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NEWS & LETTERS, April - May 2008Women World Wideby Mary Jo GreyThe Dean of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently removed a block to searches that include the word "abortion" in the school's database. Administrators at the Center for Communications Programs had blocked "abortion" searches after questions from the database funder, Bush's U.S. Agency for International Development. * * * Nairobi Women's Hospital, Kenya, reported the daily average of rapes has doubled in the increased violence following the disputed presidential election. Jeanne Ward, an international consultant on gender-based violence, said: "These sexual attacks may be crimes of opportunism, or in cases of war or ethnic violence, rapes may be targeted at one particular group of women and girls." * * * There is good news and bad news out of the state of Maryland. A court ruling forced the state to reinstate a $7 million Medicaid program to help more than 4,000 pregnant immigrant women and children who have been in the U.S. less than five years, aid they had eliminated in 2005. Unfortunately, a three judge panel of the Maryland Special Court of Appeals then showed their misogyny by reinforcing the provision of the state rape law stating that a woman who gives consent prior to intercourse cannot say NO during the act. So much for women's control of their own bodies. --Information from Feminist Daily News* * * Hundreds of women marched in Johannesburg, South Africa, in March, protesting sexual assaults by taxi drivers who have targeted women in miniskirts. The attackers of one woman stripped and groped her, and poured alcohol over her head shouting that this is what she wanted. Nonhlanhla Mokeona, of People Opposing Women Abuse, said "We want to highlight that women have rights--they have the right to choose what to wear." |
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