NEWS & LETTERS, August - September 2008
Women World Wide
by Mary Jo Grey
Thousands of Chileans marched in Santiago to protest the Constitutional Court's ruling outlawing President Michelle Bachelet's free emergency contraception distribution program. The court claimed that emergency contraception could "endanger a recently fertilized egg." Gloria Maira, of the Movement for the Defense of Birth Control, said, "This is a demonstration in demand of freedom. We don't want any more moral dictatorships." More than 500 Chileans have already announced that they will renounce their membership in the Catholic Church because of the church's involvement with the court's anti-contraception ruling. Mujeres Publicas, a women's rights group in Chile, plans another protest against the Catholic Church.
* * *
Hundreds of women, representing more than 30 nationalities from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Japan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan, participated in a 12-day bicycle ride campaign for peace. The Follow the Women group hosted the fourth Pedal for Peace in the Middle East which wound through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and parts of the Occupied Territories.
* * *
Anti-abortion measures will be on November ballots in California as a proposed constitutional amendment requiring parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period for minors seeking an abortion. Voters also face a measure to amend the state constitution to ban abortion after 24 weeks calling it "murder unless necessary to save the mother's life." In Colorado, Amendment 48 declares a fertilized egg a person who enjoys all constitutional rights. It endangers the right to abortion and threatens oral and emergency contraception, IUDs and in vitro fertilization clinics. In South Dakota an abortion ban initiative would amend the state constitution to severely limit access to abortion except where the mother's life or health is at risk and in cases of rape or incest. Voters voted down a more restrictive bill in November 2006.
* * *
A petition to ban abortion and certain forms of birth control in Montana will not be put to the vote, after anti-choicers could not even get half the votes needed to put it on the ballot. The Fetal Personhood Amendment would have redefined "personhood" to include all stages of human development from fertilized egg to birth. The law would have also banned stem cell research and infertility treatments.
--Information from Planned Parenthood
* * *
Domestic partners Lorri Sulpizio and Cathy Bass are suing Mesa College in San Diego for firing them because they are gay and because they advocated for facilities for women athletes to be equal with those for men. Sulpizio and Bass worked for Mesa's basketball program for over a decade.
--Elise
|
