Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Women's Views on News

Women's Views on News

Mississippi’s only abortion clinic blocks law to close it down

Posted: 02 Jul 2012 07:30 AM PDT

Karen Whiteley
WVoN co-editor

The sole remaining reproductive health clinic in the American state of Mississippi has succeeded temporarily in its bid to block a law intended to close it down.

The clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organisation, was granted a preliminary injunction yesterday by a federal court, stopping the law from taking immediate effect.

Without the injunction, the law was due to be effective from today, and the clinic would have been forced to start turning away women seeking abortions.

Mississippi’s House Bill 1390 was passed by the Republican-dominated state legislature on April 16 this year.

The bill requires doctors terminating pregnancies to be board-certified obstetrician-gynecologists with admitting privileges at a local hospital. Such privileges are generally difficult to obtain, but become virtually impossible to get when, as is the case in Mississippi, local hospitals are under pressure not to grant them.

But the clinic filed a suit last week against the law, saying it was unconstitutional, as it would effectively ban abortion in Mississippi “by imposing medically unjustified requirements on physicians who perform abortions”.

The right to abortion is protected by US federal law, following Roe v. Wade in 1973.

While the stated intention of the bill was to ensure patients’ safety, Republicans have been open in their view of the real objective of the law.

When signing the bill into law, Mississippi’s Republican Governor Phil Bryant declared that his goal was “to make Mississippi abortion-free”.

Equally, Tate Reeves, the state’s Lieutenant Governor, stated:

“The legislature took steps to end abortion in Mississippi by requiring doctors performing abortion to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.

“This measure not only protects the health of the mother but should close the only abortion clinic in Mississippi.”

Michelle Movahed, one of the lawyers representing the clinic, said that while several states had tried to reduce access to abortion in recent years, Mississippi was unique in being so clear about its intentions:

“One of the things that has really been surprising about Mississippi is how open the legislators and elected officials have been about their intentions.

“They’re not even pretending it’s about public safety. They’re openly saying they’re using this law to try to shut down the last abortion provider in the state.”

Following the granting of the preliminary injunction, the bill will be put on hold at least until July 11, when a further court hearing is scheduled.

Female clerics want to delay vote on women bishops

Posted: 02 Jul 2012 06:00 AM PDT

Jackie Gregory
WVoN co-editor

Senior female clerics in the Church of England (CofE) are calling for a vote, which could allow women to become bishops, to be delayed.

They are objecting to an amendment to the proposed legislation, added earlier this year, which would ensure that parishes who oppose women bishops have a male bishop sympathetic to their views.

It is the latest turn in the long-running debate within the CofE about female bishops (see WVoN story).

The General Synod of the CofE, which meets at the end of this week, was finally thought to be due to ratify the introduction of women bishops – 20 years after it first allowed women to be ordained.

But 17 women clerics have written a strongly worded letter calling on the Synod to reject the legislation in its current form.

The Rev Lucy Winklett, Rector of St James’s Piccadilly in London, herself tipped to become one of the first female bishops, told BBC Radio 4′s Sunday programme that she and other senior women clergy want the amendment withdrawn before the legislation is rubberstamped.

“It explicitly endorses any view that leads to a parish saying not only do we require a male bishop, but we require a man who has never ordained a woman, who does not believe that women can be ordained.

“Crucially that endorses, it puts at the centre of the institution, an endorsement of that principle that carries with it a variety of views including some pretty unpleasant objections to women that we think that no institution, especially not a church, should be endorsing.”

The amendment was meant to appease those from the evangelical and traditionalist wings who object to women becoming bishops. However, those who support the idea of female bishops could vote against the legislation unless the amendment is withdrawn.

Radio 4 correspondent Charlotte Smith tried to pick her way through the minefield of the debate for the programme broadcast yesterday called The Frock and The Church.

She concluded: “The House of Bishops added amendments which have succeeded in uniting the Church – now everyone dislikes the legislation.”

Campaign group WATCH (Women and the Church) has launched an online petition calling for the General Synod to refer the matter back to the House of Lords so that they will then withdraw the amendment.

The General Synod meets in York this Friday for five days.

Court-ordered virginity tests for Iraqi women

Posted: 02 Jul 2012 04:30 AM PDT

Karen Whiteley
WVoN co-editor 

Iraqi women suspected of not being virgins on marriage are being ordered by the courts to undertake compulsory virginity tests.

Speaking to the Agence France-Presse, doctors at the Medical Legal Institute (MLI) in Baghdad, said such tests, all court-ordered, were not uncommon.

“Most of the cases we receive after the first day of marriage,” said MLI’s director, Dr Munjid al-Rezali.

“The husband claims that she is not a virgin, and then the family bring her here, through the courts, this all comes through the courts, and we examine her,” he said.

The number of tests appears to be on the increase, with the rise being led by the traditional belief that, when a marriage is consummated, the woman should bleed if she is a virgin.

But while one traditional belief is causing the number of tests to rise, the disappearance of another tradition is also a contributing factor.

Dr Sami Dawood, a forensic doctor at the MLI, said in the past women were killed if blood was not found on the sheets after their wedding night. Now, husbands are turning increasingly to the courts for redress.

According to Dawood, most of the tests performed show that the woman in question was a virgin. But, he added, the tests were “shaming” in themselves.

In the only slightly heartening aspect of this whole affair, the husbands themselves are also sometimes subjected to tests: for impotency.

As Dr Rezali noted, a man with erectile problems could seek to accuse his wife to hide his shame.

The virginity test is carried out by three doctors, only one of whom must be a woman, and the results are sent directly to the court.

“If it is proved that the woman was not virgin and sought to get married without telling the man, there is no law that protects her,” said lawyer Ali Awad Kurdi.

If a woman is found not to have been a virgin, all monies and gifts relating to the marriage must be returned by the bride’s family.

Amnesty International’s Marianne Mollmann, spoke out against the tests:

“The issue of virginity testing, and forced virginity testing and sort of legal virginity tests in court proceedings or in other ways, violate a whole host of human rights and are just not justifiable,” she said.

The Middle East is no stranger to forced virginity tests.

In March 2011, virginity tests were forcibly carried out on female ‘Arab Spring’ activists in Egypt, after they were arrested by the military there.

Domestic violence survivor launches help programme

Posted: 02 Jul 2012 03:00 AM PDT

Jackie Gregory
WVoN co-editor

A woman who left a violent relationship is now offering help to others to rebuild their lives.

Sandy Marshall could find little support in the months after her marriage to an abusive alcoholic ended.

Although she could find resources for people trying to exit abusive relationships, she says there was nothing to deal with the emotional and practical fallout that can continue for years after such relationships have ended.

Now she is launching a website and programme to help domestic violence survivors to move on and overcome their feelings of guilt, loss, lack of confidence and fear for the future.

Marshall who lives in Carnforth, in Cumbria, England said: “What I found was there was nothing out there which promotes skills and techniques for coping with it all.

“My situation was not as bad as others but where do you get the motivation, the confidence back? The abuser controlled them, they are now free to do want they want but that can be difficult, there is a lot of negative emotions.”

Marshall said some programmes require attendance for two hours per week for 12 weeks, and that working women and those with families find this commitment hard to keep, particularly if they are now a single parent.

A trainer and coach herself, Marshall is setting up a social enterprise scheme that will run two-day events at weekends, followed by six one-hour counselling sessions to help enable survivors to get on with their lives.

The programme is called The Key and a website will be launched this Wednesday, July 4. It will be delivered by a group of professionals with experience in this field.

Profits of the social enterprise will go back into running workshops with children who have lived with domestic violence.

This is a cause close to Marshall’s heart, borne from experience.

“I got married at 17 to the love of my life but divorced after he had an affair. Then I met what I thought was my knight in shining armour. He was really nice to me – when he was not drinking.”

But as the drinking continued so the violence started to spiral out of control.

“About seven years ago he beat me up, and we split up, but our daughter wanted her parents to be together so I had him back.”

Sometimes he would disappear on drinking sprees only to return drunk and full of anger. The last straw came when he returned home and punched his daughter in the face in front of Marshall and his own mother.

“My daughter had been on the doorstep and I dragged her back in. My daughter is 23 now but she is still in pieces about it.”

This got Marshall thinking about providing help for children who have witnessed or suffered abuse.

Marshall said for a long time she hadn’t realised that she was in a domestic violence situation, and always thought she was somehow to blame because of something that she had said. She said one of the key areas of the programme would be memory resolution.

“There is a great big sack of negative emotions, there is a grief process to go through. I am in the training and coaching business but sometimes I didn’t have the energy to deal with everything and I had more tools than most.

“The Key programme will help deal with the guilt and get people to have new beliefs and progress with their lives.”

Marshall can be contacted (from Wednesday) via www.the-key.org.uk or email Sandy@saatraining.com.

Jenny Saville retrospective opens at Modern Art Oxford

Posted: 02 Jul 2012 01:30 AM PDT

Kirstie Imber
WVoN co-editor

A major retrospective of works by Jenny Saville, the British artist often described as the heir to Lucien Freud, has opened at Modern Art Oxford.

The exhibition, which runs until 16 September, is the artist's first solo show in a British public gallery.

This major display traces the artist's practice from the early 90s to the present, including works from her controversial Stare series.

In association with Modern Art Oxford, The Ashmolean Museum is also displaying two of Saville’s new ‘reproduction’ drawings in the Italian Renaissance Gallery, alongside works by masters Titian and Michelangelo.

Saville was born in Cambridge in 1970 and trained at the Glasgow School of Art and the Slade.

Although a highly successful member of the Young British Artists (YBAs) movement that swept the British art world in the early 90s (Charles Saatchi famously bought works from her degree show), it has taken a remarkably long time for Saville to be given her own solo exhibition.

Saville is perhaps best known for her disturbing yet beautiful large-scale paintings of female nudes, a subject she has relentlessly explored for the last 20 years.

“Women and their bodies has been a dominant subject in art history and I think I make art in that tradition,” she explains.

Yet Saville’s work is explicit in its critique of this tradition, especially with respect to ideals of beauty and physical perfection, qualities that are so firmly embedded in the historical canon of Western art history.

Included in the exhibition are a series of works produced after the artist spent time in the US observing operations at the clinic of a plastic surgeon.

The resulting canvases depict eerie close-ups of women covered with fine black markings on the fleshy contours of their bodies. Through the language of paint Saville has subtly captured the violence that underlies women's pursuits for physical perfection.

Indeed such works have led the historian Simon Schama to suggest that Saville is “a destroyer of false fetishes in terms of the tradition of the nude”.

Saville’s densely textured canvases certainly provide evidence of a physicality that is both unique and real, which offers a refreshing counterpoint to the airbrushed, glossed and perfected images that impose a certain version of beauty and femininity on the world.

As Saville herself proclaims: “I want to be a painter of modern life, and modern bodies, those that emulate contemporary life, they're what I find most interesting.”