In July a Zambian news editor, Chansa Kabwela, was charged with distributing obscene materials. Her crime? In response to a nurses strike and the sad state of health care especially for women, she sent around two photographs depicting a woman giving birth, unassisted, to a breech baby. Due to the strike, the woman had to [...]
A women’s rights law, adopted by parliament in Mali last month, has just been blocked by the President in order to preserve national unity after major outcries. The law, if enacted, would’ve given women in Mali monumental rights, including equal rights in marriage and better inheritance rights for women and children born out of wedlock.
Since [...]
A study just released by the Guttmacher Institute finds that the approval, in 2000, of the drug Mifepristone (known to others as RU-486 or the Abortion Pill) for medication abortion did not have the anticipated effect of extending new abortion access to rural and under-served areas of the U.S.
This is disappointing news, given that there’s [...]
South African sprinter Canter Semenya is making headlines because people aren’t sure if she is a she. Many think she’s too fast, and must be a he. She’s “well muscled” with “a dusting of facial hair,” and just 18. Several weeks ago, the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) ordered the teen to take a [...]
On the heels of the much talked about Waki List, another list has surfaced to the ire of increasingly cynical Kenyans.
Prime Minister Odinga has named a list of high ranking officials illegally owning land in Kenya’s prized Mau Forest, which has been increasingly allotted, burned and inhabited over the years to the detriment of the [...]
Amnesty International released an extensive report this week on the horrors of human rights abuses happening in Nicaragua. These
abuses are on account of a law, almost unparalleled in its harshness, which outlaws and criminalizes abortion in every circumstance.
“Nicaragua’s ban of therapeutic abortion is a disgrace. It is a human rights scandal against women and girls.”
-Kate Gilmore, [...]
President Obama has a unique opportunity to put pressure on Kenya’s leaders to improve their record on reproductive health and rights. And that opportunity is now.
The right to reproductive health should be entrenched in the constitution. The only way we can reduce maternal fatalities in the country is by making abortion rare, safe and legal.
- [...]
A carefully hand painted sign on clean, corrugated tin, reading, “Welcome Senator” still hangs above a small dirt alley way in Kibera, Kenya’s massive slum where President Obama visited in 2006. Now Kenya’s son’s first visit to the continent after making history in U.S. elections has come and gone, with a visit to golden child [...]
The New York Times is running an excellent series on maternal mortality. “Maternal mortality” refers to injury, illness or death related to pregnancy or childbirth. And 536,000 women die each year in this way.
A major contributor to these half a million deaths, yet one that is rarely spoken about, is unsafe abortion. As part of [...]
Abortion is entirely illegal in Chile, without exception. Yet today is International Day of Action for Women’s Health and Women on Waves, a fearless reproductive rights group (on a boat) from Holland that docks in ports worldwide to promote safe access to abortion services, is doing something about it. They’ve just announced a new hot [...]
