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WOMEN'S
RIGHTS An Anger Behind the Veil
--
Taliban rule has confined most Afghan women to head-to-toe shrouds and
home. Many see U.S. action as their best hope for a freer life.
By ROBYN DIXON, TIMES STAFF WRITER
KALAI BALLA, Afghanistan -- When the Virtue and Vice police caught
sight of 14-year-old Farkhanda, with her naive eyes and childish face,
they gave chase with their sticks and beat her.
As she walked home from a family wedding in the capital, Kabul, three
weeks ago, Farkhanda crossed the line dividing carefree girlhood from
fearful womanhood, simply by showing her face.
With one glance, the police from the Ministry for the Promotion of
Virtue and Prevention of Vice--Afghanistan's religious
enforcers--decided that she should be wearing the burka, the
head-to-toe shroud compulsory for women in much of this country.
"I was terrified. I was crying. I ran as fast as I could,"
she said, describing the ordeal after fleeing to this village in the
small slice of northern Afghanistan controlled by opposition forces
battling the strict Islamic Taliban regime.
Girls younger than 14 don't wear the burka, but women must.
Farkhanda's family didn't think that she had to wear it yet, but the
Virtue and Vice police deemed her too old to show her face.
Life under the Taliban is so repressive for Afghan women that many of
them now see U.S. military action against the regime as their best
hope for a freer life.
In Taliban-controlled areas--about 95% of the country--there are even
rules on the way a woman can walk. She should not walk too
energetically lest her feet slap too hard on the ground, making an
unseemly noise, or lest she kick up a corner of her garment, showing a
glimpse of ankle.
Kerima, a woman in her early 30s who's related to Farkhanda, never
seemed to get it right. She fled Kabul with Farkhanda and other family
members just over a week ago. "I was beaten so many times,"
she said, referring to the Virtue and Vice police. "Every time I
went to the bazaar, I was beaten because my ankles were showing. They
would hit me on my head, back or my arms. Everyone was afraid, all the
women."
When the Taliban came to power, women were banned from almost all jobs
and Kerima lost her post as a teacher. After her husband was ousted
from his job this year, the family had no income at all.
Kerima expresses the anger lurking under the burka--anger that now
haunts the Taliban leadership, which is fearful of insurrection should
the U.S. bomb Afghanistan and the opposition Northern Alliance forces
use the opportunity to attack Kabul.
"It was so boring to sit in the house all day, but we didn't have
any way out of it," Kerima said. "I was afraid of the
Taliban, and we were kept isolated from education and knowledge. . . .
I was busy with the household, and I cried when I was alone."
So fierce is the anger among many Afghan women about conditions under
the Taliban, some people suggest that women will rise up and join the
military fight to depose the Taliban should the United States launch
bomb strikes.
Some Ready to Fight to Oust the Taliban
It's a notion that seems a little farfetched, given that women have
been largely isolated from society since the Taliban came to power in
1996, and have no experience in weapons use.
But Zohal Zarra, 45, who runs the Assn. for Islamic Women in Gulbahar,
55 miles north of the capital, says she would fight to oust the
Taliban, and she is convinced that other women will, even without
guns.
"There are many women who will fight," she said, "even
if they take up stones or sticks or boiling water."
The constraints women face in Afghanistan are stifling, perhaps the
most restrictive in the Islamic world. In Saudi Arabia, where women's
rights are severely curtailed, women may not drive and must cover
their bodies, but they are allowed to work in universities, hospitals
and schools--although they rarely do.
In Kabul, which had been more liberal than other parts of Afghanistan,
women's lives changed dramatically when the Taliban came to power.
They were told they couldn't leave their homes unless escorted by a
male relative; they couldn't drive; almost all jobs were ruled out
except in areas such as gynecology--and then only because male doctors
were prohibited from treating women; and education was banned for
girls. High heels, sports, loud laughter and singing were all
forbidden to women.
Before the Taliban took over, Kabul was a city where many women did
not wear burkas. After 1996, all women had to wear them, showing
neither hands, ankles nor faces. Violations of Taliban law are
punishable by beating or stoning.
Although the Taliban insists that the rules ensure that women are
treated with dignity, many Islamic scholars have attacked the regime's
repressive code.
Mohammed abu Laila, professor in the Department of Islamic Studies at
Al Azhar University in Cairo, says that according to the Koran, women
may work and drive. They may study, teach and be leaders, but not be
heads of state.
He says there is no requirement in Islam that women's faces and hands
be covered. Countries that require women to cover all parts of their
body owe less to Islam than to regional or tribal traditions, he says.
In fact, the Koran enshrined specific rights for women, which were
liberating at the time they were conveyed about 1,400 years ago. The
Koran banned infanticide and laid down women's right to education, to
choose their husband, divorce, inherit, engage in business and own
property.
Even here in the north of Afghanistan, out of the Taliban's reach,
women are hemmed in--not by law, but by cultural pressure.
Like their counterparts under Taliban rule, they don't venture out
without the burka.
Except, that is, for Zarra, who drives a car and gets about in a
black-and-green Puma track suit, with no face covering.
"I don't care. I just go out," said Zarra, who fled Kabul
for the safety of northern Afghanistan when the Taliban took power.
"I like to drive," she said. "It's no problem."
Zarra even drives her husband, Elyas, about. He is education minister
in the essentially defunct Islamic State of Afghanistan government,
which was ousted by the Taliban.
"I have a car with tinted windows," she said, giggling.
"And I have a good husband."
Zarra runs Afghanistan's only coeducational school. She also runs an
embroidery and tailoring cooperative for widows, to provide them with
an income.
Like many Afghan women, she despises the burka. Putting it on is like
stepping into a balloon of hot air in a country where summer
temperatures reach well over 100 degrees. An internal headband holds
the shroud in place; your feet disappear beneath the billowing swath,
and it's difficult to walk or see. The small square of net before your
eyes is your window on the world.
"It's very hot. I don't see anything," Zarra said. "I
can't see where I'm going, and I feel like I might fall over."
Bazaars Devoid of Women's Faces
In Afghanistan's bazaars, the narrow, crowded lanes are filled with
the faces of men, boys and young girls. Once they reach a certain age,
girls' faces disappear. The women waft by like ghosts in their flowing
burkas.
Groups of women are escorted by men, who will materialize from a
distance, often with casually slung Kalashnikovs.
Inside the village house owned by Kerima's male relatives, the women's
domain is the kitchen, a mud-walled room with a window onto a green
yard with its ancient twisted vine. There's a hole in the floor for
the clay tandoor oven, with a higgledy-piggledy pile of pots nearby.
Male strangers are ushered to a room devoid of furnishings other than
red rugs and cushions. The women are a mere hinted presence, sensed
only in the meal of tea, red bean stew and rice with walnut and yogurt
sauce.
Only a female guest is invited into a sunny room to meet the women of
the household, two dozen smiling, curious faces from three
generations, most of whom have never handled even simple Western
objects, such as a photograph.
Shabha, 21, is another relative who left Kabul a little more than a
week ago--fleeing both the expected U.S. attacks and Taliban
persecution. She had to give up school and her dreams of being a
doctor when the Taliban came to power. Now she is married and has a
baby girl, Bahara.
Her own future, she feels, isn't worth thinking about. All she wants
is for her daughter to have the education she missed out on.
With girls' education banned by the Taliban, Nasrine Gross, an Afghan
American from Washington, runs two clandestine schools for girls in
Kabul, part of a nationwide network of several thousand secret
schools. In the late 1990s, the ban was slightly relaxed with the
introduction of a few official schools.
Most of the schools are supported by international organizations.
They're cheap: It costs only $1,500 to run a school for 20 girls for a
year.
"Remember, it's clandestine. The kids have to learn to lie about
where they're going," Gross said in an interview in the Panjshir
Valley last week. "They have to pretend they're going somewhere
different every day and change their route."
Gross graduated from Afghanistan's first girls' high school in 1964
and wrote a book in 1998 telling the stories of the students, now
scattered all over the world.
The book contains a striking selection of photographs of Afghan women
in the 1960s and 1970s--their faces uncovered, many without scarves,
some wearing leg-revealing skirts.
It is not just women who hate the burka: Many men do too, but they
argue that it's a part of Afghan tradition and culture, not to be
messed with.
"I just say to people, 'In 1965 I wore short skirts,' and they
just kind of shut up," Gross said.
She is part of a movement of Afghan women who have developed a
declaration on the rights of Afghan women. By gathering signatures
worldwide, they hope to pressure the Bush administration to support
the document and have it enshrined in a post-Taliban constitution for
Afghanistan.
Restrictive Garment Not Necessarily Traditional
Gross disputes the view that wearing the burka is an ancient Afghan
tradition, arguing that women have worked the fields here without the
attire for hundreds of years.
"It is a garment that came to Afghanistan only 150 years ago. It
is not Islamic. It came from India and was worn in the cities to show
the gentrification of the husband," Gross said. "It was worn
by people entering the middle class."
She has met many women from cities and villages who say they would
burn the garments if they weren't forced to wear them.
Elyas Zarra, the education minister, says the garment is both a
physical and psychological barrier.
"The [burka] stops women from doing something better with their
lives. They all feel angry. They feel unhappy," he said. "If
they take off the [burka], they feel free. They can see. They can do
something better."
But he says that, in the northern part of Afghanistan, it is a choice
made by individual families--at least by the men--most of whom still
support the burka.
As for rising up against the Taliban, Gross said: "You have to
understand--they are destitute women. I'm not sure how much they can
organize themselves. But mobilizing them and empowering them, it
doesn't take much."
Afghanistan lost many of its men in 22 years of war. If peace ever
comes, Gross says, she is sure women will play a big role in
rebuilding the country.
"With military men, it's difficult to bring them to the way of
peace," she said. "Reconstruction is a peaceful activity. I
think the women will be a major force for peace and reconstruction in
Afghanistan."
....October 5, 2001 Los Angeles Times, in NOW email 10/13
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Will the U.S.A. Swallow
Osama Bin Laden's Bait?
For years Osama Bin Laden has sought a way to unify all Arabs and
other Muslims against the U.S.A., Israel, and other civilized, Western
nations of the world. Allowing him to goad us into an over-reaction,
killing innocent children and other non-combatants, will play into the
hands of Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists. In spite these
horrendous attacks, we must allow reason to overcome our natural
emotional response so that we can ensure that terrorists fail to
achieve their goal.
Following are some excellent articles:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/
http://www.buzzflashcom.bigstep.com/generic.html?pid=51
http://consortiumnews.com/2001/091701a.html
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0918-06.htm
http://www.public-i.org/excerpts_01_091301.htm
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-091701
http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin~1.html
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0109170206sep17.story
http://slate.msn.com/Earthling/01-09-13/Earthling.asp
http://www.jointogether.org/gv/default.jtml?O=545745
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/17/opinion/17HERB.html
Bomb Them With Butter
by Kent Madin
Bomb them with butter, bribe them with hope. A military response,
particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the terrorists
want. It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks.
Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and
medicine. It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of
US casualties and just might get the populace thinking that maybe the
Taliban don't have the answers. After three years of drought and with
starvation looming, let's offer the Afghani people the vision of a new
future. One that includes full stomachs.
Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world
leaders, particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet
the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of
terrorism committed by their "guest". Blitz them with laptop
computers and DVD players filled with a perspective that is denied
them by their government. Saturation bombing with hope will mean that
some of it gets through. Send so much that the Taliban can't collect
and hide it all.
The Taliban are telling their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead,
let's give the Afghani people their first good meal in years. Seeing
your family fully fed and the prospect of stability in terms of food
and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom. All we ask in
return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized world.
That includes handing over terrorists in their midst.
In responding to terrorism we need to do something different.
Something unexpected... something that addresses the root of the
problem. We need to take away the well of despair, ignorance and
brutality from which the Osama bin Laden's of the world water their
gardens of terror.
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A bill called the Breast
Cancer Patient Protection Act was introduced by
U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut and requires
insurance
companies to cover a minimum 48-hour hospital stay for patients
undergoing a
mastectomy. The bill eliminates the "drive-through
mastectomy" where
women are forced to go home hours after surgery against the wishes of
their
doctor, still groggy from anesthesia and sometimes with drainage tubes
still
attached.
Lifetime Television has put this bill on their web page with a
petition
drive to show your support. Last year over half the House signed on.
PLEASE!!!! Sign the petition and help women living with breast cancer
get the care they need and deserve!!
GO TO:
http://www.lifetimetv.com/health/breast_mastectomy_pledge.html
The whole process takes less than a minute.
PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO OTHER WOMEN TO HELP WOMEN. 9/4/01
(Top)
"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what
feminism is; I
only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments
that differentiate me from a doormat."
-----Rebecca West 1913
"God grant me the courage not to give up what I think is right
even
though I think it is hopeless."
----Admiral Chester W. Nimitz
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that
matter.
----Martin Luther King, Jr.
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NOW Press Office
202-628-8669 Rebecca Farmer, x 116
202-785-8576 (fax)
August 22, 2001
Statement of NOW President Kim Gandy
Let's face it, women are more dependent on Social Security than
men. We live
longer, we are less likely to have pensions, we earn less over our
lifetimes
because of pay inequity, and we spend an average of 11.5 years
providing
care for our children and our parents. So women can least afford to
undercut
a guaranteed lifetime benefit by gambling with it on Wall Street.
Women are disadvantaged by the current system, and we need to
look at making
the system more fair, not putting it at risk. For example, instead of
recognizing women's care giving years as a benefit to society,
the system
punishes them with "Zero Credit" years that further dilute
already-lower
earnings compared to men. The average marriage last only seven years,
yet a
ten year marriage is required before spousal benefits are available. A
short
marriage combined with many years of care giving is a prescription for
disaster.
The bottom line is that creating private accounts will funnel billions
into
the financial services industry while jeopardizing a well-established,
albeit
imperfect, safety net for millions of women.
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ACTIVIST
NETWORK -- People For the American Way
Alert Date: Aug. 7, 2001 -- Circulate Until: Sept. 3, 2001
TELL CONGRESS TO RESTORE RESPECT FOR A WOMAN'S RIGHT TO CHOOSE
________________________________________________________________
ACTION:
Send a letter to your senators and representative urging them
to fight back against the Bush administration's anti-choice
policies.
ACTION PLAN:
The Bush administration and anti-choice members of Congress
have eliminated, eroded, or seriously compromised access to
reproductive health services at every possible opportunity.
Their quest has not stopped with restrictions on abortion
procedures. Whether in clinics overseas or in classrooms here
at home, the mere discussion of abortion or contraception is
enough to deny federal funds. But these actions are reversible
through legislation now pending in the House and Senate!
Tell your members of Congress that their support is imperative!
Read the sample letter and issue summary below. Then, write
your own letter and send a copy to your senators and
representative.
Find your own senators
The United States
Senate
Honorable Bob Graham
524 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0903
Phone: (202) 224-3041
FAX: (202) 224-2237
Tallahassee office: 850/907-1100. S. Fla. office 305/536-7293
Email: bob_graham@graham.senate.gov
Web site: http://www.senate.gov/~graham/
Honorable Bill Nelson
Room 818, Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-5274; Tallahassee: 942-8415
FAX: 202-228-2183
Email: senator@billnelson.senate.gov
Web site: http://www.senate.gov/~nelson/
U.S. Rep. Alan Boyd (Tallahassee area)
107 Cannon HOB, Washington, D.C. 20515;
202/225-5235; fax 202/225-5615
Tallahassee office: 561-3979; Local Fax: (850) 681-2902
Write Your
Representative - Lookup Representative
_______________________________
*** SAMPLE LETTER ***
Dear Sen. or Rep. (last name):
I am writing to ask that you support women's privacy and health
by ensuring ALL women have safe access to family planning and
reproductive health services. I would like to bring your
attention to three pieces of legislation pending in the United
States Congress.
First, please support S.367 ("Global Democracy Promotion
Act"),
which would allow overseas groups receiving U.S. aid to use
their own private resources to pay for abortion-related
services.
Second, please support provisions in the 2002
Treasury-Postal Appropriations bill which would give federal
employees prescription contraceptive coverage.
Third, please support the Murray-Snowe or Sanchez amendment
to the 2002
Defense Authorization bill, which would repeal the ban on access
to abortion for women stationed at overseas military bases.
These actions do more than provide women with reproductive
freedom; they demonstrate respect for the laws of other
countries and recognize the sacrifices public servants and
military families have voluntarily made. I would appreciate
your support for this legislation and a prompt response.
Respectfully,
(your name, address)
________________________________________________________________
(Top)
*** PREACHING RESPECT,
PRACTICING CONTEMPT ***
The Bush administration has promoted "respect" as a key
theme
in its first seven months, and recently, the president's party
announced an initiative to attract women voters to the
Republican ticket. Yet the administration's policies have
shown a far different attitude toward women. WHAT CAN BE DONE?
* Respect for global democracy *
The Senate and the House are both considering the repeal of
President Bush's discriminatory global "gag" rule with
legislation entitled the "Global Democracy Promotion
Act." The
"gag" rule prohibits U.S. international family planning
funds
from going to overseas groups that use their own private funds
to provide comprehensive counseling (including abortion
counseling), abortion services, or engage in any abortion-
related advocacy. Ask your senators and representative to
support the "Global Democracy Promotion Act" language
(it can be
found in the Fiscal Year 2002 Foreign Operations Appropriations
bill, and S. 367, "Global Democracy Promotion Act"),
to respect
other country's laws and a woman's right to comprehensive,
confidential counseling.
* Respect for federal employees *
Anti-family-planning representatives, with the full support of
President Bush, have already tried to eliminate contraceptive
coverage for federal employees from their prescription drug
benefits. Tell your senators and representative that federal
employees deserve contraceptive benefits from their employer.
Ask them to support the Fiscal Year 2002 Treasury-Postal
Appropriations bill with contraceptive coverage for federal
employees.
* Respect for women in the military *
More than 100,000 women -- active servicewomen, spouses, and
dependents of military personnel -- live on military bases
overseas and rely on military hospitals for their health care.
Yet anti-choice lawmakers are intent on ensuring that these
women who are defending our country and their families do not
receive the same medical services that are available here in the
U.S. Currently, these women are banned from receiving privately
funded abortions at these hospitals simply because they are
stationed overseas. Please ask your senators and representative
to support the Murray-Snowe amendment (Senate) and the Sanchez
amendment (House) to the Fiscal Year 2002 Department of Defense
Authorization bill. These amendments will repeal the ban on
access to abortion for women in the military overseas.
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Hell
Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorned
At the same time as Bush rejected requests by states to expand family
planning for poor women, the Republican Party announced a new
propaganda
campaign to con women into voting for Republicans. "Where have
the
Republicans been for the past 200 years?" asked DNC Chair Terry
McAuliffe.
"From denying the need for equal pay to cutting funds for breast
cancer
prevention to attempting to drop birth control coverage from Federal
health
insurance plans, the Republican Party demonstrates everyday how it is
dramatically out of step with the concerns of America's women and
families,"
he said. Not to mention the fact that Bush's desire to criminalize
abortion
would put 1.2 million women - and their doctors - behind bars every
year.
http://www.democrats.org/news/releases/rel072001.html
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OPPOSE WADE
HORN NOMINATION
June 20, 2001
URGE SENATORS TO OPPOSE WADE HORN
You are encouraged to call your Senators as soon as possible to urge
them
to vote against a Bush administration nominee who advocates policies
that
would hurt poor women, such as suggesting that single women give up
their
children to be adopted by two parent, married couples and that public
assistance should be provided primarily to married, two parent poor
families. The nominee is Wade Horn, an activist for so-called fathers'
rights, and a consistent critic of feminism. If approved by the
Senate,
Horn would oversee many programs of importance to women and children.
The
confirmation hearing was set for Thursday, June 21st, at 11:30 a.m. in
the
Senate Finance Committee, to be later followed by a vote by the full
Senate
(although we are not sure when that floor vote might be scheduled). So
please try to make those calls as soon as you can and thanks for your
help.
BACKGROUND ON THE NOMINEE
Earlier this year, George W. Bush named Wade Horn, an outspoken
proponent
of so-called "father's rights" and unabashed promoter of
marriage as a
solution to poverty, to be Assistant Secretary for Family
Support at the
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In that position, Horn
would
oversee a broad array of critically important programs such as welfare
(Temporary Assistance to Needy Families/TANF) reform implementation,
domestic violence, early childhood development/day care, foster care,
adoption, child support enforcement and many others. NOW opposes
the Horn
nomination and has been speaking out against the nominee in news
interviews
and in a letter to Congress.
Horn's positions on welfare, teen pregnancy, single parents, domestic
violence, divorce, and other family law issues are well known through
his
writings. Many of these positions are extreme and would be opposed by
a
majority of the public, if they knew about them. A few of his
many odious
ideas include:
*Poor single mothers and their children should be denied public
assistance
(like Head Start, public housing, job training and financial aid for
education) until and unless all two-parent, married poor couples have
been
provided assistance. Also, unmarried couples, straight or gay, would
never
be eligible for public assistance;
*Horn also wants the government to pressure unmarried mothers to give
up
their children for adoption by married, two parent families; and,
*The federal government should fund the promotion of marriage of poor
women to the fathers of their children.
Horn's highly placed presence in this administration will influence a
wide
range of important family policy questions, including re-authorization
of
the welfare reform (TANF) program next year. We believe that he
is clearly
an undesirable candidate for this critically important position.
PLEASE CALL YOUR SENATORS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND URGE THAT THEY VOTE.
[And please pass this on to your family, friends and colleagues]
AGAINST WADE HORN AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR FAMILY SUPPORT AT THE
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES. The main number for the
Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121; just ask for your senator's
office. Or, you can go to thomas.loc.gov, the website for
Congress to get the Washington, D.C. and home state phone numbers as
well as the Senator's email addresses.
========================================================
Find your own senators
The United States
Senate
Honorable Bob Graham
524 Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-0903
Phone: (202) 224-3041
FAX: (202) 224-2237
Tallahassee office: 850/907-1100. S. Fla. office 305/536-7293
Email: bob_graham@graham.senate.gov
Web site: http://www.senate.gov/~graham/
Honorable Bill Nelson
Room 818, Senate Hart Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Phone: 202-224-5274; Tallahassee: 942-8415
FAX: 202-228-2183
Email: senator@billnelson.senate.gov
Web site: http://www.senate.gov/~nelson/
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June 13, 2001
As feminists battle ultra-conservatives in the White House, Congress
and the
courts, the National Organization for Women (NOW) prepares to bid
farewell to
its longest-serving president, Patricia Ireland. Due to term limits,
Ireland is retiring after more than ten years as president and
fourteen as a
national officer. New leadership will be elected by activists at the
National
NOW Conference, June 29 to July 1 in Philadelphia. Ireland will
retire in August.
"This is an exciting and crucial time for feminists and NOW.
From the Bush
administration's attacks on women's rights to the change in Senate
leadership,
NOW activists have their hands full protecting the advances we've
made
together over the past decades," Ireland said. "Yet I am
confident that the
new team of feminists to lead NOW will continue to enact more
groundbreaking
laws that ensure our rights, elect more feminists to all levels
government
and further prevent the packing of the courts with anti-women's
rights nominees."
For over a decade, Ireland has led the largest, most visible and
most
successful feminist organization in the United States. Ireland's
major
contributions include organizing NOW activists to: defend women's
access to
abortion, elect a record number of women to political office, work
more
closely with other social justice and civil rights groups and
champion
international feminist issues.
From forcing reopening of Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings
after Anita
Hill's revelations to organizing the spirited protests outside John
Ashcroft's
hearings, Ireland has been in the forefront of the fight for equal
rights.
During her presidency Ireland has worked to form and expand strong
and
effective working relationships with not only traditional allies in
the civil
rights, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights
communities, but
also new coalition partners in the welfare and poverty rights, and
disability
rights movements.
Ireland has inspired a new generation of activism by working with
young women
and men on hundreds of campuses. Her vision and dedication have laid
a strong
foundation on which NOW's next president will build.
###
Ireland is available for further comment. To schedule an interview,
please contact NOW's Media Relations Office at 202-628-8669, ext.
116.
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(WOMENSENEWS)The Bush
administration has given Afghanistan $43 million including $10
million for other livelihood and food security programs, a reference
to the ruling Taliban's ban on poppy cultivation that dramatically
changed the economy of the war-torn nation. The poppy is the source
of opium and the crop had provided significant revenues to Afghan
farmers. The aid was described as humanitarian.
In addition to being an ally
in the U.S. war against drugs, the Taliban also has banned the
education of girls and women. It has banned women from professions
and from most outside-the-home employment, even with international
relief agencies. It has banned women from seeing male doctors and it
prevents women from practicing medicine.
Colin Powell, in announcing
the gift, said the administration hoped that the Taliban "will
act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their
support of terrorism, their violation of internationally recognized
human rights--especially their treatment of women and girls--and
their refusal to resolve Afghanistan's civil war through a
negotiated settlement." He also called on other nation's to
join the U.S. with dispatch and energy.
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Chilling...and plausible. One
would hope the supreme court majority would
recognize the high level of privacy in making a decision of whether or
when
to have children. LM
Atlanta Constitution:
High court presents road map for overturning abortion rights
Steven Lubet - Special
Friday, May 18, 2001
You might not think that there is a connection between
"medical marijuana"
and abortion rights, but the law works in complex ways. And it turns
out that
a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, though seemingly limited
to the
question of controlled substances, just might initiate the next
assault on
the right to choice.
In United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative, the Supreme
Court
held that federal law does not permit the distribution of medical
marijuana,
even to alleviate the suffering of cancer victims and AIDS patients.
Many
Americans no doubt believe that the decision was unfair, since it will
deprive certain severely ill people of what might be the only
effective
therapy for overwhelming pain and nausea.
But marijuana, after all, is not exactly a popular cause, and people
have
enough trouble these days just paying for their legal medications, so
the
ruling is unlikely to draw sustained public attention.
That's too bad, because the implications of the court's decision go
well
beyond the narrow question of medical marijuana. In fact, the
majority's
reasoning may well have a direct impact on the future of abortion law
in the
United States. The law of medicine The precise question in the case
was
whether the federal courts could recognize a "medical
necessity" exception to
the Controlled Substances Act. Without such an exception, the
distribution of
marijuana is always illegal under federal law, even in the eight
states
(Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington)
that have passed medical marijuana initiatives.
The court's five conservative justices held, in an opinion written by
Justice
Clarence Thomas, that no such exception is possible even in the case
of
desperately suffering cancer victims, because an act of Congress has
conclusively determined that "marijuana has no currently accepted
medical use
at all." That congressional determination is flatly contradicted
by leading
scientific authorities, including the California Medical Association
and the
National Institute of Medicine.
But according to Thomas, Congress may make binding medical judgments,
not
subject to review by the courts, no matter what patients need and no
matter
what doctors say. Privacy rights lessened Now let's shift the
discussion from
marijuana to abortion. Imagine that Congress passed a statute, let's
call it
the Controlled Procedures Act, criminalizing some abortions by
declaring that
"late-term abortion has no currently accepted medical use at
all." Following
Thomas' reasoning in the Cannabis Buyers case, the courts would be
helpless
to intervene.
The prospect for abortion rights become especially chilling when we
recall
that Roe v. Wade itself was premised on the right to privacy, meaning
that
the government may not interfere in medical decisions made between a
woman
and her physician. But now the Supreme Court seems to be saying that
Congress
may enact blanket legislation that outlaws certain necessary
treatments, with
no exceptions whatsoever. Here is the most important language from the
Cannabis Buyers case: "It is clear from the text of the Act that
Congress has
made a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits," and
therefore
the Supreme Court is "unable in any event to override a
legislative
determination manifest in a statute." In the hands of a
determined activist,
that becomes a virtual road map for eviscerating Roe v. Wade.
Tying courts' hands
There are differences, of course, between abortion and the limited
legalization of marijuana. But it is surely only a matter of time
before an
anti-choice congressman introduces a bill that is directly modeled on
Thomas'
opinion, insisting that the national legislature now has the power to
pass
conclusive judgment upon the legitimacy of medical interventions.
"Late-term abortion," the proposed law will say,
"has no medical benefits"
in the opinion of Congress, and the Supreme Court is therefore
"unable to
override" such a statute.
Late-term abortion legislation has been enacted by Congress twice in
the
past, only to be vetoed by President Clinton each time. The certainty
of that
veto kept the issue of abortion restriction pretty much below the
public
radar screen. Now things have changed. George W. Bush is in the White
House,
and Thomas has neatly explained just how a statute needs to be worded
in
order to bypass Roe v. Wade and gain approval by the Supreme Court. In
other
words, get ready for war.
Steven Lubet's most recent book is "Nothing But the Truth: Why
Trial Lawyers
Don't, Can't, and Shouldn't Have to Tell the Whole Truth."
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George W. Bush has failed women
once again -- and right in the midst of the Mother's Day season. I
can't think of a better way that a new President could have honored
mothers around the country than to increase funding to programs that
benefit women and their families. Instead, the president is pushing
budget and tax cuts that will hurt women's physical and economic
health as well as the safety of women and families.
Surely, President Bush's own
mother, wife and daughters have access to health care. But other women
won't be so lucky. Bush's budget would cut Breast and Cervical Cancer
Screening, drop the requirement for contraceptive coverage for federal
employees and their families, cut the Maternal and Child Health Block
Grants that provide health care to women before, during and after
pregnancy and childbirth and reduce infant illness and death, and
freeze the Healthy Start program that also reduces infant mortality
and morbidity. The highly acclaimed Supplemental Nutrition Program for
Women, Infants and Children (the WIC Program) would be effectively
cut, with actual funds available insufficient to cover inflation.
Older women will also pay the
price for the Bush tax cuts and budget proposal. The Bush budget and
tax cut would decrease the solvency of both Social Security and
Medicare, and result in a completely inadequate prescription drug
benefit.
Allowing workers to pull 2% of
their current payroll tax out of the Social Security Trust Fund means
the fund would be depleted 14 years earlier than is now expected.
No doubt the president expects
his daughters to be safe at school and at home. If only he showed the
same concern for other families' children. Bush proposes to cut the
discretionary portion of the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act,
freeze funding for Safe and DrugFree Schools and for 21st Century
AfterSchool Centers, and eliminate entirely the School Counselors
Program that provides someone to whom children can turn. The man who
would be our "Education President," Bush wants to cut all of
the funding for Reading is FUNdamental, an effective program
championed by both his wife and his mother.
Every mother is a working
mother. Most mothers are also in the waged workforce, but Bush's
budget proposal shortchanges these women. Like the president's wife
when she was a teacher and a librarian, more than half of women in the
waged workforce are in lowpaying jobs, in the income brackets least
likely to benefit from the proposed tax cuts. And, the Bush budget
decreases funding for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
below the level needed to maintain current services by this agency.
Women who own small businesses
will pay for the president's tax cuts through higher loan costs and
new taxes disguised as fees, while critical programs spurring
minorityowned businesses will be eliminated. The Bush budget slashes
funds for the Small Business Administration and restricts access to
capital, already difficult for women.
An irresponsible budget and tax
plan is only half the story though. Last week Bush named to federal
judgeships eleven nominees who further reflect this Administration's
ultraconservative agenda. The majority of these nominees would likely
dismantle the laws that protect and promote women's rights.
During his first 100+ days in
office, Bush's record on women has been abysmal. Rather than govern
from the middle as he promised during his campaign, Bush continues to
rule from the right by cutting social programs important to women, and
appointing right-wing extremists to key government positions and
judgeships. When I remember the "W is for Women" Bush
campaign buttons, I think it's about time the President put his money
and his judicial nominees where his motto is.
Today, the National Organization
for Women challenges President Bush to "show us the money"
and to show us a little bit of that campaign promise of compassion.
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