Can two strangers, one anti-abortion, the other pro-choice, find some common ground?
David, 31, near Norwich
Occupation Anti-abortion campaigner
Continue reading...Category Archives: Women
El Salvador woman punished under strict abortion law freed after 10 years
‘Elsy’ was sentenced to 30 years for aggravated homicide over miscarriage and is fifth such woman to be released since December
El Salvador has released another woman imprisoned for aggravated homicide who after suffering an obstetric emergency was accused of aborting her pregnancy in a country where abortion under any circumstances is banned.
The woman, who activists helping her identified only as Elsy, had served more than a decade of a 30-year sentence. She was the fifth woman released before completion of her sentence since late December of last year.
Continue reading...Afghan universities reopen with strict rules for female students
Women required to attend separate classes and follow dress code at facilities in Kandahar and Helmand as they restart classes for first time since Taliban takeover
Public universities in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in Afghanistan have reopened after being closed for nearly nine months, with some female students joining classes.
Despite calls from education activists and students, universities and high schools across Afghanistan stayed shut after their usual summer break as the Taliban came to power. High schools have since reopened, but only for boys.
Continue reading...Japan to reform 19th century law that puts ex-husband on child’s birth certificate
Automatic addition of ex-husband as father on document within 300 days of divorce to be scrapped
Japan is set to reform a 19th century law that automatically registers a woman’s ex-husband as the father of a child born within 300 days of their divorce.
A government panel this week recommended amending the rule, along with another clause in the law that prevents women from remarrying for 100 days after a divorce on the grounds that the paternity of a child born soon after would be unclear.
Continue reading...‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism
The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable
Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.
But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?
Continue reading...Scientists developing single test to detect risk of four cancers in women
Experts may be able to predict risk of developing ovarian, breast, womb and cervical cancers using cells from routine smear test
Scientists are developing a “revolutionary” test to predict a woman’s risk of four cancers using a single sample collected during cervical screening.
Using cervical cells from a routine smear test, experts may be able to spot ovarian and breast cancer or predict their likelihood of developing, according to two papers published in the journal Nature Communications. Further results are due on the ability of the WID-test – women’s cancer risk identification – to predict womb and cervical cancer, researchers said.
Continue reading...Protests flare across Poland after death of young mother denied an abortion
Family of Agnieszka T say they want to ‘save other women in Poland from a similar fate’, as case met with anger over restrictive termination laws
Protests are under way across Poland after the death of a 37-year-old woman this week who was refused an abortion, a year since the country introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
On the streets of Warsaw on Tuesday night, protesters laid wreaths and lanterns in memory of Agnieszka T, who died earlier that day. She was pregnant with twins when one of the foetus’ heartbeat stopped and doctors refused to carry out an abortion. In a statement, her family accused the government of having “blood on its hands”. Further protests are planned in Częstochowa, the city in southern Poland where the mother-of-three was from.
Continue reading...Honduras: can first female president usher in a new era for women?
Xiomara Castro’s inauguration will cap a remarkable rise but she faces daunting challenges around femicide and abortion
Xiomara Castro has been sworn in as the first female president of Honduras on Thursday, marking the culmination of a remarkable rise to power that began just over 12 years ago when she led a massive protest movement in response to the ousting of her husband, former president Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, in a military-backed coup.
Castro’s resounding victory in the 28 November election has generated hope for a new era for women in the country with the highest rate of femicide in Latin America and some of the region’s most draconian laws with regards to reproductive rights.
Continue reading...‘I’m free at last’: Uganda’s rudest poet on prison, protest and finding a new voice in Germany
Stella Nyanzi talks about challenging Uganda’s President Museveni from her new home and why she had to leave the land she loves
The first few days of Stella Nyanzi’s new life in Germany have not been without their challenges, from navigating the TV and internet in a different language to finding the right school for her three teenagers. On the second day, the family went shopping for clothes – “thick jackets, mittens and scarves” – to see them through the fierce Bavarian winter. For her 14-year-old twins, who have lived their whole lives in sub-Saharan Africa and who insisted on wearing Crocs with no socks on the flight over, the sub-zero temperatures were a rude awakening.
At the centre of it all, however, has been deep sense of relief. Nyanzi, a 47-year-old outspoken scholar, poet and human rights advocate whose irreverent writing about Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, has seen her jailed twice, decided enough was enough. She has been accepted on a writers-in-exile programme run by PEN Germany, and has no intention of returning to Uganda while the 77-year-old Museveni is in power. And while there are many concerns about how she and her children are going to settle into Munich life, the sense of freedom is powering her on.
Continue reading...Polish state has ‘blood on its hands’ after death of woman refused an abortion
Family says young mother’s health deteriorated rapidly after the twins she was carrying died a week apart in the womb
The family of a Polish woman who died on Tuesday after doctors refused to perform an abortion when the foetus’s heart stopped beating have accused the government of having “blood on their hands”.
The woman, identified only as Agnieszka T, was said to have been in the first trimester of a twin pregnancy when she was admitted to the Blessed Virgin Mary hospital in Częstochowa on 21 December. Her death comes a year after Poland introduced one of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.
Continue reading...Catalonia expected to pardon up to 1,000 people accused of witchcraft
Hundreds of people, mostly women, condemned during witch-hunts that persisted well into 18th century
The Catalan parliament is on Wednesday expected to pass a resolution to pardon up to 1,000 people – the majority of them women – condemned for the crime of witchcraft in the region 400 years ago.
The move follows similar gestures in Scotland, Switzerland and Norway after more than 100 European historians signed a manifesto titled: They weren’t witches, they were women.
Continue reading...‘Virginity repair’ surgery to be banned in Britain under new bill
Move to outlaw procedures to reconstruct the hymen welcomed by campaigners and survivors of ‘honour’-based abuse
“Virginity repair” surgery known as hymenoplasty has no place in the medical world, British healthcare professionals were warned today, as legislation to criminalise the practice was introduced by the government.
An amendment added to the health and care bill on Monday will make it illegal to perform any procedure that aims to reconstruct the hymen, with or without consent.
Continue reading...Death threats and phone calls: the women answering cries for help one year on from Poland’s abortion ban
As new laws hit the most vulnerable pregnant women in need of care, volunteers struggle to help those unable to access safe abortions
Continue reading...Taliban launch raids on homes of Afghan women’s rights activists
Campaigners arrested by armed men days after anti-hijab protest in Kabul, with beatings reported
Taliban gunmen have raided the homes of women’s rights activists in Kabul, beating and arresting female campaigners in a string of actions apparently triggered by recent demonstrations.
Tamana Zaryabi Paryani and Parawana Ibrahimkhel, who participated in a series of protests held in Kabul over the last few months, were seized on Wednesday night by armed men claiming to be from the Taliban intelligence department.
Continue reading...What happens when your star is cancelled but you can’t cancel the film?
Scandals affecting Armie Hammer, Kevin Spacey and Johnny Depp have all hit their movies. We look at how film companies cope when leading players’ box-office stock crashes
Does Armie Hammer ever yearn for the time when the worst thing people said was that nobody liked him? “Ten Long Years of Trying to Make Armie Hammer Happen” was the cruel but incisive headline of a 5,000-word BuzzFeed article from 2017 which concluded that only a wealthy white man could not merely have withstood so much failure but have been rewarded for it. The US actor tweeted about the piece, calling it “bitter AF” before making a celeb’s exit from the social media platform: he deleted his account then quietly reactivated it.
Those must seem now like halcyon days. Hammer’s fall began a year ago when messages surfaced online, purportedly sent from him to various extramarital partners, suggesting an erotic interest in cannibalism. Sexual assault allegations were made by multiple women, while an accusation of rape prompted a Los Angeles police investigation. Hollywood tends to act fast when handling a scandal in the age of social media and #MeToo: Hammer was dropped immediately by his agents, William Morris Endeavor. He exited projects including the Jennifer Lopez romcom Shotgun Wedding, Amma Asante’s cold war thriller Billion Dollar Spy and The Offer, a 10-part series about the making of The Godfather. His scenes in Taika Waititi’s soccer comedy Next Goal Wins were reshot with Will Arnett taking his place.
Continue reading...Afghan female MPs fight for their country in exile
After a harrowing escape from the Taliban, Afghanistan’s female politicians are regrouping in Greece to fight for their country. Amie Ferris-Rotman reports on the work of the Afghan women’s parliament in exile
In November, 28 former female MPs from Afghanistan gathered in Greece. They’d fled the Taliban in dramatic fashion, and were now reunited in a community centre run by Melissa Network, a grassroots organisation for female migrants and refugees that played a role in their evacuation.
The journalist Amie Ferris-Rotman was there; she tells Nosheen Iqbal about the emotional first meeting of the Afghan women’s parliament in exile in Athens. There, the women – some junior politicians, some elder stateswomen, some from prominent wealthy political families, some from poorer backgrounds – traded stories of their escapes and shared hopes for the country they left behind. Shagufa Noorzai, 22, who had been the youngest member of parliament before the Afghan government fell, says she wants the women left behind in Afghanistan to know they have not been forgotten.
Continue reading...Two men playing draughts on an abandoned train: Gosette Lubondo’s best photograph
‘Both of the people on this train in Kinshasa are me. I superimposed myself because I can’t afford models’
This image, part of a series called Imaginary Trip, was taken in an abandoned train outside Kinshasa station in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I was looking for a site to evoke an imaginary voyage to convey the idea of memory, the passage of time and the reappropriation of old places. A lot of young men hang around this area, which is a poor neighbourhood, and they squat in the trains during the day while doing various jobs such as helping people at the station. Sometimes they have something to do, other times nothing.
The two people in this photograph are both me. I took several digital images and then superimposed them to represent two young men playing a traditional game of draughts with bottle tops – as they do. When I started out on this project, I did not intend to put myself in the photographs – it was almost accidental. I did not have the money to pay for models, so it was partly a question of budget, but also of time. I spend ages in these places creating my photographs, too long for most people to hang around, so in the end I found myself in front of and behind the camera. I often work alone with a camera, a tripod and a remote trigger.
Continue reading...‘This alert is her scream’: new system would help locate missing Indigenous women
A program in Washington state is intended to trigger an effective search and raise awareness of the problem
Four years ago, Debra Lekanoff was busy traveling across the nation in her role as governmental affairs director for the Swinomish Tribe when her daughter came to her, worried.
The 14-year-old had just learned some of the troubling details of the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and was concerned that her mother, who is Alaska Native and tended to travel alone, might one day not make it home.
Continue reading...How an ancient rainmaker inspired a quest to nurture female writers in Malawi
I was struck by how few authors I could name who are women. With Makewana, the ‘mother’ responsible for rain, as our namesake, my group set out to end the literary drought
I have often tried to imagine what Makewana, the original female rainmaker of ancient Malawi, must have looked like.
There is a statue of her with long hair at Mua Mission in Dedza, since to cut her hair would have signified drought.
Continue reading...Calls for action on gender-based violence after Ashling Murphy killing
Ireland’s minister for justice promises new strategy by March and a zero-tolerance approach
Campaigners have called for the end of the “scattered” approach to gender-based violence in Ireland after the murder of 23-year-old Ashling Murphy.
Irish police are still hunting for the killer of the primary school teacher, who was strangled on a canal path near the town of Tullamore while out jogging on Wednesday afternoon.
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