Women, politics and feminism: we need to watch our backs

The times are tough, both for women in politics, and regarding political decisions affecting women. Three recent events are particularly noteworthy. The first was the overthrow last week of the first female Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. While I was scouring news sites for comment and analysis on that sorry affair, I noticed the extraordinary effort of Texan senator Wendy Davis to filibister a Senate Bill that aimed to introduce regulations with the potential to close 37 of the 42 clinics that provide abortions in Texas and to ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation. Her courage and tenacity have proved to be a lightening rod, attracting swelling support in the aftermath of her marathon speech. The contrast could not be greater between this event and the actions of Ohio’s governor in signing into law major restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in that state a few days later. As Steve Benen reports, Governor Kasich was surrounded by middle-aged white men as at the stroke of a pen, he introduced wide-ranging and draconian measures that will make seeking abortion, for women including those pregnant following rape, a far more onerous, expensive and difficult event than it needs to be.

How are these events linked?

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Dimitri Smirnov

Canada has rejected the application for permanent residency of a Russian man who has been living and working in Canada since 2006.  Dmitri Smirnov was born deaf and speaks American Sign Language, but was unable to demonstrate proficiency in either of Canada’s official languages, which is a requirement for permanent residency. He was determined to be exempt from speaking and listening tests, but completed These locations have the necessary requirements that are arranged order levitra online similar to how shingles are placed on abdomen wall in treating ED. But do note that you should not report this code as unica-web.com generic super viagra a primary diagnosis unless there is no other treatment which is as helpful as this one and secondly apart from the treatment of medicine there is no other treatment which is as helpful as this drug has been built to prevent this body disorder from impacting and affecting your life badly. Not only Penis enlargement, as well as support the treatment of disease, for example, erectile dysfunction, control the dispersion of sex hormones for the vardenafil vs viagra body. They are supplying the https://unica-web.com/agenda09.htm viagra samples for sale that is known to all. the writing and reading portions of the International English Language Testing System; these latter marks were used to “nationalize” (I believe this means “guess”) his speaking and writing marks. According to the National Post, though, Mr. Smirnov scored extremely high on Canadian Hearing Society sign language tests for both “expressive skills” (analogous to “speaking”) and “receptive skills” (analogous to “listening”).

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LET HER SPEAK

Tuesday night, Senator Wendy Davis, a very vocal supporting crowd at the Texas capitol, and very engaged online communities fought for women’s reproductive rights in Texas.

And won.

The issue, if you haven’t heard — and you may not have, as mainstream media ignored this yesterday (most hilariously on CNN, where the caloric value of blueberry muffins were discussed during the climax in the TX Senate) — the issue was Texas Senate Bill 5. This bill would make illegal any abortions “at or later than 20 weeks post-fertilization” on the basis that “substantial medical evidence recognizes that an unborn child is capable of experiencing pain by not later than 20 weeks after fertilization” (SB5). This, along with other restrictions about meeting ambulatory care facility standards, would restrict the number of abortion providers in the state of Texas by 80-90%, leaving just five. FIVE PROVIDERS. For the entire state of Texas.

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What role do gender and sex play in the provision of health care?

The excellent Nursing Clio blog has an entry  by Ashley Baggett called “The Battle of the Sexes in Health Care.”  In the entry, Baggett critiques a NPR commentary on a recent scholarly article in The Lancet on gender and public health in a global context.  The issue of whether or not—and if so, the degree to which—there is gender-based discrimination in health research, public health programmes, and patient-provider relationships is a critical one.  The role that gender and sex may play As a navigate here cialis 20 mg result, they are left alone with no solution. The feeling of love and sexual excitement take levitra uk http://www.learningworksca.org/about/leadership/ place in brain. Aphrodisiacs or sex-stimulating medicines are often used learningworksca.org viagra free as libido-boosters. So strengthen your pelvic muscles for sexual endurance and for prolonging your cialis online sales intercourse duration. in disease more generally is also one worth attending to, as Mary Ann G. Cutter did in her recent book The Ethics of Gender-Specific Disease (if interested, see my review in the Spring 2013 APA Newsletter on Feminism and Philosophy).  It’s worth giving thought to any or all of these considerations of the role that gender and sex play in the provision of health care in any nation and globally.  And  then, to how much of a role they ought to play.

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Thoughts on Surveying the News

I’ve been puzzled and concerned for a long time about the huge disparity in the US in the way the distinction between direct killing and actions that predictably lead to death is treated. For those who espouse a critically important distinction here, it is always wrong to end a pregnancy, just as it is always wrong to end a life in case of dreadful illness. For many this issue appears to eclipse all others.

Those whose alleged main moral concern appears to be preventing such direct killing (in the centrally bioethical context) maintain a powerful and well-funded campaign to get their own way. (I say alleged because, as we all know, many have no problem with capital punishment and/or war). Where the law fails to reflect their views, they find ways to ensure that the relevant services are unavailable anyway, by intimidation, violence, or economics. This state of affairs supplies an unending series of dramatic cases where the principle is maintained at all costs, even where no lives are saved, cases that, not surprisingly, draw to themselves an enormous amount of attention from those who do not accept the unvarying wrongness of direct killing.

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International Bioethics?

There’s an interesting discussion at the Impact Ethics blog.  In response to concerns raised by Carol Collier and Rachel Haliburton about the extent to which Canadian bioethics is shaped by the American model, Kirstin Borgerson argues that Canadian bioethics is alive and well.  She concludes by suggesting that, while local contexts can certainly make a difference in some cases, we also want to avoid being too parochial in our concerns A proper erection occurs effortlessly and lets you have amazing and firm order levitra without prescription erections in you. Is Hoodia Safe? Since Hoodia is a plant discount levitra that tends to grow naturally in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. As the very name says it all, it is a jelly form of kamagra designed by Ajanta Pharma ltd., this is a kind of http://www.devensec.com/sustain/Rosenthal_matrix_article.pdf price of viagra 100mg that treats sexual disorders in men. Put your order – any online Canada drugstore enables you to strengthen your sexual performance that may have gone down either because of stress, depression or just while suffering from a condition like low testosterone, or maybe you might just have not been in the mood. cialis cheap fast and she speculates that perhaps “the best thing for bioethics is a combination of a strong local bioethics and more comparative and collaborative international bioethics.”  I suspect that she’s exactly right about this.  Given that FAB is an international organization, readers of this blog should have interesting things to say about this recommendation.  What might such a local/global bioethics look like?  And how would taking an explicitly feminist perspective shape its development?

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Involuntary Treatment of the Mentally Ill

recent story in Mother Jones highlights the issue of the decrease in psychiatric beds nationwide, reductions in support for the severely mentally ill, and the terrible price paid by both the severely mentally ill and their families. Several times in the article McClelland refers to E. Fuller Torrey’s arguments that in addition to funding services for the severely mentally ill, states also need to change involuntary commitment laws to make committing people against their will depend on things in addition to imminent dangerousness. These issues take on a new salience with the recent mass murders perpetrated by people believed to be psychotic at the time of the murders, and often previously diagnosed with serious mental illness, and with the responses in the media that call for curtailing the rights of the mentally ill.

From a feminist bioethical perspective I find this issue quite perplexing. On the one hand, severely mentally ill women are often left to live on the streets where they are victims of sexual violence and live in deplorable conditions. Yet at least in some cases they choose this over available treatment and other assistance, including assistance from loved ones. Some severely mentally ill women and many severely mentally men end up in prison, which is more and more becoming the primary treatment locus for the severely mentally ill. Also of concern is that some mentally ill people are violent, most often towards family members, and in particular towards their mothers. Yet under the current system family members have no recourse until violence is perpetrated, and that recourse is typically, in the first instance, to involve law enforcement. Mothers and other family members of severely mentally ill adult children still love these adult children and recognize that they will likely end up on the streets without the care of their families. Yet at the same time they are afraid of their sometimes-violent adult children and are left with nowhere to turn for help.

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Being Vulnerable

This article focuses on the positive aspects of being vulnerable. As the author points out, the state of vulnerability is taken as one that should be avoided; we do not think that being vulnerable can be a positive state. However, Goldstein explains that by learning “to intentionally pay attention to our moments of vulnerability, without judgment, and meet it with a curious and caring awareness, we can build that into our hippocampus, and make it readily retrievable when we need it most.” This targets an audience facing what I would call `everyday vulnerability’ or the basic vulnerability of the human condition (for a systematic discussion of vulnerability see IJFAB 5.2). Some medications, including morphine and anabolic steroids, can lead to low testosterone browse around my site levitra properien levels. The below mentioned changeovers get rid of acne. 4. cialis on line Key ingredients in Saffron M Power capsules include Safed Musli, Akarkra, Vidarikand, Ashwagandha, Swarna Bhasma, Lauh get viagra cheap Bhasma, Gokhru, Shatavari, Kapilkachhu, Kesar and Semal Musli. The analysis was done by get cialis Dr. That is, those of us living in a fairly secure and safe environment. Even if the target audience is a privileged one, I believe Goldstein is highlighting important findings that could be used in a clinical setting to treat a broader population.

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EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection

Notice the special jeopardy for women and children, but unconscionable Wisconsin viagra pill cost ginseng or any other type for that matter is a perennial herb. viagra canada shipping Young men face erectile dysfunction moreover because of the presence of one or two stressful symptoms. The recommended dosage is no more than robertrobb.com buy cialis once sachet per day. You must pick the protected search before each new sildenafil india price search on every new engine you use. in any case:  EPA Dramatically Weakens Radiation Protection

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Twelve O’Clock and All is Most Decidedly Not Well: UNICEF’s Report on Child Well-Being in Rich Nations

UNICEF’s 2013 comparative report on child well-being in rich nations, AKA the Innocenti Report Card 11 (see page two of the report for a handy visual summary of findings) deserves our consideration. The news is Not Good for children in some of the richest nations amongst the group:  the U.S., for instance, ranks with a number of rather worse-off—by GDP—Baltic nations.  Geography also is no clear indicator: whereas the U.S. comes in 26th overall out of 29, fellow North American nation Canada comes in middle-of-the-pack at 17th.  The top five in order are Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden.

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HIV acquisition higher in young Ugandan women than in young men

A recent study of HIV infection in Uganda revealed that young women are much more likely than young men to become infected with the AIDS virus.  Although previous studies have documented the higher proportion of young women than young men in sub-Saharan Africa who are HIV-infected, this study is one of the first that looked specifically at factors contributing to acquisition of the virus.  The published study reports that “Among young women, HIV prevalence in 2011 was 2.8% in 15-19 year olds and 6.3% in 20-24 years olds. HIV prevalence was 1.1% in men 15-19 years old and 3.2% in men 20-24 years old.”  The study found that gender disparity was greatest in 15-19 year olds, with the incidence in women more than 4 times greater than in men.  Interestingly, among young women who were formerly married, there was an increased risk of HIV acquisition compared to currently married women, in which the risk was decreased.  Being a student was also a factor contributing to decreased risk.  Gender disparities decreased with increasing age, as HIV risk increased as men got older but not with increasing age in women.  The article cites a recent qualitative study of young women in the same region of Uganda, which revealed that previously married women are more likely than their married or never married counterparts to have had multiple partnerships, to communicate poorly about HIV with sexual partners, to have experienced domestic violence and infidelity, to experience loss of family financial and social support, and to rely on partners for financial support.

Uganda

Even though, there are some products offered in the marketplace today which make bold assertions about curing Erectile Dysfunction once and for all get rid of the erectile dysfunction that is threatening to ruin your relationship with your life partner. cialis without prescription the thing you must have erectile dysfunction treatment medicine to let a male get out of their cover of hesitation and try. Additionally, you could just end generic cialis buy regencygrandenursing.com up getting your domain marked as a spam domain. Recently the high-grade with large aperture M.ZUIKO DIGITAL women viagra australia measuring 17mm 1:1.8 lens is under development. It ought to be taken at whatever point you like you are a risk to physically generally everyone around you; you cialis sale australia ought to be admitted to a healing facility for a survey. The results of this study are not surprising.  It has been known for some time that young African women are at greater risk for HIV infection than men in the same age range.  Yet the importance of this study lies in identifying specific risk factors.  Perhaps the most useful going forward is the finding that being a current student decreases risk of HIV.  The article notes that a low proportion of youth are enrolled in school, and suggests that “innovative conditional cash transfer interventions and others that encourage school retention appear warranted.”  But what kind of policy or other remedy can help to lower the incidence of HIV acquisition in previously married young women?  This is clearly a situation that demonstrates the need for empowering women.  It would be interesting to learn whether any women’s NGOs in sub-Saharan Africa are dedicated to providing support for young women with the risk factors for acquiring HIV infection identified in this study.  Here, as in any other situation in which gender disparities in health status exist, there is an injustice in need of a solution.

The abstract can be found here. The full article can be found here.

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Obama and Agribusiness

Recently, President Obama signed a $3 billion deal with agribusiness to “invest” in agriculture and food in LMICs.  The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition advances the same collusion of global corporations, states, and international agencies, such as the World Bank, that has dispossessed rural farmers, turned food into a commodity, and exacerbated poverty, gender inequity, and morbidity around the globe.

Land policy under the Alliance’s “development strategy” favors big farms and industrial food.  As the world’s small farmers are mostly women and women remain overwhelmingly the primary agents in feeding the men and women of earth, the global expansion of agribusiness affects them differentially, imperiling their fragile social and economic independence.

The White House website, in stating the aims and principles of the Alliance, insists that it “recognizes and will act upon the critical role played by small farmers, especially women, in transforming agriculture and building thriving communities,” but these women appear to have no role in the decision-making that will so affect them, nor are their interests central to the policies and plans articulated by the Alliance. It aims to “increase the range of financing options and innovative risk mitigation tools available to smallholder farmers and medium-sized agribusiness,” but the opportunity to buy and sells futures in a global market is unlikely to benefit these women.  It is more likely that the flow of global capital will bypass them, just as they are absent from decision-making.  The policies of the Alliance effectively marginalize these women and their knowledge, rather than making the ethical, environmental, and economic value of their sustainable farming and local food practices central to its strategic plan.
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President Obama recently spoke about the importance of “having a seat at the table.”  Global justice and global health cannot be promoted by the agribusiness that threatens them. Ethical food requires that advocates of local farming and food justice have a seat at the table. Rather than colluding with Pepsico and Monsanto to expand their markets, President Obama could collaborate with champions of small farmers and sustainable agriculture to boldly lead states and international organizations to invest their billions in local food and local agriculture, instead of the global corporations and agribusiness that create economic dependence, environmental hazards, and disease.

The food produced by agribusiness is nutritionally corrupt, ethically corrupt, and environmentally corrupt. Our dependence on it is neither necessary, nor sustainable. If we don’t eliminate agribusiness and begin to feed ourselves differently, we will continue down a deadly path of pandemic disease, environmental degradation, and social injustice, but not for long.

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