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grrrly news 05/16

May 16, 2004 07:24 PM posted by lisa : track it (0)

Pope makes saint of woman who died for unborn child
Pope John Paul created six new saints Sunday, including an Italian woman who has become a symbol of the anti-abortion movement for saving her unborn child at the cost of her own life.
Gianna Beretta Molla died in 1962 at the age of 39, one week after giving birth to a healthy baby. Early in her pregnancy, Molla discovered she had a tumor in her womb but decided against treatment because it would have involved an abortion.

In Pakistan, Those Who Cry Rape Face Jail
As Pakistan's president stalls on repealing the country's controversial Hudood Ordinances, female rape victims here continue to face the risk of being legally treated as adulterers, punishable by stoning

Abortion Records Safe From Feds, for Now
Legal battles waged since November in five states and seven separate federal courts have finally turned back the tide of Justice Department demands for women's medical records.

Community Colleges Help Women Start Over
While the elite former women's colleges inch toward gender parity, a female stronghold is developing among the low-cost community colleges, where many of the students are the first female members of their families to read and write.

Abuse Is Too Common in U.S. Military
President Bush ended his apology for the Iraqi prisoner abuse by saying it "isn't the way we do things in America." Abuse, however, is all too often the way of the U.S. military and the victims are often enlisted and civilian women

Female Face of Abuse Provokes Shock
The images of grinning female soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners are shocking and famous. Some say they challenge the notion that women are more peaceful than men. Others point to a susceptible minority within a violent military culture.

Women's Choral Groups Raise Their Voices
Women's choral groups are becoming increasingly popular in the United States as more women discover music written by and for women.

Montas Kept Risking it All for Haiti
After Michele Montas' husband was slain for his journalistic work in Haiti, she went on the air to proclaim his spirit still alive and use her microphone to criticize the murder investigation

Two Women Fuel the Freedom Rides
As the modern Civil Rights Movement surfaced in the 1960s, sit-ins aimed at desegregating eating places in the South were an early, popular tactic of a new group called the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Well-dressed, well-behaved black students, educated in Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of civil disobedience, trained not to react to harassment or violence, sat determinedly at the lunch counters of white-only establishments, asking to be served.

Uruguay rejects bill to legalize abortion
Uruguay's Senate on Wednesday blocked an initiative that would have made it the first country to legalize abortion in devoutly Roman Catholic Latin America.
Senators voted 17 to 13 to reject the bill, which was approved in the lower house in December 2002 but met resistance in the more conservative upper house.

Testosterone Improves Sex for Some Women
A testosterone patch improves sexual function in certain women, according to a new study presented at a meeting of women's health experts.
Although testosterone is considered the "male" hormone, women also produce testosterone, which plays a role in a woman's sexual drive. But testosterone levels decline with menopause, a fact of life that led some researchers to suggest that replacing diminished testosterone may help women improve sexual function.

Cardinal says rape does not justify morning after pill
Even a crime such as rape cannot justify the elimination of a life, according to Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa.

Cardinal Errázuriz was commenting on a decision of the Chilean Health Ministry to distribute free "morning-after" pills to rape victims.

"The free distribution of a medication whose objective is not to heal, is a more than controversial issue," the cardinal said.

Health workers' penalty in HIV case is death
Libya sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death by firing squad after convicting them Thursday of intentionally infecting more than 400 children with the virus that leads to AIDS in an experiment to find a cure.
Relatives of the children shouted for joy as the sentences were handed down, but Bulgaria's justice minister called the verdicts absurd. Some human rights groups say Libya concocted the experiment story to cover up unsafe hospital practices.

Did politics play role in Plan B rejection?
The Food and Drug Administration defended its decision to reject over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception even as women's groups and medical experts accused the government agency of allowing political pressure to interfere with a public health issue.

Poll: Sumo fans in Japan favour keeping ban on women in ring
Fans of Japan's ancient sport of sumo favour preserving a tradition that bans women from climbing atop the game's raised dirt mound, a survey commissioned by the Japan Sumo Association showed Saturday.
The 2,000-year-old national sport has always prohibited women from the ring, though the origins of the practice are unclear.

Soy, exercise combo could reduce hot flashes in women: Study
A new study indicates that exercising and consuming soy could reduce hot flashes in women.
According to Web Md, the study explains that this happens because soybeans contain estrogen-like compounds. Soybeans and soy products such as tofu are often touted as remedies for menopause.
However, soy works better for some women than for others. One reason might be that processed soy loses some of its active components. Another reason might be exercise.

Prostitution rise blamed on forces
Peacekeeping troops deployed in Kosovo have contributed to a huge rise in prostitution and human trafficking in the region, a human rights group claimed yesterday.
An international coalition of soldiers serving in the former Yugoslav province were accused of sexually exploiting women and girls as young as 11, in a report by Amnesty.

'Myths' stop women breastfeeding
Serious misunderstandings about breastfeeding may be stopping women giving their babies the best start in life, the Department of Health says today.
Most women believe they face disapproval if they feed their babies in public and that breastfeeding comes naturally to some but not others.

Lesbian moms celebrating first Mother's Day
They hope for the right to marry -- someday, for the sake of their infant twins. This week, however, two lesbian couples are savoring the joys of their first Mother's Day as mothers.
"We're going to wake up as late as we can, and take our day really slow and just appreciate the experience so far and the experiences yet to come," said Rebecca Rodriguez of Oakland, Calif. "We're so grateful to have two children in our lives."

Southern Baptists condemn public schools as too gay-friendly
A prominent Southern Baptist is asking the national convention to consider a resolution recommending that parents remove their children from what he calls "godless" and "anti-Christian" public schools. The resolution, coauthored by T.C. Pinckney, publisher of a Baptist newsletter in Alexandria, Va., urges parents to home-school their children or send them to Christian schools.

Oral sex lessons to cut rates of teenage pregnancy
Encouraging schoolchildren to experiment with oral sex could prove the most effective way of curbing teenage pregnancy rates, a government study has found.
Pupils under 16 who were taught to consider other forms of 'intimacy' such as oral sex were significantly less likely to engage in full intercourse, it was revealed

Scandal renews debate about women's place in U.S. military
The Iraq prison scandal marks the first time female U.S. troops have been implicated in wartime abuses, according to military historians and others.
Out of the seven Army reservists who have been charged with maltreating Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison, three are female. Their top commander - Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800th Military Police Brigade until she was suspended when the abuse surfaced - is a woman, as well.

Victim of childhood gender experiment takes own life
A Winnipeg man who was born a boy but raised as a girl in a famous nurture-versus-nature experiment has died at the age of 38.
David Reimer, who shared his story about his botched circumcision in the pages of a book and on the Oprah TV show, took his own life last Tuesday.
His mother, Janet Reimer, said she believes her son would still be here today had it not been for the devastating gender study that led to much emotional hardship.

Our Bodies, Ourselves Turns 35
Thirty-five years after their first meeting, the women who created Our Bodies, Ourselves--the popular reference that allowed women to take health information into their own homes--reflect on how their work shaped the women's health movement.

Mean Girls
Almost anything that can be said about the recently revealed abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American and British troops is going to be a cliché. It's horrifying and sickening; it's a disgrace to the uniform; it damages our cause in the war against terror by displacing us from the moral high ground; and it drops a highly effective recruitment tool in the lap of those waging jihad against the West

Kuwaiti Women a Step Closer to Vote
The issue of voting rights for women in Kuwait is heading for a vote in the emirate's parliament now that Kuwait's cabinet has given its approval to the proposed legislation. For more than 40 years Kuwaiti women have been fighting for the right to vote. That effort moved closer to becoming a reality when Kuwait's cabinet approved draft legislation giving women voting rights and the right to run as candidates in parliamentary elections

Pelosi extols values of women in positions of power
The United States needs more women in positions of power, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told graduating seniors at Simmons College on Sunday.

"It is important to have women in leadership, because women bring something unique to the table," the California Democrat told 1,300 graduates of the predominantly women's college.

Engineering colleges teach more women
Liz Bartell thought she would major in Spanish or another of the liberal arts when she arrived at the all-women Smith College.
But she had always liked math, so, at her mother's urging, she took an introductory course in engineering her first semester.
"It was insanely hard and I didn't do well, but I loved it," Bartell said. "It was so challenging I just couldn't get enough."

Big girls do buy
Plus-size teens want all of the curvy, sexy choices their slender counterparts have, and retailers are competing for the perfect fit

Abu Ghraib Abuse is a Feminist’s Dream, Says Military Expert
The globally distributed photo of a U.S. servicewoman holding a naked Iraqi prisoner by a leash "is exactly what feminists have dreamed of for years," according to a military expert and frequent critic of attempts to integrate all aspects of the U.S. armed forces.

Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, also believes social-engineering in the military and the degradation of American culture are to blame for the abuse of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib facility near Baghdad.

A Real Feminist Hero
The controversy surrounding the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison has drowned out almost every other news story for the past week and a half. And so it was easy for the American press to overlook a milestone worth marking – May 4, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s rise to power in Britain.

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thatcher... a feminist... hero. ronald reagan... a true... visionary. WTF.

some people are badly in need of a frontal lobotomy.

Posted by: dana on May 16, 2004 08:21 PM |