The UK drugs regulator is to examine new evidence about a pregnancy test used in the 1960s and 70s which hundreds of parents believe caused serious deformities in their children, often leading to early death.
Category: Reproductive Rights
The XX Factor
Unfortunately for women, the necessity of taking account of biological sex differences in early-stage pharmaceutical research has routinely been neglected, avoided, and rationalized away.
Only in the last 15 to 20 years has overwhelming evidence been amassed to show that sex differences, both large and small, exist at every level of analysis in the human animal.
The discovery of sex differences in the human brain and nervous system should not be seen as a blow to gender equality. Men are not the “gold standard” version of the human species, and women should not be viewed as a deviation from the norm.
https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-xx-factor/
How Australia missed the point about stay-at-home mums being a drain on the economy
According to the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report published in October 2016, Australia fell from 15 in 2006 to number 46 in 2016. Australian women’s low workforce participation rates were cited as one of the key drivers behind Australia’s dramatic slip in just ten years.
The government’s omnibus savings bill is still on the table, though it is unlikely to pass. It proposes significant changes to parental leave and childcare subsidies, all in the name of making it ‘fairer’. The whole plan, frankly, is pants.
The changes aren’t radical enough and go nowhere near addressing the barriers to high quality affordable childcare and parental leave that keep mums out of work. Australia’s Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins said so in remarks to a recent Senate inquiry on the bill. And on that basis the Human Rights Commission rejected it.
https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/stay-at-home-mums-being-a-drain-on-the-economy/
Unpaid childcare is Australia’s largest industry – it needs to be acknowledged
The value of unpaid childcare makes it Australia’s largest industry, larger than any in the formal economy.
Unsurprisingly, because of traditional role allocation, women do 76% of childcare and 72% of unpaid work overall. They also do 67% of domestic work, 69% of care of adults and 57% of volunteering.
With women doing three-quarters of the unpaid work, attaching a dollar value helps in understanding how it affects their participation in the paid workforce, says Thorpe.
ALHR – Human rights lawyers concerned reintroduction of Fred Nile “Zoe’s Law” will undermin e womens and girls’ rights
Fred Nile has reintroduced his Crimes Amendment Bill, known as Zoe’s Law, which seeks to criminalise harm to, or destruction of, a “child in utero”.
“At best, these proposed changes to the Crimes Act are incompetently drafted and unnecessary, since there are already adequate provisions to prosecute dangerous drivers or assailants whose actions result in a woman suffering a miscarriage. At worst, these provisions are motivated by malicious and misogynistic intent and constitute a startling attack on the human rights of women – in the same league as the global gag rule recently signed by Donald Trump. ALHR calls on members of the NSW Legislative Assembly to reject the bill in its entirety.
https://alhr.org.au/human-rights-lawyers-concerned-reintroduction-fred-nile-zoes-law-will-undermine-womens-girls-rights/
New Texas bill takes aim at men’s masturbation habits
State Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, filed a bill Friday that would penalize men for “unregulated masturbatory emissions.” The satirical House Bill 4260 would encourage men to remain “fully abstinent” and only allow the “occasional masturbatory emissions inside health care and medical facilities,” which are described in the legislation as the best way to ensure men’s health. Such an emission would be considered “an act against an unborn child, and failing to preserve the sanctity of life,” according to the legislation.
http://www.sfgate.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-representative-creates-a-bill-to-promote-10994871.php
For Aboriginal women, International Women’s Day is not a celebration
Aboriginal women are the “fastest growing” prison population in Australia and it is well-known incarceration rates for Aboriginal women are linked to the double discrimination women face in the criminal justice system on the basis of both race and gender.
Aboriginal women also spoke of the suffering resulting from child protection practices leading to widespread removal of Aboriginal children, including newborns, from their mothers at rates exceeding those that occurred under the discriminatory era of The Stolen generations.
It’s not 1899, abortion should not be a crime. – YouTube
UN announces that Peru will compensate woman in historic human rights abortion case
Nearly a decade after the UN Human Rights Committee agreed that a Peruvian woman’s rights were violated for having been denied an abortion – and recommended that the Government compensate her . . . Peru has said it will pay compensation for having refused her access to a legal medical procedure.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?
Texas Lawmakers Advance Bill That Would Allow Doctors to Lie to Pregnant Women
This morning, the Texas Senate Committee on State Affairs unanimously passed a bill on to the full Senate that would let the government decide what a pregnant woman deserves to know about the health of her unborn child.
Committee members, it appears, believe it should be up to the doctor to decide if a pregnant woman should know she’s carrying a fetus with severe disabilities — especially if the doctor suspects she’ll have an abortion if she finds out. If passed, the law would make it impossible for Texans to sue a doctor for intentionally withholding this kind of information about a fetus’ health.
http://www.sacurrent.com/the-daily/archives/2017/02/27/texas-lawmakers-advance-bill-that-would-allow-doctors-to-lie-to-pregnant-women?
