…so why didn’t the G8?

At the end of last month President Obama recognised the threat the LRA is having on this underdeveloped area of central Africa when he launched a plan to tackle the notorious fighters and the shattering impact they have on communities. The African Union (AU) is also taking welcome steps to find solutions.

But despite commitments and political initiatives, the LRA has been allowed to operate for more than 20 years. It’s impossible to calculate how many lives have been ruined but in the last two years alone the group has become the deadliest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo killing more than 2,300 and abducting more than 3,000 people across the region.

[…]

Seventy-two-year-old Papa Peleke runs an upholstery business in Dungu town in north-east Congo, where he lives with his wife of 44 years, their nine children and their “many grandchildren”. He and four of his teenage granddaughters were abducted by the LRA in November 2008 and taken deep into the forest. His youngest granddaughter recently escaped after 15 months in captivity. The others remain missing.

“The world must end this war and this suffering,” he told Oxfam. “I don’t want to have to hear the name LRA in Congo any more. The Congolese army aren’t able to do much – on the day we were abducted there were 10 soldiers nearby but they didn’t do anything.”

The UN and the international community are asking what can be done for people like Papa Pekele and his family. The answer is simple: they must finally make sure there is peace, security and development.

What bothered me most about the G8 Maternal Health Initiative was that it was ignoring pressing urgent issues effecting the lives of women in the regions it was covering while focusing on issues that, at this stage, the women in countries like Sudan and Congo simply aren’t able to debate for themselves due to lack of status, lack of education, and lack of infrastructure. What is it these women want and need? They want to be protected from self-proclaimed prophets turned military leaders like Joseph Kony.

Mr. Kony, who has been wanted by the International Criminal Court since 2005, has engaged since the late 1980s in the mass abductions of children from villages and government-run camps in the Ugandan countryside. His hostages, seized in ambushes along roads and in raids on settlements, became the living fuel for a grim, millennial war.

Mr. Kony did not ransom his captives. He had another design. He indoctrinated the boys as foot soldiers in a guerrilla campaign against the Ugandan government and, when directed by his sponsors in Sudan, against villages and rebel groups in Southern Sudan. Abducted girls were put to work, too — as labor, as soldiers, and, once they reached puberty, as sexual chattel for Mr. Kony and his coterie of commanders, who called them their wives.

From The Guardian,

Isabelle Caro, a French actress and model whose emaciated image appeared in an Italian ad campaign and whose anorexia was followed by other sufferers of eating disorders, has died aged 28.

For at least the last decade, young girls in search of something to be a part of have been lulled into anorexic culture. I won’t link to any of the Pro-Ana/Pro-Mia websites, because medical studies have universally shown that simply viewing the sites can result in lower self-esteem.

They lure the impressionable and persuade them that the Pro-Ana community is providing caring and nurturing advice.

[…]

A study published in European Eating Disorders Review exposed healthy college girls with no history of eating disorders to 1.5 hours of pro-ED sites and they showed decreased caloric intake the week following their exposure.  Some participants admitted using techniques and tips they viewed on the sites and had “strong emotional reactions” up to three weeks after the study.

It’s easy to blame the fashion industry for these unhealthy ideals, promoting images of increasingly thin women, but we could just as easy blame the myth of “choice” for the epidemic, a product of a world view that sees the self as a decision one makes as an isolated individual.

What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity – and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour. (David Gauntlett, Media Gender and Identity, Routledge, 2002)

The Pro-Anorexic community claims the disease is a “lifestyle choice”, that this choice should be respected by the medical community and their family and friends.

Pro Anas who defend their anorexia not as a disorder or an affliction from which to recover, view it instead as an accomplishment of self control and a part of their identity and one that defines them to a very significant extent.

It’s difficult for me, as a women myself, to see others conned into the belief that something so terrible, menacing and deteriorating for them is something to be respected. Sound familiar?

Talk about vulnerable women:

It has become a grim Christmas ritual: hundreds of innocent civilians massacred in remote corners of Africa by the Lord’s Resistance Army, one of the world’s cruellest and bloodiest guerrilla forces.

Now, fearing a Christmas attack for the third consecutive year, the United Nations is mobilizing 900 peacekeepers to protect villages in Congo, and the United States has promised its own action against the LRA.

[…]

Women from the Great Lakes region on Wednesday held a peaceful walk in the Democratic Republic of Congo condemning the increase in mass rapes in the country.

The women drawn from Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Sierra Leone joined their female counterparts in Congo to urge the government to criminalise the culture of impunity and end the sexual violence.

Women in the region are mustering what little resources they have to draw attention to the continued threat of violence in the DRC. Without supplies, without the support of their government or judicial system, they stage marches abundant in courage.

1. Don’t show up at the office Christmas party with a Marie Stopes “party purse”.

A total of 5,992 abortions were carried out at Marie Stopes International’s nine UK clinics in January – a rise of 13% on the 5,304 in January 2005.

“We may be seeing the consequences of the festive season, when partying excess and alcohol consumption combine to increase libido and lower inhibition, with the inevitable consequences of unprotected sex resulting in unplanned pregnancies.”

[…]

Last Christmas the charity offered festive “party purses” stocked with condoms and the morning after pill.

Liz Davies, MSI director of UK operations, said: “Despite our efforts we have still seen the biggest rise ever in abortion figures in the month after Christmas.

2. Do NOT use an unexpected pregnancy to exhibit your awesome powers of fertility.

Abortions usually peak at the end of long school holidays, according to newspaper reports in South China’s Guangdong Province. The past month – after the end of the school summer vacation – has seen more students having abortions, according to the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News.

A similar increase was reported a few months ago after the week-long May Day holidays when at least 1,000 students, most under age 20, visited hospitals in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, for abortions, according to the Xinkuai Bao newspaper.

And, the weeks after the Spring Festival – the Chinese Lunar New Year – and the week-long October 1 National Day holidays have also become peak seasons for student abortions, according to Doctor Yang Jin of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Department of Zhujiang Hospital in Guangzhou.

[…]

Many high school girls adopted a light attitude towards abortion and even considered it’s a way to show their ability to bear a child. Some even arrived at the hospital as a group in a festive mood.

3. Lastly, whatever you do, even if you put off shopping until midnight on Christmas Eve, do NOT, I repeat… DO NOT resort to buying your partner a Planned Parenthood gift card.

Indiana residents in need of a quick stocking stuffer this holiday season have an unusual option: Planned Parenthood gift certificates.

The group’s Hoosier State chapter on Wednesday began selling gift certificates redeemable at any of its 35 facilities for any service provided — from basic health screenings to birth control to abortions.

____________________

Andrea adds: Too late on the Marie Stopes Party Purse, Jennifer! Our office Christmas party was weeks ago. Seriously, however, I’m trying to think of what my family would do if I gave a “Planned Parenthood gift card.” It would probably result in an immediate psychiatric assessment of some kind, hurried consultations and an intervention. That, or just lots of yelling.

From The Irish Times:

Some day abortion will be universally recognised as harmful to women, writes BREDA O’BRIEN

None of the women who took a case to the European Court of Human Rights is a particularly wonderful advertisement for abortion. All three suffered medical complications resulting from the procedure.

One bled so much afterwards that an ambulance had to meet the train she was travelling on. Another passed clots for months. The third suffered complications of an incomplete abortion, including prolonged bleeding and infection.

So much for safe, legal and rare. And that is just the physical side of things. The counselling that they received in Britain was obviously lacking, too. One of the women, simply called “A”, wanted an abortion because she already had four children in care, but was getting her life together and recovering from alcoholism.

She was afraid that having the baby would jeopardise her chances of getting custody of her children again, by triggering a relapse into alcoholism and depression.

What kind of an indictment of our society is it that an impoverished, struggling woman thinks that the best possible option available to her is to end the life of her child in the womb? Obviously, no one in the clinic told her that while any woman can suffer from post-abortion depression, the risks are much higher for people with a previous history of depression.

She went on to have another child after the abortion, and while depression has been a factor, she still managed to regain custody of three of the children. How wonderful it would have been if someone had said to her that abortion was not the only way, that supports would be there to help her to cope.

The Irish Government’s position was that “her suggestions that a social worker would have denied or reduced her access to her children and that she did not consult her doctor as he or she might disapprove, were unsubstantiated and, indeed, such alleged acts would have been unlawful.”

However, the woman did not know that, and no one in the clinic seemed to think it worthwhile to explore her options. The clinic had no difficulty, though, in relieving her of the money she borrowed from a moneylender, or indeed, in carrying out an abortion in a way that left her needing an ambulance.

As a woman who still calls herself a feminist, it makes me furious that feminists seem to think that abortion is such a good thing for women, an absolutely necessary “right”, when so often it is a somewhat brutal substitute for what they really need.

[…]

Some day abortion will be universally recognised as harmful to women and lethal to the smallest members of the human race.

Until then, let us not add to the numbers of countries that have hardened their hearts and legislated for it.

This from the mouths of MPs on both sides of the C-510 (Roxanne’s Law) debate.

One young female MP claims the bill is a “front to attack a women’s right to choose.” A spokesperson from the National Abortion Federation calls it a “bad bill” and “anti-choice.” Words designed to carry heavy negative associations but that essentially don’t say anything in relation to C-510.

Neither of these “arguments” point to specifics of the bill they disagree with, because opponents actually can’t find fault with bill itself. Instead, they elect to disagree on the basis of what it could potentially be rather than what it is. Which is interesting, because traditionally pro-abortionists don’t give any value to potentiality.

The spokesperson for the NAF does concede that violence against women increases during pregnancy, and it is this specific situation of violence during pregnancy that the bill sets out to criminalize. As the bill sponsor Rod Bruinooge points out, we have specified laws for sexual harassment because of its unique nature, and this bill seeks to do the same with domestic violence towards pregnant women. A similar bill has been passed in the US, without threatening a woman’s ability to obtain an abortion.

On the night of February 8, 1992, Glendale Black had a fight with his pregnant wife.  Tracy Marciniak, his wife, was nine months pregnant and due to deliver their son in only four days.  They had already given their son a name: Zachariah.  Tracy was eager to have her baby and anxious for the day to arrive.  Glendale, however, flew into a rage that night and decided that that day would never come.  He killed their child.

He punched Tracy in the stomach.  Hard.  And then he punched her again.

Tracy was severely injured, and Zachariah began to bleed to death in her womb.  She begged her husband to dial 911, but he refused.  When she reached for the phone herself, he kept it away from her.

Eventually, he relented.  Tracy was rushed to the hospital and delivered Zachariah by Caesarean section.  He was dead.  Tracy herself was on the verge of death, but was saved by her doctors.

Glendale Black was arrested. But in 1992 killing an unborn baby was not a crime.  Black was convicted of assault and nothing more.

On August 26, 1999, three men attacked Shiwona Pace in Little Rock, Arkansas.  She was due to deliver her baby the very next day.  Knowing her baby would be a girl, she named her Heaven Lashay.  But her former boyfriend, Erik Bullock, paid three men $400 to kill Heaven the day before she was to be born.

Shiwona lay sobbing and begging for mercy on the floor while the hit men brutally beat her, choked her, and clubbed her with a gun.  They kicked her in the abdomen repeatedly, killing her child who was to be delivered the very next day.  One of them shouted, “—- you!  Your baby is dying tonight!”

Unlike Tracy Marciniak, Shiwona Pace saw Bullock and her assailants go to prison for killing her daughter.  Only a month before, Arkansas had passed legislation making the killing of an unborn child a prosecutable offense.  If Erik Bullock had hired those killers only a month before, they would have gotten away with manslaughter.

The House of Representatives is voting this week to make the killing of an unborn baby a crime if it happens in a federal jurisdiction.  The measure, called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, has the support of the House, the Senate, and the President.  This is an uncontroversial bill that has passed the House before by wide margins.  Abortions, protected by Roe v. Wade, are specifically exempted.

I call this a similar bill, because coercing a women into an abortion essentially forces her into the role of a hired hit man.

I’ve expected something like this for some time, but I thought the Irish would have a vote on the matter.

Ireland’s longstanding abortion legislation could change due to a ruling expected to be handed down by the European Court of Human Rights next week.

When two Irish women and one Lithuanian woman who were forced to travel to Britain for abortions they took the action against the Irish state five years ago.

The three women, who were supported by the Irish Family Planning Association, claimed the inability to have an abortion in Ireland breached their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights, which Ireland originally signed up to in the 1960’s.

The three women claimed that the limited abortion law in Ireland means they are being discriminated against, and that the state contravenes their rights under the convention. All three said they experienced medical complication when they returned to Ireland.

Their case was eventually heard last December in the court’s Grand Chamber with 17 judges presiding and on Thursday they are expected to give their final judgment.

Currently abortion is only available in Ireland if the pregnancy threatens the life of the woman. It’s estimated that about 5,000 women a year give an Irish address when they have abortions in Britain, but many more give British addresses. The Irish Family Planning Association believe that several hundred more Irish women also travel to the Netherlands and Spain for abortions.

The court is attached to the Council of Europe and has no relationship with the European Union. Any ruling the court makes will be legally binding on Ireland.

_____________________

Andrea adds: What kind of power does the European Union’s Human Rights Court actually have?

Whether or not women under the age of 18 should be required to inform their parents/guardians prior to an abortion is a controversial issue. People who oppose notification want young women to have the same rights and privacy as their older counterparts, and those who are for it fear that younger women may not be mentally prepared for the decision or could be victims of statutory rape going unnoticed or unreported by medical professionals. Either way, the State of Alaska has voted in favour of parental notification, which takes effect this Tuesday.

Ballot Measure 2, which passed, and is now the parental notification law, would require minors under the age of 18 to notify a parent or guardian before getting an abortion.

A third group joined in on arguments between the state and Planned Parenthood during Friday’s preliminary injunction hearing.

Planned Parenthood and the State of Alaska met for the first time in court, after a ballot initiative was passed in the August primary.

It’s not surprising that Planned Parenthood disagrees and has, of course, filed a complaint.

Planned Parenthood of the Greater Northwest and two doctors filed a complaint Friday in state court in Anchorage, the Anchorage Daily News reported. They contend the law treats teens who want to end their pregnancies differently from those who do not want abortions and are not required to tell their parents about their pregnancies.

The law is so vague, physicians are likely to have trouble determining when they are in compliance, the doctors said. The law, approved by the voters in August, allows teens to avoid the consent requirement by going before a judge or presenting doctors with a notarized affidavit of parental abuse.

Firstly, young women who are pregnant will, eventually, find it very difficult to keep their pregnancies secret from mom and dad. Secondly, there’s no grey area here. Women with affidavits or judge approval don’t need consent, that’s it. If a doctor finds this too confusing, perhaps they’re not mentally sound enough to practice medicine in the first place.

A few months ago, when the State of Nebraska voted for more in-depth screening for abortion procedures, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland filed a lawsuit, and the state couldn’t financially handle the fight. Alaska, however, with its annually granted permanent funds and  strong oil and fishing industry, has a lot more money.

From CBC News:

A desire for anonymity is sending P.E.I. women to a private abortion clinic in Fredericton and that needs to change, says a local women’s group.

There are no abortions performed on the Island, but the procedure is publicly-funded and performed in Halifax for P.E.I. women. It costs the provincial government $250 and requires a referral by two doctors.

But one Island doctor who refers women to Halifax told CBC News some are uncomfortable with the public route because their names are on government documentation, and typically more women go to the private Morgentaler clinic in Fredericton, and pay the $600 to $800 cost out of their own pocket.

The Women’s Network says that policy needs to change.

“If fear of being identified, whether that’s by a medial professional or if it’s by a record keeper or if that information is just stored on a server somewhere on a computer, if that fear of being found out, so to speak, is there for women, some of them will refuse to access publicly funded abortion,” said network executive director Michele MacCallum.

If you really don’t care about the impact of abortion on women’s health, then by all means, let women file in and out undetected. However, if you want women to have an accurate health record for a health care provider to access they’re going to have to put their names down.

Pat Maloney at the National Post read my mind.

One would hope that in a country where there are no restrictions on abortion there could at least be a public debate — especially about a bill whose sole purpose is to protect women from unwanted abortions. Remember that there is no consensus on abortion; polls consistently tell us show that many Canadians want some limits on abortion.

In 1988, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the country’s abortion law. But the court did say that Parliament has the right to legislate protection of the unborn.

Even though Mr. Harper would not support such a bill, he doesn’t have to. Bill C-510 is a private member’s bill, not a government bill. The purpose such bills is to give backbench MPs from all parties the opportunity to bring forward legislation they believe in, independent of what’s on the government’s agenda.

Mr. Harper would get one vote — just like any MP — and he could vote as his conscience dictates.

The National Post has been covering the recent events at Carleton University where the students union, CUSA, has decertified the anti-abortion group LifeLine.

There is a striking parallel between what is going on at Carleton University and what is going on in Parliament.

As the Post recently stated: “The fact that these young men and women are anti-abortion should have nothing to do with whether they are worthy of coverage. This is about certain students, CUSA, acting like petty tyrants because they do not like the views of some of their fellow students. This goes against every principle of free speech. Why is there not more outrage about this?”

And why is there not more outrage about abortion debate being shut down in our Parliament? This also goes against every principle of free speech.

Think about it: why should CUSA allow pro-life students to speak out about abortion, when our political leaders won’t allow pro-life MPs to speak out about abortion? CUSA has learned that it’s okay to shut down free speech on unpopular topics.

And where that kind of thinking ends God only knows.

As a relatively new immigrant here, I won’t pretend to understand the intricacies of Canadian government. However, I have always been annoyed that the Harper government has been allowed to give the abortion topic the silent treatment, even to the point of making the lack of discussion an election platform.

“I have been clear throughout my entire political career I don’t intend to open the abortion issue,” he said. “I haven’t in the past; I’m not going to in the future.”

Refusing to debate any topic is wholly undemocratic and doesn’t fulfill the government’s duty to be a tool for public opinion. Maloney cleverly parallels this situation with what is happening at CUSA. She asks an important question here, why isn’t there more outrage about this violation of free speech?