“Safe access zones” around abortion clinics do not breach Australians’ limited right to free speech because protesters are not engaged in public debate but rather targeting women for their medical choices, the Victorian government has said.
The Victorian government has made the submission to the high court, warning that without safe access zones some women who need abortion services will decide “to delay or not to seek those services at all”.
The high court is hearing two constitutional challenges against safe access zone laws in Victoria and Tasmania at the same time as a group of Labor and Nationals MPs in New South Wales begin a push for that state to introduce zones of 150m around abortion clinics, the same buffer that applies in Victoria
One high court case has been brought by religious picketer Kathy Clubb, the first person to be charged under Victoria’s laws. Clubb was fined $5,000 for approaching a couple in the safe zone outside an East Melbourne clinic in August 2016 and trying to hand them pamphlets.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/18/safe-zones-around-abortion-clinics-dont-threaten-free-speech-victoria-says?
Category: Reproductive Rights
Adopt another way for kids’ sake
In 2015-16, more than 46,000 Australian children were taken from their parent or parents. Most of these children were under the age of five and, although they were placed in out-of-home care, 60 per cent of them were placed with extended family. During the same period, 278 adoptions were finalised.
That leaves thousands of kids who are bouncing around the foster care system from family to family. Experts say these kids want “forever homes” and the permanency of adoption.
It is estimated that there are 4000 children in foster care who are eligible for adoption. Although child protection and adoption are governed by the states, a federal government inquiry has been announced into whether there are unnecessary barriers to adoption, whether a national adoption code should be established and what that code might look like.
In 2013 Julia Gillard, then prime minister, gave a national apology to the victims of forced adoption. After an inquiry, the government recognised that past practices left perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with deep wounds that would not heal.
It is assumed by many that while closed adoptions are bad, open adoptions are good. An open adoption is where the child knows their biological mother and father, and has regular contact with them throughout their upbringing. Open adoption may be better than closed adoption; however, it may not, and in any case it is hardly a perfect scenario.
It seems impossible to talk about adoption without hurting somebody and incurring backlash. It is even harder as an adopted person to explain to non-adopted people what being adopted is like. The adoption experience is different for everyone, but a fundamental truth is this: a child wants their mother and father. No amount of pretending this isn’t the case will change the facts. Biology matters. Sorry if that offends.
A child-centric adoption system would not erase the identities of children. It wouldn’t abolish their birth certificates and create new ones with new names, in a grand game of pretence. In a child-centric system the child would never be separated in law from their parents, removed from their family tree and lose their rights.
Naturally, in practice they might reside elsewhere for the term of their childhood, and their carers’ need certain rights to bring them up, obviously.
A child-centric system would allow all adult adoptees who have had their identities changed in the past the right to end or annul their adoption and change their identity back, returning in the eyes of the law to their biological family. This should be a “no fault” process and simple for the adoptee to achieve.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/inquirer/adopt-another-way-for-kids-sake/news-story/eab6f2d47adb9528fda8517f89d8ce39
Labor's promise to axe tampon tax just start of focus that should be on women this budget
Finally it’s happened. A major political party has pledged to stop taxing my period, and the periods of millions of Australian women on a monthly basis.
This is a breakthrough in Australian politics and signals that women could be more of a focus in the upcoming federal budget in May, particularly where it relates to tax and superannuation.
It also means that some politicians see tampons as a tax-free necessity, just like condoms – which are already free of the Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Labor now has the first mover advantage on a highly controversial women’s tax discrimination issue.
In looking at strategies to address some of the economic imbalances that affect Australian women, KPMG recommends further proactive policies are needed including:
- paying the superannuation guarantee on Commonwealth Parental Paid Leave and applying it to workers’ compensation payments.
- Amending the Sex Discrimination Act to ensure employers are able to make higher superannuation payments to women if they wish to do so.
- Reviewing the Fair Work Act to determine the effectiveness of Equal Remuneration orders in addressing gender pay equity – including a less adversarial consideration of the undervaluing of women’s work.
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/labor-pledge-to-axe-the-tampon-tax/
Drawing lines: A review of Renate Klein’s 'Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation'
Reading Renate Klein’s elegantly argued Surrogacy: A Human Rights Violation, it’s difficult not to keep repeating to oneself, “How did we get here?”, all the while trying to keep at bay a sense of despair.
“Here” is an allegedly civilized world in which treating a woman’s body as a commodity is regarded in polite liberal circles as not just acceptable but a sign of being progressive. Klein’s analysis of surrogacy focuses on the renting of women’s wombs, what she and others appropriately describe as “reproductive prostitution.” The term reminds us that many liberals also endorse “regular’ prostitution, men’s use of objectified female bodies for sexual pleasure.
Klein’s definition of surrogacy reflects those basic values: “Pared down to cold hard facts, surrogacy is the commissioning/buying/renting of a woman into whose womb an embryo is inserted and who thus becomes a ‘breeder’ for a third party.”
Key observations and insights that Klein’s book provides include:
- While many people have strong emotional desires to have children, there is no “right” to have a child genetically related to you. The moral claim for surrogacy is an illusion.
- The surrogacy medical machine comes with risks for the women who sell eggs and those who carry the fetus, as well for the children born through this method, and there has been little research/testing on the long-term health effects. The health claims of surrogacy are distortions.
- Surrogacy routinely involves the exploitation of poorer women, increasingly in the Third World. The political practice of surrogacy is exploitation.
In Closed-Door UN Meetings, Trump Administration Officials Pushed Abstinence For International Women’s Health Pr ograms
In closed-door meetings at the United Nations in March, Trump administration officials pushed socially conservative views on women’s rights issues — including abstinence-based policies over information about contraception — that were further to the right than those expressed by most other countries present, including Russia and the representative for the Arab states, UN officials who attended the meetings told BuzzFeed News.
Early in this series of meetings, Bethany Kozma — a senior adviser for gender equality and women’s empowerment at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and anti-transgender activist — emphasized that the US was a “pro-life nation,” sparking a strong reaction from delegates in the room, two officials in the room confirmed to BuzzFeed News.
Throughout the two-week session, Trump administration officials discussed shifting international policy on women toward abstinence-oriented education and teaching women sexual “refusal skills.” Those views — as well as the US’s push for more conservative policies on immigration, trade and environmental regulation — ended up uniting most of the 45 CSW member states against the US on family planning issues, six sources who attended or were familiar with meetings told BuzzFeed News.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/emaoconnor/un-meeting-trump-administration-abstinence?
EL SALVADOR – 20-year-old faces prison after giving birth to her stepfather’s baby in a latrine
A year ago today, Imelda gave birth in the latrine at her family’s small, one-room home with curtains for dividers in a small community. She said she did not know she was about to give birth; instead, she told her lawyer, she “felt something come loose”. She screamed for help, fainted and started to haemorrhage.
Her mother took her to the local public hospital, where they saw that she had given birth. She was pregnant, she told health professionals, because her stepfather had raped her repeatedly from the age of 12. This was documented by the hospital, but not acted upon. Instead, they notified police. At her home, the baby was rescued from the latrine without any injuries.
Imelda was charged with attempted aggravated homicide, although no evidence was presented that she had taken any action to endanger or attempt to murder the baby. She has been in detention for the past year, with a preliminary hearing scheduled for 30 April.
http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/el-salvador-20-year-old-faces-prison-after-giving-birth-to-her-stepfathers-baby-in-a-latrine/?
Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis
This tragedy of black infant mortality is intimately intertwined with another tragedy: a crisis of death and near death in black mothers themselves. The United States is one of only 13 countries in the world where the rate of maternal mortality — the death of a woman related to pregnancy or childbirth up to a year after the end of pregnancy — is now worse than it was 25 years ago.
Black women are three to four times as likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than their white counterparts, according to the C.D.C. — a disproportionate rate that is higher than that of Mexico, where nearly half the population lives in poverty — and as with infants, the high numbers for black women drive the national numbers.
Last year, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists released a statement noting that “evidence suggests that, in addition to regular nursing care, continuous one-to-one emotional support provided by support personnel, such as a doula, is associated with improved outcomes for women in labor.”
Monica Simpson is the executive director of SisterSong, the country’s largest organization dedicated to reproductive justice for women of color, and a member of the Black Mamas Matter Alliance, an advocacy group. In 2014, she testified in Geneva before the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, saying that the United States, by failing to address the crisis in black maternal mortality, was violating an international human rights treaty.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/11/magazine/black-mothers-babies-death-maternal-mortality.html?
Is pregnancy holding women back from partnership?
A senior lawyer in a national Australian law firm (hereafter Woman 1), speaking on the condition of anonymity, said she was advised by a partner at her firm not to fall pregnant until she was a partner, at which point she would be better placed to take leave.
“I think it was actually said as a genuine piece of advice, and he would have thought he was helping me.”
An associate at another national firm (Woman 2), also speaking anonymously, said that upon announcing her pregnancy and impending maternity leave, opportunities that had been promised were suddenly no longer available to her.
Woman 2 then learned that her employment status changed from full-time to part-time, with her pay scale changing to a pro rata basis, which led to a refusal of standard pay increases.
“Sadly, pregnancy and family responsibilities discrimination remains prevalent in Australia,” said Kingsford Legal Centre director, associate professor Anna Cody said.
“One in two mothers [experiences] discrimination at work during pregnancy, parental leave or [when returning] to work.”
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/biglaw/23027-is-pregnancy-holding-women-back-from-partnership?
Idaho candidate on abortion: Urges charges, death penalty
On Thursday, the recently hired columnist Kevin Williamson was fired from the Atlantic after an uproar over his views on abortion – namely his belief, first mentioned in a 2014 tweet, that women who have the procedure should be executed by hanging.
The truth, of course, is that Williamson never should have been hired in the first place; the Atlantic and Goldberg knew about Williamson’s belief about executing women who had abortions and brought him on anyway. They knew they would be forcing the women at the magazine – some of whom we can assume have had abortions – to sit in an office with a man who wanted them dead.
A Republican lieutenant governor candidate on Tuesday softened his stance that women who get an abortion should be punished if it is ever criminalized in Idaho, a day after saying the punishment should include the death penalty.
Last year, Abolish Abortion Idaho launched a ballot initiative seeking to charge both abortion providers and women with first-degree murder – but it is unclear if the group will have enough signatures to make it on the ballot in November.
Meanwhile, Republican state Sen. Dan Foreman attempted to introduce legislation that would also classify abortion as first-degree murder for mothers and doctors, but the proposal never received a hearing.
Read more here: http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/election/article207845019.html?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/06/kevin-williamson-atlantic-fired-abortion-tweet?
https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/04/04/kevin-williamson-also-said-his-podcast-people-who-ve-had-abortions-should-be-hanged/219857
POLAND – In response to all-male discussions of women’s issues on TV, a group of women made a mock programme on men’s sexuality – Safe Abortion : Women's Right
POLAND – In response to all-male discussions of women’s issues on TV, a group of women made a mock programme on men’s sexuality.
They chose the sexual health of men as their subject and asked the question: Should Viagra be a prescription drug? They discussed male problems with erection and the selling of Viagra without a prescription while contraception requires one. During the debate, one said: “I think men must be protected from Viagra because it is an extremely strong drug with numerous side effects. “An erection is a gift from God” another argued, while a third claimed: “Use of Viagra interferes with the plans of God.”
http://www.safeabortionwomensright.org/poland-in-response-to-all-male-discussions-of-womens-issues-on-tv-a-group-of-women-made-a-mock-programme-on-mens-sexuality/?
