Category: Reproductive Rights

Call for National Enquiry Into Gender Dysphoria

The National Association of Practising Psychiatrists respectfully request:

  1. The commonwealth government set up a parliamentary enquiry into the treatment of gender dysphoria in children in Australia;
  2. All medical colleges who have member doctors involved in treating gender dysphoria children (paediatricians, general practitioners, surgeons, endocrinologists, gynaecologists, psychiatrists), along with the AMA, the NAPP and other representative medical bodies, and the Medical Board of Australia form a joint committee to develop a set of practice guidelines for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents under the age of 18 years presenting with gender dysphoria.

Source: Call for National Enquiry Into Gender Dysphoria – NAPP

‘She taught me to survive’: Kristina Keneally’s fight for parents of stillborns

In Australia, six babies every day are stillborn with the rate remaining largely unchanged for two decades.

[M]ost organisations in Australia don’t extend their parental leave policies to cover employees recovering after a stillbirth. Keneally’s quest is therefore to have more employers standardise this as part of their framework; a change that would not impact a company’s bottom line given they’d already accounted for that employee’s leave.

Source: ‘She taught me to survive’: Kristina Keneally’s fight for parents of stillborns

Woman: Deleted. – Redline

A Statement on Abortion Law Reform by the Council of Disobedient Women On the eve of bringing an end to antiquated, anti-women abortion laws Green MP Jan Logie intends to write women out of the Bill.

The Council of Disobedient Women can confirm that there were exactly zero People with Penises who were pregnant in 2018 in New Zealand, and globally for that matter. (Reference: all of human history).

This refusal to utter the word woman, and the reduction of females to assorted body parts, is the opposite of inclusive. It is dehumanising.

Source: Woman: Deleted. – Redline

US sprinter Allyson Felix beats Usain Bolt’s gold medal record 10 months after giving birth

A 33-year-old U.S. sprinter broke a world record for gold medals Sunday, toppling former record-holder Usain Bolt.

Allyson Felix won her 12th gold medal at the World Championships during the mixed-gender 4x400m relay, Business Insider reports. Bolt was the previous World Championships record-holder, since 2013, with a total of 11 gold medals.

It was Felix’s first race since giving birth to her daughter, Camryn, in November 2018.

As Felix gets ready for her fifth Olympics, she also has been vocal against Nike’s long-standing maternity policies for sponsored athletes. She’s pushing so that she and other female athletes won’t be impacted financially for being pregnant.

Source: US sprinter Allyson Felix beats Usain Bolt’s gold medal record 10 months after giving birth | WBNS-10TV Columbus, Ohio | Columbus News, Weather & Sports

Questions of Power and Rights in Surrogacy

I am a lesbian. In my political activism over more than forty years I have repeatedly spoken out against homophobia as well as fighting against misogyny, ableism, racism and classism among other oppressions. Today, in my talk, I am going to criticise gay men who engage women to be surrogates so that they can fulfil their ‘desire’ for children. My criticism is for anyone – straight or gay – who acquires children through surrogacy.

Surrogacy is an industry in which we are creating a new stolen generation with consequences of transgenerational trauma as we have seen in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) and Julia Gillard’s National Apology for Forced Adoptions (2013). But this time it is inherently a part of the industry. The baby is conceived in order to be taken away at birth. As Renate Klein points out in Surrogacy, pets are better treated and puppies and kittens are usually not removed from their mothers until 6 to 8 weeks old (I am not recommending this, simply pointing it out).

Gay men in these days of equal marriage laws are perceived by the mainstream as a progressive force. And some gay men do behave as a progressive force. However, there is a distinct class of wealthy mobile gay men who are promoting surrogacy as a new freedom for gay men. But there is nothing progressive about exploiting women on the basis of poverty, ethnicity, disability or sex. There is no place for an industry based on misogyny, racism, classism and ableism.

Source: Questions of Power and Rights in Surrogacy | Stop Surrogacy Now

Abortion decriminalised in NSW after marathon debate

New South Wales parliament has passed a bill decriminalising abortion, overturning a 119-year-old law and achieving what advocates say is a “massive step forward for women” in the state.

The bill was opposed by religious groups, anti-abortion activists and several MPs who raised concerns about late-term and sex-selective abortions, conscientious objection and the way the bill was introduced.

Tensions reached a climax last week when Liberal MPs Tanya Davies, Matthew Mason-Cox and Lou Amato threatened, then withdrew, a leadership spill motion against Premier Gladys Berejiklian over her handling of the bill.

The premier was not present for the final vote on Thursday.

Source: Abortion decriminalised in NSW after marathon debate | Australia news | The Guardian

Transgender man loses court battle to be registered as father

A transgender man from Kent who gave birth with the help of fertility treatment cannot be registered as his child’s father, the most senior family judge in England and Wales has ruled.

In the first legal definition of a mother in English common law, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the high court’s family division, ruled on Wednesday that motherhood was about being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man or a woman in law.

“There is a material difference between a person’s gender and their status as a parent. Being a ‘mother’, whilst hitherto always associated with being female, is the status afforded to a person who undergoes the physical and biological process of carrying a pregnancy and giving birth.

“It is now medically and legally possible for an individual, whose gender is recognised in law as male, to become pregnant and give birth to their child. Whilst that person’s gender is ‘male’, their parental status, which derives from their biological role in giving birth, is that of ‘mother’.”

Source: Transgender man loses court battle to be registered as father | Society | The Guardian

Why Australian women should be incandescent with rage right now

If you happen to be a woman living in Australia, now is the time to get angry. Not just alert or alarmed, but truly angry. You need to be furious because If you happen to be a woman living in Australia, now is the time to get angry. Not just alert or alarmed, but truly angry as abortion rights and the family court come under threat

Source: Why Australian women should be incandescent with rage right now | The New Daily Why Australian women should be fighting mad right now

Number of women dying in childbirth way off track to meet worldwide targets

UN figures show slow decrease in maternal mortality rate, with rates on the rise in countries including the US.

In the US maternal death rates have increased by over 50% and progress in reducing deaths in the 10 countries with the highest rates has slowed since 2000.

Source: Number of women dying in childbirth way off track to meet worldwide targets | Global development | The Guardian

https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/19-09-2019-more-women-and-children-survive-today-than-ever-before-un-report