.

“It’s a fantastic gesture for Mr. Hollande. It’s like a page has been turned. It’s the first parity government in France. He’s really turned a page in terms of French feminism,” Cattan said.

DateWed, May 30, 2012 in , , , , tagged , , , , , , , , ,
Wednesday
May232012

Will PA Defund Planned Parenthood? | Sudan Stoning Sentence for Young Woman Moves Supreme Court 

Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) introduces The Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priorities Act.PA Republican State Representative Daryl Metcalfe introduced the Whole Woman’s Health Funding Priorities Act today, with the objective to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Existing state law already prohibits taxpayer funding of abortions but Metcalfe is not satisfied.

“Regardless of their position on abortion, Pennsylvania taxpayers must no longer be forced to subsidize the loss of innocent lives,” said Metcalfe.  “In reality, women in Pennsylvania will be healthier and the children safer when we permanently defund Planned Parenthood and its anti-family agenda.”

Mallory Quigley, communications director for Susan B Anthony List, called the bill an “upgrade” for women’s health services because it directs money away from Planned Parenthood clinics and toward hospitals and other kinds of family planning clinics that don’t provide abortions.

Six states enacted legislation to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011: Wisconsin, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee. District judges in all of those states except Wisconsin have since determined that those laws were unconstitutional and have temporarily blocked them. Similar cases like a new Texas law that has refused all Medicaid funds, are being ruled unconstitutional at a state level.

A federal judge in the Texas case wrote that the state has made no credible case that especially poor women won’t suffer under the new anti-Planned Parenthood legislation.

“In the past our clients would qualify for services for free, but now we have to charge them a fee,” said Jeff Teague, president of Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee. “It’s put a burden on people, obviously. We’ve seen a ten percent decrease in patient numbers, and we’ve worked very closely with health department to see if they’ve seen a corresponding increase, and they have not. We have a serious concern that there are a number of women not receiving or delaying care, which is a bad situation either way.” via Huff Po

Related Reads

A Message to Girls About Religious Men Who Fear You Soraya Chemaly at Huff Po

What You Need to Know About the Law Behind the Catholic Church’s Anti-Birth Control Lawsuit ThinkProgress

California Bill Would Increase Access to Birth Control RH Reality Check

The battle among Catholic bishops E.J. Dionne Jr. at WaPo

Death by Stoning

A detail from Ercole Ferrata’s “Martirio di Santa Emerenziana” (1660), a marble engraving carved to adorn the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone of Rome, Italy. The engraving depicts the stoning St. Emerenziana, martyred at the grave of St. Agnes.Death by Stoning

It’s believed that stoning is the world’s oldest form of execution and is a common death penalty in the Bible, leaving scholars to conclude the Jesus’ famous anti-death penalty statement in John 8.7: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Today stoning is primarily enforced by Islamic fundamentalist sharia law. In 2004, 13-year-old Zhila Izadyar was sentenced to death by stoning in Iran for the ‘crime’ of being raped by her older brother. International protests saved her life.

How Stoning Works: The prisoner is buried either up to his waist (if male) or up to her shoulders (if female) and then pelted with stones by a crowd of volunteers until obviously battered to death. Under the terms of most fundamentalist courts, the stones must be small enough that death cannot reasonably be expected to result from only one or two blows, but large enough to cause physical harm. The average execution by stoning is extremely painful, lasting at least 10 to 20 minutes. via About.com

Help Us Save Intisar Sharif Abdalla

A young Sudanese woman, who gave birth to a child claimed not to be her husband’s, has been sentenced to death by stoning by Sudanese judge Sami Ibrahim Shabo. AOC will respond to requests for help from activists in Sudan trying to save the young woman from this brutal death.

Intisar Sharif Abdalla, believed to be between 15 and 17 years of age is presently awaiting her fate with her baby, in a jail in Khartoum. Prison authorities, who claim she is 20 years old, say the young mother was sentenced to death in accordance with Article 146 of the Sudanese criminal law. She had no legal representation.

The judgment was made on May 13, 2012 after just one hearing and came after an “admission of guilt” plea following torture and brutal beatings by Sharif’s brother who instigated the case. Her co-accused however remains un-convicted and walks freely.

The sentence must be approved by Sudan’s Supreme Court. To date, no stoning cases have been carried out but the demands for full Islamic shariah laws have escalated since the separation of Islamic Sudan and predominantly Christian South Sudan.

Anne is working with the same team of activists as she did on freeing Lubna Hussein, one of 40,000 Sudanese women who avoided flogging when she was arrested in 2009 for improper dress.

Again in 2010, Anne published a horrific video of a young woman being flogged in Sudan, stabilizing the footage on Vimeo when YouTube repeatedly took it down. She then sent the video files to Bloomberg News. Media contacts will be made regarding this stoning case in the next few days.

DateWed, May 23, 2012 in , , , , tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,
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