Offensively Wrong Analogy of the Day

ESPN's Jemele Hill compares Tim Tebow's anti-choice ad to Muhammad Ali protesting the draft and Tommie Smith and John Carlos raising their fists at the 1968 Olympics.

Pro-Choice License Plates

Virginia Planned Parenthood's attempt to get pro-choice license plates in Virginia is a great idea whose time has come. I've often complained of the left ceding rhetoric to the right--"tax burden" and the like. In no place has this caused more damage than the pro-choice movement. Bill Clinton talking about abortion being "safe, legal, and rare," defends the principle of abortion, but not on the merits and as an unfortunate last resort. It's hard to rally people to defend a practice when your leaders won't even defend it vigorously. It allows anti-woman activists to claim that even pro-choice people don't really believe in the procedure and gives credence to their extremist rhetoric.

So something as small as a license plate is a step toward taking back the narrative.

Honduras Bans Morning-After Pill

And now, some non-coup bad news from Honduras:

A new law has taken effect in Honduras prohibiting the consumption and marketing of the morning-after pill in the Central American country.

The law was passed by the Honduran Congress at the beginning of the year with backing from the Medical College of Honduras, which pointed out that the pill has an abortifacient effect making it unconstitutional.

The Honduran Congress argued that the drug would “gravely endanger the health of the Honduran population, especially women who are able to get pregnant.”

Though the law's origin pre-dates the Micheletti regime, this is still some pretty bad timing. Taking away reproductive rights from women is always a major step backward, and especially in a law like this, when women's options on birth control are already limited (and abortion is illegal).

Perhaps the worst moment comes at the end of the brief article, when the Latin American director of the Population Research Institute and general chauvinist pig Carlos Polo commented that the law is helping Hondurans in "freeing ourselves from an inoperative and costly method that has grave adverse effects for women." Yes - those evil feminists are out to destroy women's bodies through vague "grave adverse effects" and repress them with things like freedom of choice in reproductive rights. Classy.

How Not to Victimize Rape Victims a Second Time

Charging a rape victim thousands of dollars for the rape kit that the police need is one of the most vile things you can do (and even claiming the rape victims should pay is offensive beyond words). I know that many of those who enforce these policies and make these claims hate women, and some probably even believe a rape victim probably did something to "deserve it," so I will try to explain this as simply as I can, so your tiny little brains can understand it.

When somebody is raped, it is the state's failure to protect its citizens; it is not the victim's failure to protect themselves. If you can't protect your own citizens, you certainly should not make them foot the bill for your failures.

You wouldn't think this is so hard to understand, and that maybe a little empathy might be present here, but I guess that's asking too much.

Fair Pay Day

I meant to blog this earlier, but today is Blog for Equal Pay Day. Specter kind of took over the news cycle, but I do have a few things to say about this.

Women still make only 78 cents to every dollar men make. From the National Women's Law Center via Change.org:

Women are far more likely to live in poverty than men. Women working full-time, year-round are paid only about 78 cents for every dollar earned by men. African-American women earn 69 cents and Latinas earn 59 cents for every dollar paid to men. This wage gap cannot be dismissed as the result of "women's choices" in career and family matters. In fact, authoritative studies show that even when all relevant career and family attributes are taken into account, there is still a significant, unexplained gap in men's and women's earnings. Thus, even when women make the same career choices as men and work the same hours, they still earn less.

You can sign the petition for the Paycheck Fairness Act, blog about this, call your congresscritters, do whatever. You can also remember that unions are one of the best ways to raise the wages and benefits of working people, and that, as I wrote not long ago, the Employee Free Choice Act is a feminist issue.

From the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

*”On average, unionization raised women’s wages by 11.2 percent – about $2.00 per hour – compared to non-union women with similar characteristics.”

Finally, to tie all this back in with Specter and breaking news, even though Specter said his vote on cloture for EFCA would not change, in reality, winning a Democratic primary in Pennsylvania without union support will be tough--and apparently Specter had a meeting with Teamsters President Hoffa yesterday before deciding his party switch...

So. Support paycheck fairness for women, particularly women of color, and support the Employee Free Choice Act. Damnit.

Legalized Rape in Afghanistan

Hamid Karzai is hopeless.

We've known this for a long time now. While I understand he faces some pretty tough conditions, the corruption of the Afghani government has only emboldened the Taliban. He holds elections, but he clearly has no intention of giving up power. And as the Americans have done at least since the beginning of the Cold War, we continue to back terrible rulers in the name of stability. You'd think that we'd learn our lesson about this by now, but we clearly have not.

Anyway, in an effort to gain support from fundamentalists before the upcoming election, today Karzai signed the "Sharia Family Law." What does this do? Among other things:

In a massive blow for women's rights, the new Shia Family Law negates the need for sexual consent between married couples, tacitly approves child marriage and restricts a woman's right to leave the home, according to UN papers seen by The Independent....

Article 132 requires women to obey their husband's sexual demands and stipulates that a man can expect to have sex with his wife at least "once every four nights" when travelling, unless they are ill. The law also gives men preferential inheritance rights, easier access to divorce, and priority in court.

A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women, Unifem, warned: "Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband".

I know we are fighting a war on terror or something. Even if we aren't calling it that anymore. But how can we possibly support a ruler who has no interest in providing even basic human rights for half his people? I know that under Eisenhower or Johnson or Reagan, this law would not affect U.S. support in the least. I think it's really important that Obama break from the past and condemn Karzai for this, even at the risk of costing him the election. Of course, an open U.S. attack would probably be the best thing for his short-term electoral prospects, but the withdrawal of American aid would doom his ability to stay in power. And could his replacement really be that much worse?

Via Amanda, who no doubt will be attacked from O'Reilly over this post too. I'm sure Bill O would love a law like this in the United States.

Historical Image of the Day

Phyllis Schlafly led rally against Equal Rights Amendment, 1982

How History Has Ruined Everything

The introduction paragraph to Lynn Foster's A Brief History of Mexico, Revised Edition states 

"The democratic reforms in 2000 that ended 70 years of party domination in Mexican politics by the Partido Revolutionario Institutional (PRI) have swept in a new era in Mexican history..... The corrupt party leadership that so long ruled Mexico has ended, and everything from labor relations to indigenous rights has been affected.  Moreover, these momentous changes, unlike so many others in Mexican history, were accomplished peacefully.  The political confidence of Mexico today could not contrast more sharply with the ominous foreboding described in the earlier edition of this book."

Yeah, it's true that some things have changed now that there is a new party in power, but there is certainly no more "political confidence" now than when the PRI was in power, and the Mexican distrust of their government is not going to change any time soon.  If you ask any indigenous person, nothing has changed.  They are still discriminated by almost every government policy and regarded as backward people who don't want to "develop."  

We visited with some members of the indigenous community of Amatlán in the state of Morelos.  They told us that not long ago, some people from the government wanted to come visit the community to offer a proposal for a development plan, and the community welcomed them.  But when they proposed a program for developing fish farms in their town, the community members just laughed.  Every year, there is a period of 5 months where water is so scarce that they barely have enough for their basic needs!  How are they ever going to develop fish farms?  Of course they refused the proposal, and no doubt the government reps when back to their people and told everyone that those damn indians don't even want to develop...  So clearly, there are still problems with the Mexican government.

This is the problem capital-H History and history books in particular: they always portray history as a past struggle that has resolved itself already.  In elementary school, we learned (a little bit) about the struggle for women's rights, which basically went like this: "Women used to not have the right to vote.  Can you imagine?! But now they do!  Yay!  Thanks to the women of the past, women don't have to fight for their rights anymore!"  Similarly, the history of race relations in the US goes like this:  "Black people used to be slaves, but then they weren't!  Then they were segregated, but not anymore!  Yay!  Everything is perfect!"  History books teach us not to recognize current systemic problems because it only shows us how they have already been fixed.  No different than a fairy tale, history books only feed our need for a happy ending.

So basically, history teaches us to be complacent and to accept the status quo - Thanks!

Historical Image of the Day

Gloria Steinem at women's rights rally, 1970s.

Historical Image of the Day

Pennsylvania Hall Fire, 1838. This building was burned by a mob for having women and African-Americans speaking advocating for women's suffrage and abolitionism.

It also should be noted that this is an excellent example of the deep-seated hostility in the North to equal rights, especially for African-Americans, and that the history of northern racism is as long and painful as that in the South. But it doesn't get the same publicity.

Historical Image of the Day

Claudine Penn, the first female African-American police officer in Memphis. Hired as a meter maid in 1963, commissioned as an officer in 1968.

Historical Image of the Day

Hutchinson Family Singers, 1845. This was a family group that sang protest songs against slavery and for temperance and women's rights. They survived in one form or another for 50 years.

Historical Image of the Day

Margaret Fuller, transcendentalist, women's rights activist, author of Women in the Nineteenth Century (1845), editor of the transcendentalist journal The Dial from 1840 to 1842, first female foreign correspondent for the New York Tribune. She may have been the first female correspondent for any American newspaper, but I'm not sure about this. She died in 1850 at the age of 40 when she was returning to the US with her Italian revolutionary husband and their young child when their ship slammed into a sandbar near Fire Island, New York. Many have also said that she was the likely model for Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

The Very Real and Horrible Consequences of Nicaragua's 2006 Abortion Ban

This story reveals how the real effects of Nicaragua's no-exceptions abortion ban are playing out now, and the news is not good:

"Two weeks after Olga Reyes danced at her wedding, her bloated and disfigured body was laid to rest in an open coffin — the victim, her husband and some experts say, of Nicaragua's new no-exceptions ban on abortion.
Reyes, a 22-year-old law student, suffered an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus develops outside the uterus, cannot survive and causes bleeding that endangers the mother. But doctors seemed afraid to treat her because of the anti-abortion law, said husband Agustin Perez. By the time they took action, it was too late."

Let's get this clear: this wouldn't have been an "unwanted pregnancy" abortion. This wouldn't have been a case of abortion-as-birth-control. This wouldn't even have been a case where, had the pregnancy been brought to term, the fetus would survive. This was, simply put, a case where, because of the law in Nicaragua, a dead baby was going to kill its 22 year old mother. No doubt, doctors were probably afraid to treat Reyes out of fear they would be prosecuted. As the article points out, fewer than twelve (TWELVE!) legal abortions a year were recorded in Nicaragua prior to 2006, but the number of secret abortions was doubtlessly higher (though I see no reason to trust the Catholic Church's figure of 36,000, obviously given the nature of the source). Had this law not been put into effect, it isn't that Nicaraguan women everywhere would be running to get an abortion. But women like Reyes (and the other two, unnamed women who have already died because they couldn't get the treatment they had to have to survive) are instead forced to die because the medical profession (which, last time I checked, was kind of there to help us live) couldn't and wouldn't help her.

The fact that Reyes had a condition in which the fetus - no matter the outcome - was going to die, and yet she couldn't save her own life, and that doctors weren't willing to save her life, offers just one more reason why this abortion ban has to go. It isn't just denying what should be the fundamental rights of a woman - it's hiding behind the "defense of life" while actually killing more people.

Rio's Governor Sérgio Cabral on Abortion; PSOL Again Reveals Its False Sense of "Equality"

In today's Globo, there's an article in which Sérgio Cabral comes out in favor of the right to abortion in Brazil. Cabral rightfully points to studies that go back to the 1970s that show the undeniable links between birth rates, poverty, and violence, saying that, while he may not approve personally of abortion, he fully believes that not only should it be a woman's right, but that it would help combat the problems of poverty and violence in Rio specifically and Brazil more generally. He goes beyond what many politicians in Brazli (which is generally still extremely conservative on the abortion issue) are willing to say, proclaiming that the option of choosing an abortion is a woman's right, and as such, there should be public facilities that offer such services.

I can't agree more with Cabral on this. Until abortion is legal in Brazil, the growing inequality, poverty in urban areas, and the violence in those same areas will never decrease. This isn't a matter of "kill the poor and things will get better", an argument some "progressives" here claim it is (funny how they don't raise the same point when police invade favelas and kill dozens of people, traficantes or not). Until women have every means available to them for family planning (state-subsidized birth control is just a small step), the situation won't get better. I highly applaud Cabral for his open stance - Brazil needs to confront this issue, and fast.

Unfortunately, it won't thanks to people like Chico Alencar, one of Rio's representatives in the Câmara dos Deputados in Brazil and a member of the PSOL. He came out and called Cabral's remarks "nazi-fascistic". Taking that "progressive" stance of saying that such comments are just efforts to kill the poor, Alencar refuses to acknowledge the facts that, until all options are available to women (not just efforts to educate them about birth control, which many Catholic authorities here resist and undermine anyways), the problems will not improve. Alencar (and others) can harp all they want about how this is inequal and an example of "elitist" efforts to kill off the poor, but doing so ignores another very central aspect of society, not just in Brazil, but in other countries - making abortion illegal just makes it difficult for the poor to get an abortion. It is common knowledge here that the middle-class and elites have access to private doctors who can, will, and do perform abortions on unwanted pregnancies for them. So this isn't a matter of inequality on Cabral's part - it's a matter of inequality on Alencar's part, for to deny the poor the right to an abortion that many middle-class and elite women already have is just more stubborn insistence to ignore the real problems.

What is worse, Alencar is another example of the PSOL's false concern with equality. I have only grown angrier and angrier with PSOL since last year's presidential debates, when candidate (and PSOL leader) Heloisa Helena campaigned on a platform of social equality, yet was vehemently anti-abortion, effectively rendering any claims of a desire for "equality" useless (after all, what good is social "equality" if you're not even willing to defend women's equal right in decisions concerning pregnancy?). Alencar is further demonstration of how deep this complete failure to consider equality in all its forms (not just social or class, but gender, too) runs in the PSOL. It's one thing to hide behind his "progressive" concern for the poor to mask his anti-abortion stance; calling it "Nazi-fascist" just reveals how irrational, tragically cartoonish, and false the PSOL's (and many others') concerns for equailty are in Brazil. For all the good that a Cabral does by making such statements, you will have at least 10 Alencar's coming out against it with smoke-and-mirror arguments and baseless (and untrue) labeling. As great as it is that Cabral said this today, Brazil still has a very long way to go on this issue.

Effects of the Total Abortion Ban in Nicaragua

With little surprise to me, Daniel Ortega's support of banning all forms of abortion in Nicaragua (all in the name of getting the conservative and religious vote in Nicaragua last year) has had disastrous results. A Human Rights Watch report puts the number of women dead at at least 80 since last year's ban, implemented in November, shortly after Ortega's election. The law, banning any form of abortion (even if the mother's life is in danger) has not only doubtlessly increased the number of deaths and injuries from illegal abortions; as the Human Rights Watch points out, it has also led to women becoming fearful of seeing doctors even in totally legal cases of women's health, for fear of prosecution. Likewise, doctors remain fearful of offering legal health services to women, again for fear of prosecution. Thus, pregnant women will continue to die in Nicaragua as long as this law remains in effect, not just through clandestine abortions, but through the failure to get the basic (legal) medical attention they need, due to women's and doctors' fears of prosecution, even if their needs and care are legal.

That Nicaragua passed such a law is incredible; that Ortega so heavily sponsored it is unforgiveable. For all those who insist that banning abortion anywhere will lead to positive results, Nicaragua is now tragically a damning indictment of how terrible such laws are.

(via The Latin Americanist)

Improving Access to Birth Control in Brazil

In the wake of the Pope's visit to Brazil (though the timing is unintentional), Brazil began to subsidize birth control pills to all of its citizens this week. Scott at LG&M has touched often upon how efforts to undo abortion rights in the U.S. are a direct assault based as much on class-based notions of gender as anything else. Now, certainly, while the issues of abortion in the U.S. and birth control in Brazil are very differnt, one issue that still has similarities is the access, and lack thereof, to reproductive rights among the poor. Just as abolishing Roe in the U.S. would only make abortion illegal to the poor who couldn't afford safe, secret abortions, so in Brazil birth control pills have been available mostly to the minority number of middle- and upper-class women right now. As the article correctly points out, the enactment of this government program is huge - it will make birth control accessible to all, regardless of income. This in itself is vital towards any effort to leveling the social field in Brazil.

Certainly, the program does not do much in the way of making abortion a legal option for women in Brazil (and, as would be the case if Roe were stricken down in the US, abortion is only illegal in Brazil to those who can't afford to have a safe, private procedure. Despite it's illegality in Brazil, thousands of women still die every year in clandestine abortions, reminding us once again that the illegality of abortion does not lead to its disappearance). Still, by making birth control affordable on the state-subsidized program, Brazil has taken a huge step in improving reproductive rights for women and for the poor.

Historical Image of the Day

Suffrage activists picketing in front of White House during Wilson administration

Lots Going on in Latin America

There's a lot going on in Latin America this weekend that's worth bringing up. First, and most importantly in terms of states and peoples, there is a constitutional crisis brewing in Ecuador. President Rafael Correa is seeking Constitutional change, which is desperately needed in a country with an unfairly strong legislative and judicial branches, and a very weak presidency (hence the presence of 5 different presidents over 8 years). Correa is seeking to strengthen the executive branch, making the President actually be able to effect change in Ecuador without the traditional elites pushing him (or any subsequent presidents) against the will of the people who elected him. Still, the reinstatement of 57 of his opponents to Congress is going to make things difficult. There will be a lot more news coming from Ecuador, but hopefully, they will be able to get constitutional change established so that the President can actually try to help improve his country.

In Mexico City, the council is poised to pass a bill allowing Mexican women the right to an abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. Latin America has almost uniformly rejected the right for a woman to have the option to chose a safe, medical abortion (of course resulting in numerous unsafe abortions, as well as an unfair ability for wealthy women to gain an "unofficial" but medical abortion while the poor are unable to do so). Although this bill is only in Mexico City, and is already facing fierce protest from many sectors of the traditional Catholics in ther city, its importance is huge, both for women in Mexico and as what could end up being the first step in the broader rights of women in Mexico and throughout Latin America.

Finally, there is (of course) Brazil. Lula is in the States this week, following up Bush's visit to Brazil two weeks ago. Of course, the media is once again portraying Lula as far closer and more friendly to Bush than he is (nevermind that just two weeks ago he called Bush's tariffs "nefarious"). While Lula is undeniably involved in open dipolmacy in a non-stand-offish way (I wouldn't quite go so far as to call it "friendly") with the U.S., it's not as if he's a Tony Blair or a John Howard or even a Pervez Musharraf. It looks like this visit will have very little outcome or major devlopments (though Bush's concession that he is willing to lower tariffs is alone at least a change from his usual "no way, nohow" approach).

And in an oddly short story, the Brazilian government is providing free wireless internet to Indigenous peoples in the Amazon as part of its broader goal to save the Amazon by combatting illegal and corporate logging in the Amazon. Unfortunately, I'm not quite sure how this will help the illegal logging (I suspect the goal is building support networks and spreading info via the internet), but the story is so short, and it's unfortunately the only one I could find.

Tuesday Forgotten American Blogging: Jeannette Rankin

Not entirely forgotten, Jeannette Rankin deserves more attention than she gets. A fascinating woman, mostly known for her vote against the United States entering World War II, she also led fights against other wars, was an important suffragist in the Pacific Northwest, and kept the left wing of progressive ideology alive well into the 1970s.

Born in Montana in 1880, Rankin attended the University of Washington where she became interested in social work, like many young women of her day. She moved to New York and did some work in that field, but moved back to Washington and by 1910 was fighting for the successful vote for suffrage in that state. She did the same in her home state of Montana in 1914. She parleyed her regional fame into a seat in the House of Representatives from Montana in 1916. She was the first woman to be elected to that body, four years before women could vote across the nation. She soon lost that seat however, because she voted against American entry into World War I. This was unpopular, but ultimately many people opposed American involvement. They were swept away in the hysteria following our entry, but in the long run, their views were respected by many Americans. Like many a politician, Rankin's views turned as she was savagely attacked in the media and by many of her fellow suffragists. Thereafter, she supported the draft and Liberty Bonds. She lost in the Republican primary in 1918 for the US Senate.

Again, like many a politician, after she left electoral office, she stayed in Washington, D.C., working as a lobbyist. Working largely for women's issues, she urged the passage of Sheppard-Towner Act, which provided federal money for the welfare of women and children. The bill passed in 1921, though it faced constant criticism from conservatives and was repealed in 1929. She also played a key early role with the American Civil Liberties Union, serving as its first Vice-President. She worked with the National Consumers' League, which used consumer pressure to improve the conditions of workers. She was a leading member of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. And she allied herself closely with the settlement house movement still going strong in the interwar years. She also began spending much of her time on a farm in rural Georgia and worked against all odds for progressive causes there.

Rankin still had the itch for electoral office and in 1940 was again elected to the House from Montana. However, like her first term, her tenure was dominated by her pacifism. Again, the United States entered a foreign war. But unlike World War I, virtually no one opposed World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. But Rankin voted with her conscience and against US entry, the only member of Congress to do so. Not surprisingly, this killed her political career and she didn't even bother to run for reelection in 1942, knowing that she had no chance of winning.

After the war, Rankin remained active in political life. She supported the non-violent doctrines of Martin Luther King. Well into her 80s, she was an early opponent of US involvement in Vietnam. In 1968, she led a march of 5000 women, the Jeanette Rankin Brigade, to the steps of Congress to protest the war. She died in 1973 and left her estate to fund poor women, which it continues to do today.

A remarkable woman, Rankin is probably the most admirable figure to come out of Montana (though Gary Cooper is close of course). I often object to the Progressives on multiple levels, but it is hard to attack Rankin. Was her vote on World War II right? No. Perhaps if she had to cast the deciding vote, she would have come down differently, though I doubt it. But she stood by her pacifist principles, and they are good principles, if perhaps utopian. Throughout her long career, she also worked to further the rights of women, something almost totally forgotten about her today. Rankin deserves further study. Moreover, she has much to teach modern liberals. We can learn from her, and we should.

Perhaps the best book on Rankin is Norma Smith, Jeannette Rankin, America's Conscience, published by the Montana Historical Society in 2002. An interesting take on the subject is a book about her brother Wellington Rankin, Wellington Rankin: His Family, Life, and Times. It's a small book published by a local press but nonetheless provides a useful perspective on Jeannette and her family.