"A Complete Guide to 'Hipster Racism'"

http://jezebel.com/5905291/a-complete-guide-to-hipster-racism

Not about Women's Rights, but it's a very very very important commentary on modern racism!

Anti-Choice vs. Pro-Choice Measures in 2011

Anti-Choice Legislation:

"In Congress, the anti-choice leadership of the House of Representatives declared blocking women's access to legal abortion care a "top priority.""  

This is what happened...

Total anti-choice measures enacted in 2011:

• 26 states enacted 69 anti-choice measures in 2011.
• Arizona, Florida, and Kansas enacted the most anti-choice legislation in 2011, with five measures each.
• Since 1995, states have enacted 713 anti-choice measures

http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/key-findings-threats-to-choice.html

IN CONTRAST:

Pro-choice Legislation:

Total pro-choice measures enacted in 2011:

• 6 states enacted 10 pro-choice measures in 2011.
• California enacted the most pro-choice legislation in 2011, with four measures.
• 2011 marks the seventh year in a row that Colorado has enacted a pro-choice measure.

Key pro-choice victories in 2011:

• California, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon enacted laws that promote healthy childbearing.
• Colorado enacted a law that improves sex education for young people.
• California enacted a law to protect the confidentiality of reproductive-health professionals and patients.
• Maryland and Washington improved low-income women's access to reproductive-health services by expanding eligibility for their state Medicaid family-planning programs.

http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/government-and-you/state-governments/key-findings-pro-choice.html 

Guest Blogger Series: Nancy Keenan “‘Arrest Grandma’ Act Would Insert Government into Difficult Family Decisions”

http://blog.latinovations.com/2012/04/20/guest-blogger-series-nancy-keenan-arrest-grandma-act-would-insert-government-into-difficult-family-decisions/

"The bill’s backers call it the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act (CIANA). We call it the “Arrest Grandma” Act because of what it would do.

The “Arrest Grandma” Act would make it a federal crime for anyone other than a parent—such as a loving grandmother, aunt, or clergy member—to accompany a young woman to another state for abortion care. It also would force doctors to learn and enforce 9 other states’ parental-involvement laws—under the threat of fines and prison sentences."

Educating Myself on Abortion Legislation

Hyde Amendment (1976)

"First passed by Congress in 1976, the Hyde Amendment ensures that abortion is not covered in the comprehensive health care services provided by the federal government through Medicaid. Congress has made some exceptions to the funding ban, which have varied over the years. At present, the federal Medicaid program mandates abortion funding in cases of rape or incest, as well as when a pregnant woman's life is endangered."
http://nchla.org/issues.asp?ID=1

Roe v. Wade (1973)
"Roe v. Wade challenged a Texas law that prohibited abortions except to save a woman's life. At the time, many other states had similar laws. As a result, women had very restricted access to legal abortion. Too often, women who desperately needed abortions resorted to dangerous illegal abortions performed by poorly trained practitioners in unsanitary conditions. Examining the Texas law and the effects that it had on the women of Texas, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy found in the United States Constitution included the right of women to decide whether to have children. The Court was careful to balance the right of a woman seeking an abortion with the states' interest in protecting maternal health and the potential life of the fetus." 
http://www.prochoice.org/policy/courts/roe_v_wade.html 

Chinese Activist Flees House Arrest

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/27/151530934/blind-chinese-activist-flees-house-arrest

"A blind Chinese activist, one of the country's most prominent, has made an audacious escape from house arrest and is safe from Chinese authorities, according to his supporters.

Yet days after Chen Guangchen fled his home, it's not clear exactly where he is. A diplomatic source indicates that he is inside the U.S. embassy, but this has not been confirmed officially.

Chen has attracted international attention with his efforts to prevent forced illegal abortions in China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken out in support of him."

The Komera Project & Global Grassroots: Educating Women

 http://www.komeraproject.org/

"The Komera Project provides scholarships to qualified girls in Rwinkwavu, Rwanda who lack the resources necessary to complete secondary school. Komera Scholars attend existing local boarding secondary schools in Rwanda. Our comprehensive scholarships include tuition, uniforms, health insurance, travel expenses, feminine hygiene products, books, pens and pencils, notebooks, mattresses, and sheets."

"As girls continue their education, they improve their earning potential, their health and their sense of self-worth enabling them to break the bonds of poverty." 

“You will never break the cycle of poverty or disease without educating girls. It won’t happen”
-Paul Farmer, Founder, Partners in Health

________________________________

http://www.globalgrassroots.org/index.html

"What Gretchen (Gretchen Steidle Wallace, the founder of Global Grassroots) discovered in that visit to South Africa, was that women and girls in grassroots communities throughout the country already knew what they needed to do to protect themselves from contracting HIV. But they did not have the economic freedom, sexual rights or personal voice to decide when, where, how and with whom to have sex." 

"In Rwanda, nearly 1 million people were killed in 100 days during the 1994 genocide. The UN estimates that 250,000 - 500,000 women were also raped, many by known HIV infected men. At the end of the genocide, the government estimated women made up 70% of the population, left to assume the roles of men in heading households, rebuilding lives, caring for orphans and trying to heal from trauma, grief and physical wounds. It is among these same marginalized women that Gretchen found extraordinary courage, steadfast resolve and legitimate solutions to advance social change for women."

_______________________________

Education = Earning potential + Self-Worth
Earning potential = More career choices + Independence + Better use of family money
Self-Worth = Independence + Strength + Health

When I was studying abroad in Rwanda and Uganda in the spring of 2010 I noticed the unbelievable strength of the women.  In Uganda, the women in the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps rethatched the houses, tended to gardens, found food, raised the children, kept their lives going while the men succumbed to drinking and depression after the peak of the LRA violence.  In Rwanda, there was a disproportionate number of women after the 1994 genocide.  Today, the women are the ones who are working hardest towards real reconciliation.  We visited villages where women's collectives had been formed where wives of perpetrators and wives of victims worked together to produce soap and other goods.  Women are peacekeepers; Women are survivors, forgotten victims; Women are healers.   

 

 

Why Women Are a Foreign Policy Issue

Why Women Are a Foreign Policy Issue - By Melanne Verveer

"On a trip to Afghanistan in the summer of 2009, not long after my appointment as the U.S. State Department's ambassador at large for global women's issues, I stopped for dinner with a group of Afghan women activists in Kabul. One woman opened our conversation with a plea: "Please don't see us as victims, but look to us as the leaders we are.""
...
"...promoting the status of women is not just a moral imperative but a strategic one; it's essential to economic prosperity and to global peace and security."

The Fight For Women's Rights in NH

This is everyone's fight! If it isn't you, it's your mother, your sister, your grandmother, your wife, your best friend... women's rights = human rights.

*Thankfully, the New Hampshire state Senate rejected four anti-choice bills yesterday that would have made access to birth control and abortion care much more difficult for women in the state.  
http://www.miscellanyblue.com/post/21797835826