David recently posted this comment in another thread:
I try to talk candidly with my daughters regarding the pitfalls and benefits of relationships. I try not to say either do or don’t have sex prior to marriage. I try to talk about consequences for doing something without a good understanding of why and what will happen after. When the girls watched the movie “Juno” that became a good opportunity for discussing the difficulty of dealing with teen pregnancy and the confused reasons people can come to that place.
Posted in Doing Life, Relationships, What can we do?, Women's Rights | 5 Comments »
Read the rest of this news item »
Alexa, Human Trafficking, and International Justice Mission
Wednesday, March 5th, 2008Recently yotta-brilliant founder of Off The Map, Jim Henderson, introduced me to his extremely kewl niece, Alexa, and her zetta-awesome senior project, which I want to tell you about. Jim said:
I am so proud of my niece Alexa. How many young people when asked to create a Senior project would choose something as big, complex and important as ending Human Trafficking. Alexa is partnering with IJM which is probably the most respected organization in the world when it comes to this issue.
Alexa is a high school senior and she has put together what looks to be a fairly posh benefit dinner to raise funds for International Justice Mission. She has also built a pretty sweet web site to promote the dinner, as well as to educate people about human trafficking, at www.endhumanslavery.com I would totally encourage you to check out her web site, and if you are in the Seattle area, sign up for the benefit dinner, which happens the evening of March 14th in Bothell.
Alexa’s site has these quotes running at the top:
Human trafficking has become a $9 billion a year global industry and is increasingly an activity of organized crime.
Every 10 minutes a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor
Over 12 million people worldwide are trafficked for forced labor or sexual exploitation
IJM has some ideas about how we can begin to address this issue. But I’m wondering if any of you have any ideas/thoughts on how we can respond? What good news is there in the face of such horrible news?
Posted in Activism, Slavery, Women's Rights | 11 Comments »
Is Planned Parenthood racist?
Friday, February 29th, 2008Yesterday I ran across this story on The Point, a team blog which is associated with Prison Fellowship Ministries and Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint. Lila Rose, a student at UCLA and editor in chief of The Advocate, a student magazine of the right to life, writes:
Over the summer, The Advocate investigated the financial dealings of Planned Parenthood and made some shocking discoveries about the clinic-owning “nonprofit.” We obtained the information by having an actor call clinics across the country and pose as a donor. The actor who called, The Advocate’s advisor, communicated to them a very racist agenda—the one that Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood’s founder, had envisioned. He then asked to donate money specifically for the abortions of African-American babies in order to “lower the number of blacks in America.”
Posted in Ethics, Women's Rights | 19 Comments »
Read the rest of this news item »
Mad women
Tuesday, January 8th, 2008But the truth is that their activities are becoming harder every day. In a state in which the gods of death and money rule, in a state where the economy is flourishing while the children are hungry, where the mythological heroes are fearless murderers, where the leaders openly and publicly admit that human life is not worth a fig in their eyes, in a state that sends its sons to be killed without even bothering to invent a reason for it, in a state that imprisons millions of human beings in ghettoes and enclosures and kills them slowly, the persistent quiet voice of the Women in Black is the strongest conscientious voice of refusal.
Dr Nurit Peled-Elhanan an Israeli peace activist and professor at Hebrew University. She was a founder of the Parents CircleFamilies Forum. Following the death of her 13-year-old daughter, Smadar, in a suicide bomb attack in Jerusalem in September 1997, she became an outspoken critic of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza speaking at a conference of the Women in Black movement last weekend.
Allowing for a little hyperbole, Dr Nurit could have been speaking about us. Our communities where young men go off to die and politicians play dice with people’s lives.
In the midst of the electioneering of 2008 (oh God can it really be that long?) please cut through the fancy words of your politicians and their greed for power. Listen out for your fiercest critics. Challenge those who seek power to explain how their agenda will help the weakest, the lowest, the most ignored, the ones whose votes count for least in the corridors in Washingon, Toyko and London.
And in time, we may even get the politicians we deserve.
Posted in Activism, Ethics, Women's Rights | 2 Comments »
A horribly complex issue
Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Sharon over at A Cup of Coffee wrote this post last week and has kindly granted us permission to repost. Thankyou Sharon!
——————
This morning I attended a workshop on FGM (Female Genital Mutilation or female circumcision). We care for a lot of refugees at the health centre where I work, including a significant number from Somalia and other African countries where FGM is practised, and so although it is uncommon and illegal here it is something we do see regularly and need to know about.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), often referred to as female circumcision, comprises all procedures involving partial or total removal of the external female genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whether for cultural, religious or other non-therapeutic reasons. (WHO)
Girls usually undergo FGM prior to puberty- the average age is 6-8. While it is increasingly done by health professionals under local anaesthetic, in rural areas it is still carried out without anaesthetic, with scissors, razor blades or knives while the girl is held down by female relatives. In the short term the girl may experience excrutiating pain, shock infection, haemorhage, urinary retention and fractures. But it doesnt end there. Long term issues caused by FGM include difficulty passing urine, pelvic infections, scars, cysts, fistulae, difficulties with menstruation, increased risk of HIV transmission, sexual complications, childbirth complications and negative psychosocial impacts.
Posted in Women's Rights | 22 Comments »
While the physical trauma that girls go through is horrendous and quite harrowing to contemplate, what I found most disturbing was the psycho-social issues they face, the fact that even in New Zealand women see the pain and long term complications of FGM as preferable to the socially ostracised life they and their daughters would lead without it.
Read the rest of this news item »
Movie Review: Iron Jawed Angels
Friday, September 14th, 2007
“The ruling class are those who have a voice. And that voice is a vote.”
- Alice Paul
For our September meeting, our movie group watched the 2004 film Iron Jawed Angels. This film focuses on the efforts of women’s suffrage leaders Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, brilliantly played by Hilary Swank and Frances O’Connor. The film is set in the final years of the struggle before the passage of the 19th Amendment. By 1912, the veteran leaders of the women’s suffrage movement in the US had decided that a federal amendment granting the vote to women was unattainable and had resigned themselves to battling to gain the vote state by state.
Then Alice Paul and Lucy Burns burst onto the scene. Passionately committed to the idea of a constitutional amendment, they brought with them the radical tactics they had learned while campaigning for the women’s vote in England. They used parades, mass demonstrations, picketing, civil disobedience and hunger strikes to attract attention to the disenfranchisement of women. Many of the women’s suffrage leaders suffered a great personal toll before finally achieving their goal in 1920.
We gave this movie high marks. As Staci said, “All American women should be required to see this movie before their 18th birthday.” Aubrie noted that she had learned about the suffrage movement in school but it was “just names and dates.” She felt that actually seeing the movement brought to life had “a huge impact.” Before seeing this film, I knew that our foremothers had worked long and hard to earn the right to vote. But I didn’t understand how much women like Alice Paul and Lucy Burns had actually endured. I will never cast another ballot without thinking of them and being grateful for their determination and their sacrifice.
Posted in Movie Reviews, Women's Rights | 7 Comments »|
