Women's Views on News |
- Pregnant women, alcohol and the law
- Don’t miss Gabrielle Le Roux in Edinburgh
- More cuts ahead for domestic violence services?
| Pregnant women, alcohol and the law Posted: 14 May 2015 03:54 AM PDT
It was ruled recently that a seven year-old girl born with foetal alcohol syndrome cannot bring her case before the Supreme Court – but what does this case say about our attitude towards pregnant women? The child's mother drank excessively while she was pregnant, and the girl to be born with foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), and permanent brain damage. The case, originally made by a council in north-west England, called for the girl to be entitled to compensation because her mother had administered a poison to her foetus in the form of alcohol. When this case first made headlines in 2014, it sparked an unpleasant debate in the press about whether drinking during pregnancy should be made a criminal offence. While there is no doubt that the child in question did suffer from her mother's drinking, the notion of criminalising pregnant women who drink is a dangerous one. According to the NHS, it is safest if pregnant women don't drink alcohol at all, but women who do choose to drink should consume no more than two units of alcohol once or twice a week. UK guidelines updated this year say women trying for a baby and those in the first three months of pregnancy should not drink any alcohol. However, there is no conclusive evidence about exactly how much is safe, or what the effects of small amounts of alcohol are on a foetus. Pregnant women are constantly bombarded with information and advice – often unwanted and inaccurate – about what they should and should not do with their bodies, and judged on everything they do and do not do: exercising, not exercising, drinking wine, drinking coffee, eating tuna… the list goes on and on. How many times have you seen a pregnant woman sipping a glass of wine and found yourself judging her? The fact is that, from the moment a pregnant belly pushes itself out into the world, we view it as public property. Criminalising drinking during pregnancy would set a dangerous precedent, arguably paving the way for anti-abortion legislation by giving a foetus "person" status above that of the mother. In cases like this, where a mother drinks so much that she gives her child brain damage, we have to ask ourselves who benefits from criminalising this woman? I would argue that for someone to have been drinking that heavily during a pregnancy, something must have been seriously wrong. We don't know the details, but perhaps the mother was an alcoholic who needed help. Perhaps the pregnancy was unwanted and she had been forced to continue with it. We should remember that it is possible to feel compassion for a brain damaged child and her clearly vulnerable mother at the same time.  |
| Don’t miss Gabrielle Le Roux in Edinburgh Posted: 14 May 2015 03:32 AM PDT
Proudly Trans International exhibition, a one-day exhibition in Edinburgh of work by Gabrielle Le Roux, explores African and Turkish transgender people's lives and activism through art. In Africa and Turkey, as in many parts of the world, transgender people face extreme danger and challenges both in their personal lives and in their activist work. Acclaimed London-born South African artist Gabrielle Le Roux uses collaborative art processes as creative interventions for social justice. In Proudly African and Trans, the dedication of trans activists is showcased through portraits and narratives. One of these is Victor Mukasa, Ugandan LGBTI human rights defender, whose words beautifully capture the vision and intention of the artwork: "Transgender Africans have been silenced for a long time. We have been invisible as though we did not exist. "Today, many of us speak, we show our faces, we write and we express ourselves openly. This exhibition is an extension of that. "The portraits are our images and they speak our words, they tell our stories, they express our feelings, they exhibit our pride, even our fears, they are our history, they are us today and the history of the African transgender struggle in future. "They are strength, hope and pride to generations after us." Le Roux was in the Ugandan capital, Kamapla, for an exhibition in 2002 when she read about a police raid of a lesbian bar in the local tabloids. Le Roux had run a nonprofit in South Africa called the Women's Media Watch before becoming an artist, and she went looking to help the bar's owner fight against the anti-LGBT media storm following the raid. She connected with Victor Mukasa, a transman who went on to bring the first LGBT rights lawsuit against the Ugandan government, which he won in 2008. That meeting led to the work for which Le Roux has become best known: a series of hand-drawn portraits done in collaboration with trans and intersex people from around the world. Following the creation of the Proudly African and Trans portrait series, Gabrielle Le Roux was funded by Amnesty International to create a further collaborative portrait series: Proudly Trans in Turkey. Transphobic hate crime is prolific in Turkey, with at least 37 murders of trans people since 2008 and dozens more attempted murders. Just earlier this month, on 2 May, four trans women were nearly killed in separate knife and gun attacks during a single night. Yet despite facing the worst trans murder rate in Europe, trans activists in Turkey remain defiant, articulate and proactive in campaigning for their human rights. In addition to their portraits, the exhibition shares their personalities and views through short films. To mark the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT) on 17 May, the Scottish Transgender Alliance and Equality Network are hosting a unique one day exhibition of both Proudly African and Trans and Proudly Trans in Turkey at the 5th Floor Gallery, in Edinburgh’s City Art Centre. These powerful portraits and narratives of trans activists in Africa and Turkey were created by artist and feminist activist Gabrielle Le Roux in collaboration with the individuals featured. Le Roux will be in attendance and there will be a variety of workshops exploring the themes of the artwork throughout the day.  |
| More cuts ahead for domestic violence services? Posted: 14 May 2015 03:00 AM PDT
The run-up to the national election saw headline-grabbing protests in London over cuts to domestic violence services, with hundreds of campaigners gathering to occupy a council rooftop and stopping traffic in the street with colourful flares. Led by the Sisters Uncut collective, the protest highlighted cuts to local authority funding for domestic violence services – and warned that more of the same was likely. Sisters Uncut member Lucy Strange said funding for domestic violence services had already been reduced by 30 per cent, and that all the major political parties had planned to continue these cuts if elected. The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition of the past five years has regularly come under fire for reducing funding for charities and other organisations involved in supporting those at threat from domestic violence and abuse. The first two years of the last government saw a 31 per cent cut in funding for domestic violence and sexual abuse services. Cuts have been exacerbated by the scrapping of the discretionary social fund in 2013; it was replaced by the £150m poorer local welfare assistance fund, leaving local governments with big gaps to fill. This has led to an all-too similar story nationwide. At the start of 2014, for example, Worcestershire's local authorities halved funding for domestic abuse, while in Devon support was cut by 42 per cent. As a result of lost public funding, many charities have been forced to downsize. Insufficient resources have meant hundreds of women and children turned away from refuges each week. In August last year, Polly Neate, chief executive of Women's Aid, joined those calling for a halt to this rapid withdrawal of such essential, often life-saving, services. "We thought we had won the argument that refuges need to be a national network but we are having arguments of 40 years ago all over again," Neate said. "There has to be a national network and national funding to support it." There has, in addition, been concern over changes made to the legal aid scheme since April 2013, which have made it harder for victims of domestic violence to access legal advice and representation in court. And a report published earlier this year by the Justice Select Committee warned that more than a third of domestic violence victims are now unable to meet the requirements to access legal aid. Emma Scott, director of the charity Rights of Women, has highlighted survey findings showing that lack of support is leading to many women staying in abusive relationships, and warned: "It is not over-dramatic to say that women will die." If there is a positive side to all this, it is that – as Polly Neate recently pointed out – domestic violence is now "on the political agenda as never before". From almost complete silence on the issue five years ago, this election campaign saw all three major parties make specific domestic violence pledges. The Conservative Party manifesto included a promise to ‘prioritise tackling violence against women and girls", stating, on its page 59: "We will now work with local authorities, the NHS and Police and Crime Commissioners to ensure a secure future for specialist FGM and forced marriage units, refuges and rape crisis centres’. But, with cuts (in)famously at the top of the new government's agenda, it seems highly likely that domestic violence services will continue to be squeezed, as "saving" on public spending continues to be prioritised over saving lives.  |
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