Did they think she was going to run away in the middle of having a c-section?  Barbaric is not enough of a word here.

Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant charged with using someone else’s identity to work, gave birth to a boy on Dec. 21 at Maricopa Medical Center. After her C-section, she was shackled for two days to her hospital bed. She was not allowed to nurse her baby. And when guards walked her out of the hospital in shackles, she had no idea what officials had done with her child…

…All hospitalized inmates are treated in the same manner as Mendiola-Martinez, according to Lt. Brain Lee, a spokesperson for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. He said she had a “soft restraint” attached on one leg to her bed to prevent escape.

That soft restraint was a 12-foot-long chain…

…She says she was shackled during the two last months of her pregnancy too. Every time she had a pre-natal appointment, she waited in a small un-ventilated room with 20 other women. She had to sit in the floor. The chains were heavy and hurt her waist. Mendiola-Martinez often wept. She feared that her sadness could hurt the baby…

…About 1,500 pregnant women come through the Maricopa County Estrella jail every year. In 2009, 35 of them gave birth while in custody, according to Maricopa Medical Center records. More than 70 percent of the women detained in Maricopa County jails are accused of non-violent crimes and haven’t been sentenced yet. About 11 percent of them are undocumented immigrants. Health and county authorities say they don’t keep records on the immigration status or ethnicity of the women who give birth.

No of course they don’t keep records. Read the rest of this ghastly example of American injustice here.  Many thanks to Attica Scott for bringing this story to our attention.

In Haiti, as is always true in the aftermath of a major disaster, in addition to the urgent need for what we traditionally consider the pillars of immediate aid–food, water, shelter, medical care–there are  needs that are specific to women, particularly for pregnant women and mothers with new babies and the need to address the added vulnerability to violence that women face when government infrastructures are dysfunctional. According to the International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA):

(W)omen of reproductive age face limitations in accessing pre-natal and post-natal care, as well as greater risk of vaginal infections, pregnancy complications including spontaneous abortion, unplanned pregnancy, and post-traumatic stress. An increase in violence against women was also recorded…

…(I)n natural disaster situations and in post-disaster recuperation, the cases of violence may increase. “Given the stress that this situation caused and the life in the refuges, men attacked women more frequently.

Additionally as the MIndanao Commission on Women and Mothers for Peace Movement points out:

women suffer most from the impact of climate change and natural disasters because of discrimination and poverty. The same happened to women victims of Hurricane Katrina and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami as documented in a report on “Gender and Climate Change.”

Tracy Clark-Flory addresses these issues relative to providing aid in Haiti in a piece on Salon’s Broadsheet:

It isn’t just that women often require special care and resources post-disaster; human rights organizations say that they could also play a critical role in distributing much-needed aid. Women “are central actors in family and community life,” says Enarson, and are more likely to know “who in the neighborhood most needs help — where the single mothers, women with disabilities, widows and the poorest of the poor live.” Diana Duarte, a spokesperson for MADRE, an international women’s rights organization that has joined the relief effort, put it this way: “Women are often more integrated and more aware of the vulnerabilities of their communities.”

Even beyond the initial emergency response, there lies a long road to recovery that holds other unique challenges for women and girls. They are “at increased risk of gender-based violence, especially domestic violence and rape but also forced marriage at earlier ages” due to their increased dependence on men for protection and support, says Enarson. After a disaster of this magnitude, there will also be scores of “newly disabled, widowed or homeless women” in need of help. MADRE’s Duarte points out that women’s generally higher “level of poverty negatively effects their ability to access resources to rebuild.”

Clark-Flory also points to the work of the Gender and Disaster Network which calls for a gender-responsive approach to aid in Haiti and has a wealth of resources on the topic here.

Madre’s Marie St. Cyr and Yifat Susskind offer this excellent view of what such an approach needs to look like in Haiti,

All Haitians are suffering right now. But, women are often hardest hit when disaster strikes because they were at a deficit even before the catastrophe. In Haiti, and in every country, women are the poorest and often have no safety net, leaving them most exposed to violence, homelessness and hunger in the wake of disasters. Women are also overwhelmingly responsible for other vulnerable people, including infants, children, the elderly, and people who are ill or disabled.

Because of their role as caretakers and because of the discrimination they face, women have a disproportionate need for assistance. Yet, they are often overlooked in large-scale aid operations. In the chaos that follows disasters, aid too often reaches those who yell the loudest or push their way to the front of the line. When aid is distributed through the “head of household” approach, women-headed families may not even be recognized, and women within male-headed families may be marginalized when aid is controlled by male relatives.

It is not enough to ensure that women receive aid. Women in communities must also be integral to designing and carrying out relief efforts. When relief is distributed by women, it has the best chance of reaching those most in need. That’s not because women are morally superior. It is because their roles as caretakers in the community means they know where every family lives, which households have new babies or disabled elders, and how to reach remote communities even in disaster conditions.

Moreover, women in the community have expertise about the specific problems women and their families face during disasters.

Unfortunately, in big relief operations, already-marginalized people are usually the ones who “fall through the cracks.

None of this sits too well with the men’s rights movement.  Robert Franklin, Esq. has this to say at Men’s News Daily:

(A)ccording to Clark-Flory, ”women in general will be in need of ‘hygiene supplies…”  Men and boys apparently will not need those things.  And “women often require special care and resources post disaster.”  Men and boys don’t need those things either.  Is that because men and boys are supermen who don’t need help?  Or is it because they’re less deserving of it than are women and girls?

First of all, the piece did not say that men and boys don’t deserve aid, it said that women have some needs that men don’t have  that  also need to be addressed.  Secondly (having hopefully given female readers time to pick themselves up off the floor from laughing)–apparently Mr. Franklin, Esq. does not go to the grocery or drug store very often or he would know that hygiene is our oh so clean euphemism for sanitary products–oh wait, that is a euphemism too–okay, excuse my indelicacy–it means tampons and pads that women use when they MENSTRUATE (there, I said the word). As a general rule, most of the people who use those products are FEMALE.  But if Mr. Franklin, Esq. really feels that he needs them, I’m sure we can send him a box with explicit instructions on where to shove them.

As for special care, unless men get pregnant and have babies, they probably do not require that assistance either.

Over at Spearhead (they’re not subtle are they?), they also object to Gender and Disaster Network’s “Elaine Enarson (probably a Swedish woman)” saying that,

They are “at increased risk of gender-based violence, especially domestic violence and rape but also forced marriage at earlier ages” due to their increased dependence on men for protection and support.

with this,

So now when men provide women with protection and support they are suspected rapists, child molesters and batterers? Are these strange, foreign women more trustworthy than Haitian girls’ fathers, brothers and grandfathers? I try to refrain from inserting my opinion when I am writing these news pieces, but Ms. Enarson is making one of the most offensive insinuations possible with the above statement, and she is dead wrong. It is matriarchal societies where women cannot rely on men for support in which women face the most danger.

Really?  Name one matriarchal society where this is or was so.  And yes, women who are in general more likely to be victims of intimate violence are far more likely to be victimized when they suddenly become more physically vulnerable.

International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) offer this framework for re-prioritizing the way we offer aid:

In the face of obstacles and the needs that have been identified, the evaluation proposes a series of concrete recommendations, amongst which are to: improve the sexual and reproductive health of women and adolescents in natural disaster situations and in post-disaster recovery; ensure access to contraceptive measures, particularly condoms for the prevention of transmission of HIV; provide post-natal care; medicine to combat infections and post-traumatic stress; provide an adequate response to cases of violence against women, girls and boys; include the provision of health and legal services; and improve the security situation of shelters to prevent cases of abuse of power by guards.

The UNFPA is currently working to rush maternal health supplies to Haiti.

As Bill Quigley puts it so eloquently, we need to:

Prioritize humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the line. If they are moved to the back of the line, start at the back.

There are several organizations that are working to provide aid to meet women’s specific needs in Haiti.  The women’s human rights organization Madre is,

working to send support to women’s human rights defenders. We are hearing reports of a horror that often accompanies disasters like this – namely, an upsurge of violence against women. It’s critical that women human rights defenders in Haiti have the support they need to help survivors and reach out to women who are trying to keep themselves and their children safe in the chaos that has gripped Port-au-Prince.

You can make a donation to help their efforts here.

In addition, the U of t Feminist Law Student’s Association reports that,

V-Day is trying to reach our sisters in Port au Prince who run the V-Day Haiti Sorority Safe House, which provides shelter to women survivors of violence and their children, as well as psychological, legal and medical support. While we have not been able to reach the staff at the Safe House, it is clear that increased help will be needed for women survivors of violence in the aftermath of the earthquake. Reports state that over 50,000 lives have been lost, and that Port Au Prince has been “flattened.”

You can donate to VDay’s Haiti Rescue Fund here.

Not Under The Bus has declared today a day of action to fight for a woman’s right to an abortion.  They have an entire page of things that YOU can do from signing petitions (too many to list here) to writing to your Congressional representative to writing an OpEd for your local paper.

While women’s groups throughout the U.S. are focusing on the abortion issue, it is important to remember that this is not the only aspect of women’s health that is in jeopardy.  The National Partnership for Women and Families has prepared an excellent brief about the proposed wellness provisions that could effectively become a backdoor for rate discrimination against lower income women who are not able to participate in these programs because:

A disproportionate number of women head low-income families and are unable to pursue daily exercise programs when faced with significant caregiver responsibilities at home;

A disproportionate number of women are in low-income families and are unable to access safe areas for physical activity or affordable healthy food choices; and

Many of the most vulnerable women and children who would benefit greatly from assistance in living healthier lives are ill-prepared to sustain the added financial burden that arises from paying significantly more for health insurance under the current “20 percent” standard.

They conclude:

There is no doubt that women want their families and themselves to be healthy.  Every day, women are leading the charge for improving health across the country.  But what women also need is support to achieve healthy lifestyles — not a policy that allows their employer to discriminate against them based on their health status (or a family member’s health status).  This kind of policy undermines the very goals of health reform.  Instead, employers should be encouraged to provide wellness incentives that treat women equitably and respect the challenges they face in meeting the dual demands of work and family.

Gwendolyn Mink and Dorothy Roberts also point to concerns regarding nurse home visitation programs aimed at low-income pregnant women and mothers of young children, saying they are,

concerned that the provision is not aimed at providing health care. Instead, it pledges to advance goals that endanger the reproductive and family freedoms of low income women, conjures stereotypes of low income women of color, and implies that using available public services is a bad thing. The Senate bill contains a similar provision.

They go on to say that,

It is imperative that a government-sponsored home visitation program for low-income women amply and explicitly protects program clients.  Express stipulations to assure that participation is voluntary must be part of the statutory package, along with a guarantee that a decision to participate, or not to, cannot be made a condition of receiving other government assistance.  The aim of nurse home visitation programs should be to provide medical and wellness services;  neither the statutory language nor administrative regulations should permit or encourage monitoring the family and reproductive decisions of individuals, and neither should denigrate low-income mothers for using public assistance.  We should do everything possible to ensure that these programs support the women they are intended to serve rather than using women to advance the interests of government.

Whatever action you decide to take today, be sure make clear that women’s health care  must include not only access to affordable, safe and legal abortion, but also to full reproductive health care and affordable, non-discriminatory overall health care.

__________

Many thanks to Adele Stan for drawing our attention to the wellness program issue.

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a stirring speech on the importance of women’s human and reproductive rights on the occasion of the 15th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development.  From her remarks (emphasis mine):

Investing in the health of women, adolescents, and girls is not only the right thing to do; it is also the smart thing to do…

…we have seen that when women and girls have the tools to stay healthy and the opportunity to contribute to their families’ well-being, they flourish and so do the people around them….

…While investing in women lifts many lives, the inverse is also true. In societies where women’s rights and roles are denied, girls are forbidden from attending school or they pay a very heavy price to try to do so. Few have the right to decide whether or when to get married or become mothers. Poverty, political oppression, and even violent extremism often follow…

…These struggles can’t be separated, and neither can their solutions…

…This year, the United States renewed funding of reproductive healthcare through the United Nations Population Fund, and more funding is on the way.  The U.S. Congress recently appropriated more than $648 million in foreign assistance to family planning and reproductive health programs worldwide. That’s the largest allocation in more than a decade – since we last had a Democratic president, I might add.

In addition to new funding, we’ve launched a new program that will be the centerpiece of our foreign policy, the Global Health Initiative, which commits us to spending $63 billion over six years to improve global health by investing in efforts to reduce maternal and child mortality, prevent millions of unintended pregnancies, and avert millions of new HIV infections, among other goals.

Indeed, empowering women is one of the smartest and cost-efficient ways there is  to fight, “Poverty, political oppression, and even violent extremism.” As I noted last spring,

According to UNFPA, the cost of all eight of the Millenium Development Goals would be $64.7 billion dollars. Of that,

The total 2010 costs for sexual and reproductive health, which include family planning and maternal health, are estimated at $27.4 billion; $32.5 billion for HIV/AIDS; and $4.8 billion for basic research, data collection and policy analysis.

Okay, that is a lot of money, but not really if you put it in perspective. It is less than 4% of the $700 billion bailout package and less than 5% of the $664 billion Department of Defense 2010 Budget Request. And it is going to save lives instead of destroying them and is guaranteed not to be spent on golf outings and corporate jets.

It remains to be seen whether the U.S. will carry out Clinton’s financial promises and if so in what form.

In the meantime, our reaction to the Christmas Day airplane incident is predictably machismo, predicated on deflecting accusations (from both the left and the right) of appearing “flaccid” in response to a would be terrorist who literally used his balls to try to blow up a plane.  We seem hell-bent on ignoring the wisdom of empowering women that Clinton spoke of, focusing instead on over-powering and protecting ourselves with an odd combination of Playboy sci-fi vision

meets Madam Sasha.

And there is reason to believe that we are more than willing to spend quite a bit of money on snake oil solutions to  terrorism (a story that broke in of all places, Playboy and has been roundly ignored by the mainstream media). No question, all this scanning of our minds and private parts is going to cost a pretty bundle (with almost 20,000 airports in the U.S. alone with the cost of these scanning  machines estimated to each cost something having 6 figures, you do the math) and in terms of saving lives be a ridiculously inappropriate expenditure of money.

Which brings us to the bad boy country du jour…  In our attempts to address the issue of Yemen as a terrorist training ground, instead of bombing them to smithereens, we might do well to pay attention to the very wise Helen Thomas who had the temerity to ask during a recent press briefing why the Christmas day bombing took place:

Thomas: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.”

Brennan: “Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

Brennan: “I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

Brennan: “I think this is a — long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Why indeed. As I pointed out last week, if you want to cure something, be it breast cancer or terrorism, you need to know what the cause is.  And as Professor Cynthia Enloe has long suggested, to fully address militarism and its harms, you need to look at its impact on women’s lives.  Not surprisingly in Yemen, where a large portion of the population is poor and uneducated, violence against women is a very significant problem,

According to a World Organization Against Torture report published in 2002, one of the first exploratory studies undertaken in Yemen revealed that 46.3% of the women questioned had experienced violence from their spouses or other family members at some point in their lives. Recent studies examining the prevalence of violence against women in Yemen have yielded staggering figures regarding contemporary levels of assault in the nation. Typically, the majority of violent acts against women occur in homes, while the range of what constitutes abuse varies; intimidation, sexual violence, physical force, emotional abuse, and home arrest are all disheartening manifestations of abuse. Research has estimated roughly 50.9% of women suffer from a degree of intimidation on a regular basis, while 54.5% will experience some risk of physical violence at least once in their lifetimes.

Dr. Samir al-Shamiri, a Sociological professor at Aden University, specializing in research of domestic violence in Yemen, has compiled an extensive amount of statistics on the subject in order to increase public awareness of the plight of women. According to his research, 17.3% of women are victims of sexual violence, while 28.2% of women suffer from several restrictions upon their freedom of mobility. Dr. al-Shamiri has further concluded that while 44.5% of women suffer from at least three of the above-mentioned forms of abuse, only 28.2% do not suffer from any form of violence or intimidation. However, there is a distinct possibility that the figure may in actuality be much higher, as it is difficult to acquire a representative polling bases when so many individuals are afraid to discuss their situations.

And in neighboring Saudi Arabia, there are reports that Yemeni women are being used as human shields by Houthi forces.  However, despite Clinton’s rhetoric, empowering Yemeni women is not likely to be an integral part of the U.S. strategy in Yemen, any more than it has been  in Afghanistan or Iraq except as a justification for military action.  However, thanks to organizations such as Rising Voices, Yemeni women are being given opportunities to participate more widely in the political discussion in their country,

Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian of Yemeni Arab descent, has caused much media attention because of his attempted bomb attack on a flight to USA. Another shocking revelation was Abdulmutallab’s conviction that he was trained by AL-Qaeda in Yemen and there are many others in Yemen planning to bring down American jets.

The mainstream media is filled with all these news along with stereotypes but they rarely portray what the common people of Yemen are thinking about. There are not many options to get those perspectives.

With the help of a Rising Voices microgrant, the project “Empowerment of Women Activists in Media Techniques” is teaching blogging to female politicians, activists, and human right workers in Yemen to bring them in global conversation.

There is more on the Rising Voices work in Yemen here.  The U.S. will no doubt spend billions fighting ‘terrorism’ in Yemen with weapons, military personnel and private  contractors (while President Obama has said we won’t send troops, that remains to be seen and does not rule out the use of private contractors), and as it always is, this military response will be detrimental to women’s well-being in Yemen. If anything is done to empower Yemeni women, it will likely be as an afterthought, not in the spirit of Secretary Clinton’s remarks, and that is the true disconnect in regard to women’s human rights, not only for women in Yemen, but throughout the world.

Shortly before the Senate approved its version of  health care reform legislation, I quiped that I was re-reading Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale in order to get psyched for the vote.  Truthfully, it was only partly said in jest.

The hijacking of abortion rights as a bargaining chip for the provision of health care is morally reprehensible and if it stands will result in significant harms to women’s health. As women’s health advocates are working full tilt to try to stop this from happening, there is an uncomfortable sense of having been here before.  How is it  possible that we have to fight  for the right to choose to have an abortion all over again?

Blasphemous as it might sound, I think that part of the problem is the word choice, which sounds ever so frivolous compared to the right to life.  We’re not deciding which pair of shoes to buy. We are fighting for the human right to make decisions about our own  lives.  Full stop. As M. Gabriela Alcalde, Director of the Kentucky Health Justice Network told me in an e-mail correspondance,

We should stop talking about the morality of individuals and think about the morality of not providing necessary health care to individuals and communities.  Government’s job is to worry about systems working, government’s moral obligation is to assure that groups or classes of people are not excluded from society’s benefits or carry disproportionately society’s burdens.  Abortion is necessary when seen from a public health perspective.  In countries where it is illegal, maternal mortality is higher, infants are abandoned at higher rates (look at Romania), and overall maternal and child health is compromised.

Just as critically, we need to not lose sight of the  fact that abortion is only one aspect of reproductive rights. There are many other aspects to women’s health care in addition to abortion that need to be assured.  According to Alcalde,

Abortion should not be thought of separately from prenatal care, birthing, and other reproductive and maternal health services and experiences.  separating it from the experience of pregnancy in general is a huge mistake.

As I’ve noted before,  according to the National Women’s Law Center,

Maternity coverage continues to be largely unavailable in the individual health insurance market, with virtually no improvement in access to this essential health coverage from 2008 to 2009. NWLC examined over 3,600 individual health insurance policies offered to 30-year-old women living in capital cities across the country for 2009, and found that only 468 of those plans—or 13%—include any coverage for maternity care.

NWLC also notes that only the current House bill prohibits the treatment of domestic violence as a pre-existing condition and that there are still very significant concerns about the affordability of health care which is more likely to impact women, who earn less than men and are less likely to be covered through an employer.

While these are the primary issues that are on the table in regard to the current  legislation, the reality is that there are other significant women’s reproductive health issues that need to be addressed.

In, “Sowing The Seeds Of Reproductive Justice In Kentucky” (Collective Voices, Fall, 2009), Alcalde points for instance to problems faced by Latina women,

Some reproductive health challenges that Latinas face once in the U.S. include a high uninsured rate, low prenatal care rate, high and rising HIV/AIDS rates, high maternal mortality rate, high cervical cancer rate, and a high unintended pregnancy rate.  Additionally, Latinas have a lower contraceptive use rate and have a higher contraceptive failure rate than other groups of women in the U.S..

Other issues that come to mind include the high c-section rate in the U.S., affordable contraception on campuses and access to rape crisis and abortion services in the military, and the insistence in many parts of the country on the use of doctors (inevitably in high cost hospital settings) instead of midwives to deliver babies.

One of the critical mis-steps in the health care debate was the reduction of the issue to  one of insurance coverage rather than health care provision.  In regards to women’s health, additional damage has been done by allowing abortion to be addressed separate from the overall issue of reproductive health.

In “How To Talk About Reproductive Justice” (Collective Voices, Fall, 2009), Loretta Ross provides a useful framework for a more comprehensive solution when she defines reproductive justice as, “the right of every human being to have a child, not have a child, and parent a child.”

We  need to insist that abortion not be held hostage, nor can we allow it to be split  apart from the right to full reproductive health rights for all women at a fair and equitable price.  That abortion is being used as a bargaining chip for these basic human rights  is a bald effort to control women’s lives and is unacceptable.

To fully understand this patriarchal power play, it is useful to look at the current health care reform debate from a global context.  These are but a few examples:

1.  While the population control drumbeat gets louder as we become more aware of the implications of climate change, it bears recognition that we are very callously already practicing exactly that by the denial of the relatively small amounts of money that it would take to eradicate maternal mortality which claims the lives of more than half a million women every year throughout the world.

“Every hour of every day in DRC, four women die from complications of pregnancy and labour, and for every woman who dies, between 20 and 30 have serious complications, such as obstetric fistula, which is very common in DRC,” said Richard Dackam Ngacthou, country representative of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). For every 100,000 live births 1,100 women die, he said.

But to meet a national target of reducing the number of women who die in childbirth by 75 percent and to provide all Congolese with access to contraception – in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals – new funding targets must be achieved.

The funding gap is severe: in 2008 some US$5 million went towards the fight against maternal mortality, whereas in 2009 less than $2 million was allocated. Congo’s 2010 budgetary situation is no less dire, with only around $6 million planned to finance the entire health sector, where some $60 million would be warranted, according to a member of parliament.

2.  In South Korea a new policy is effectively coercing women into having children:

On Dec. 9, Sungshin Women’s University in Seoul organised an event titled, ‘Happy Childbirth – Rich and Strong Future’, aimed at trying to raise awareness about the country’s very low birth rate. It sparked controversy when the organisers requested women students in the audience to submit a sworn statement that they would have children.

A fourth year student who prefers to remain anonymous, told IPS “the organisers almost forced female participants to write a sworn statement for childbirth despite many participants asserting that the low birth issue is a social problem rather than mere individual choice.”

South Korea’s birth rate – 1.19 in 2008, according to the Korean Statistical Information Service, is the lowest among OECD countries – has been in the news recently.

In November, the government’s Presidential Council for Future & Vision announced “comprehensive plans for low birth rate.”

The plans include a crackdown on abortion.

3.  And in countries such as China and India, there has been a systemic campaign of favoring the births of male children over females:

There are about 100 million women less on this earth than there should be. Women who are “missing” since they are aborted, burnt, starved and neglected to death by families who prefer sons to daughters. This column had also identified the countries of South Asia, East Asia, West Asia and Saharan Africa as the main regions which were missing most of these women. The estimated number of women who are missing are 44 million in China, 39 million in India, 6 million in Pakistan and 3 billion in Bangladesh. This is the single largest genocide in human history. Ever. Some researchers have coined a word for this phenomenon: Femicide, or the killing of the human female because she is female. (Note:  see also here and here.)

Until we insist that it cannot be considered separate of the overall issue of reproductive health, abortion rights will continue to be in jeopardy. Health care, including full reproductive health care, is a human right, not a commodity to be controlled or bartered away by the governments we elect to represent us.  Yet clearly that is exactly what is happening not only here but in many parts of the world. Our current reality is not so far from Atwood’s dystopia as we might like to think.