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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
Women Worldwideby Mary Jo Grey Finally the government of Nepal has passed two bills: 1) allowing women to inherit parental property, and 2) permitting abortions during the first 12 weeks with the consent of her husband, when a woman's health is in danger, and in cases of rape, incest, and fetal impairment. While welcoming these reforms, women's groups said the struggle for women's rights must continue. But, in the Bahamas voters rejected two referendums: 1) protecting women against job discrimination, and 2) denying citizenship to the children and foreign husbands of Bahamian women (while it is granted to the families of Bahamian men). —Information from We! Isis International * * * Arsonists burned to the ground the home of a University of Montana professor days after she filed a lawsuit seeking health insurance for the same-sex partners of university employees. Carla Grayson, her partner, Adrianne Neff and their 22-month-old son awoke to flames and escaped through a window. Two days after she filed the lawsuit, she received an anonymous, powder-filled letter in the mail that read "die dyke." * * * The horrific practice of "honor killing" has taken the life of yet another courageous young woman—a Kurd who had moved with her family from Turkey to Sweden. After a lifetime of physical abuse by her father and brother, and four years of death threats when she fell in love with a Swedish man, 26-year-old Fadime Sahindal waged a public fight against conditions faced by young Kurdish women. She was shot in the head by her father and died in her mother's arms. Foreign groups in Sweden are now speaking out against patriarchal cultures that allow such barbarism. * * * A safe sex advice booth at a pre-prom fair at Alhambra High School in Martinez, Cal., drew protests from parents who called it "inappropriate." The county health services department that sponsored the booth said it was meant to "encourage thoughtful, careful decision-making." Tessa Rangel, junior class vice president, maintained "sex is nothing new to teens and if they make that choice, they might as well do it right." * * * A Melbourne, Australia Supreme Court jury, in April, convicted Peter Knight of murdering a security guard at an abortion clinic in Australia's first abortion-related killing. The guard and two other men struggled to disarm Knight when he entered the clinic with a rifle, ammunition and kerosene and pointed his gun at a pregnant woman. |
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