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NEWS & LETTERS, October - November 2008
Women World Wide
by Mary Jo Grey
A coalition of women's rights activists in Iran successfully persuaded a judicial commission to drop some of the most contentious, male-biased sections from a so-called "Family Protection Law" passed by Parliament in September. Yet they now face a smear campaign, including charges against the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Shirin Abadi, that she supports promiscuity and prostitution. Similar campaigns in the 1990s led to mysterious serial killings. In the past year, more than 20,000 women have been attacked by "morals squads" and put under temporary police arrest for breaking the Islamic dress code and they still face the barbaric practice of stoning to death for adultery.
--Information from Nayerah Tohidi, Women's eNews
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A petition with more than 325,000 names gathered in less than a week was submitted by Planned Parenthood to the Department of Health and Human Services to stop a rule by the Bush administration that could redefine abortion to include the most common forms of birth control, which therefore could be denied to women by misogynist health care providers.
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Two convicted rapists were pardoned by Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai after serving less than three years of an 11-year sentence. The victim found out when they walked into their village, forcing her and her husband into hiding. She had been gang-raped, mutilated with a bayonet and forced to walk home half naked after she and her husband spoke out publicly about their missing son, forcibly taken by armed men.
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