Let's celebrate womens day

By talking about the rape laws in pakistan and the abortion laws in South Dakota.

Let's start wíth the rape first:

In 2002 six men were sentenced to death for the gang rape of a woman. Gang rape is hideous enough, but what makes this case even more so is that it was actually ordered as a punishment by a council. Mukhtar Mai was raped by four men on the instruction of tribal elders after she refused to marry a member of a clan whose relative buggered her 12 year old brother. What I cannot understand is how these people can think so little of women - that she is just a pawn and a bargaining tool so men can get what they want. She wanted justice for the crime committed on her brother and instead gets brutally raped, degraded and humiliated by people who are supposed to be the leaders of the village. Can someone explain that to me? Maybe when they do, can they also explain what is honourable about murdering a female member of your family for having an independent spirit and not wanting to live their lives for others? Why women jump on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands, so they aren't a 'burden' to anyone? Why are there so many people in this world who seem to think that women are inferior to men? Without women the human race would not exist. Without men, the human race would not exist. Surely it's logical that both sexes are equal and that such attitudes are just a way of control and power?

On that happy note, let's go to the South Dakota abortion laws. A marmalade-dropping moment if ever I heard, although I don't eat marmalade. From July it will be a crime in South Dakota to perform any abortion unless a pregnant woman's life was in danger.That means that pregnancy from rape or incest is not included! Danger from whom? Danger from what? From herself? From trying to self abort through sheer desperation, because when you make abortion illegal, the number of abortions do not fall, but the number of women who die rises. If you ban abortion, you end up with some very seriously injured women: back street abortions end up with severe bleeding, internal damage and hysterectomies. But presumably the "pro-lifers" (whose life, may I ask? Certainly not that of the pregnant woman - her wishes for her life are not even taken into consideration)consider this to be some kind of punishment for having the audacity to end an unwanted pregnancy.

A woman cannot be free until she has the right over her own body and her own future. This means access to contraception, to abortions, to education, healthcare, the same wage for the same job as men, to public positions and to legal personality. Not being able to decide what happens to your own body is an abuse of human rights. And no, I do not think that a foetus has the same rights as a human, because rights come with responsibilities. A foetus at ten weeks might look like a baby when magnified and stuck on the front cover of the Daily Outrage, but considering it's about the size of a walnut I can't see it surviving. And until it can survive outside the womb, the wishes of the pregnant woman must come first.

Happy Womens Day: I'm going shopping.