Category: Women’s Rights

Rape victim-blaming in Iowa

An Iowa judge who sentenced a victim of rape and sex trafficking for killing her abuser also ordered her to pay $150,000 in restitution to her abuser’s family.

A runaway seeking to escape an abusive life with her adopted mother, 15-year-old Pieper Lewis was sleeping in the hallways of an apartment building when a 28-year-old man took her in.  After she was raped a second time by a man with whom she had been forced at knifepoint to have sex, she stabbed the rapist repeatedly.

Originally charged with first-degree murder, she pled guilty to manslaughter and willful injury, each punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

While police and prosecutors have not disputed that Lewis was sexually assaulted and trafficked, they argued that her assailant was asleep when stabbed and not an immediate danger.

Prosecutors took issue with Lewis calling herself a victim…

…and for failing to to take responsibility for

“leaving [her assailant’s] kids without a father”. 

Throughout the trial, the judge peppered Lewis with requests to explain how her poor choices led up to the stabbing and expressed concern that she did always follow the rules while in juvenile lockup.  She was not allowed contact with family or friends while in detention.

While the judge deferred the prison sentences as long as Lewis honors the terms of her parole, Iowa law requires restitution to the family of her assailant, which was set at $150,000.

“A child who was raped, under no circumstances, should owe the rapist’s family money.”

These are the words of One of Lewis’s former teachers, Leland Schipper, was so outraged by the ruling that he organized a GoFundMe appeal to raise the money.  The appeal quickly raised enough to pay off not only the $150,000, but an additional $4,000 owed to the state. The remainder will be used to help Lewis – who completed her GED while in detention – to continue her education.

Iowa has no ‘safe harbor law’ that gives trafficking victims a level of criminal immunity. State law only protects victims of crimes committed “under compulsion by another’s imminent threat of serious injury.’ Prosecutors argued that the provision did not apply because the rapist was asleep when stabbed.

While a safe harbor law for trafficking victims passed the Iowa House, it was stalled in the Senate by law enforcement groups that claimed it was too broad.

Sources for this post:  Des Moines Register, Guardian, NPR

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Abortion refugees

It is estimated that more than 100,000 women in need of an abortion will be unable to get one as states rush to pass restrictive laws in the post-Roe/Wade America. The primary reason is that the cost of travelling to a state in which abortion is legal is prohibitive for many low-income and minority households, locking them into a continuing cycle of poverty. For those who can afford to make the trip, workarounds are quickly springing up to meet the need.

Mexico.  At the Profem Tijuana clinic, within walking distance of the international border,  the the share of patients from the U.S. rose from 25% to 50% between May and July, 2022.          

Gulf Coast. Abort Offshore is a floating clinic that performs legal abortions up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in federal waters.  It draws patients from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  The shore-to-shore trip – including procedure – takes about 5 hours.

Illinois.  Hope Clinic is expanding services at its Granite City, IL., location, just across the Mississippi from St. Louis, MO.

Maryland.  Partners in Abortion Care is opening a clinic in College Park, MD.  Located within 40 miles of three major airports and interstate highways, it is convenient for patients from West Virginia and Ohio.  Beginning in July, nurse-midwives, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants were empowered to perform abortions in Maryland.

Minnesota.  An abortion clinic in Duluth, MN. Has long provided services to patients from adjacent states, but expects more traffic in the wake of a recent court ruling which expanded abortion access. The ruling ended a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, two-parent consent for minors and a requirement that physicians discuss medical risks and alternatives to abortion.  It also tossed out requirements that only doctors could provide abortion care, and that abortions after the first trimester had to take place in a hospital.

New Mexico.   Governor Michelle Lujan recently signed an executive order to build an abortion clinic in Las Cruces, about 45 miles from its Texas border.

Oregon.  Planned Parenthood in Willamette, OR is bracing for an influx of patients from neighboring Idaho. Oregon’s legislature has approved a $15 million expenditures to establish the Oregon Reproductive Health Equity Fund to aid women in need of abortions.

Planned Parenthood maintains a continuously updated report on the legal status of abortion state-by-state.

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Women staking a claim

While the extent to which the reversal of Roe v. Wade has influenced the big increase in women running for statewide and Federal office may not be clearly known, the rise in and of itself is remarkable.

The post-primary landscape reveals new records set for the number of women running both for Congress and for Governor:

U.S. House: 776

U.S. Senate: 84

Governor: 86

The 168 Black women represent new records set for number of Black female candidates for all 3 offices.

The 95 Hispanic women represent new records set for the number of House and Gubernatorial candidates.

While these numbers are encouraging, a steep slope remains:

  • Only 24% of current House members and 28% of Senators are women
  • Only 18% of Governors are women
  • There are 19 U.S. states that have never elected a female governor
  • Only 58 women have ever served in the U.S. Senate…none before 1932

Under-representation of women on the Senate and Gubernatorial ‘benches’ from which Presidential candidates are most often drawn continues to limit opportunities for women to achieve national visibility on the political stage. 

Although third parties have run women for the presidency far more often than men, women have appeared on the national tickets of the two major parties only four times, and only once as President:

  • Geraldine Ferraro (1984)
  • Sarah Palin (2008)
  • Hillary Clinton (2016)
  • Kamala Harris (2020)

The numbers leave little doubt that partisan divide is not only the biggest obstacle to racially-balanced representation, but also to one that is gender-balanced.

A staggering 71% of female candidates ran as Democrats this year.

And while White and Latina candidates were distributed almost evenly between parties, 70% of Black candidates ran as Democrats.

In House races, Black women running as Democrats outnumbered those running as Republican by almost 3:1.

In Senate races, the number of Black women running as Democrats outnumbered those running as Republicans by almost 4:1.

The cracks in the political glass ceiling are spreading, and2022 is shaping up to be the year that it finally shatters.

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Contraceptives: Mexico’s new contraband

For 20 years Verónica Cruz Sánchez, founder of the feminist human rights group Las Libres in Guanajuato, Mexico, was a tireless advocate for women seeking abortions in a country with staggeringly high rates of rape and domestic violence. 

During that time, her non-profit organization distributed hundreds of thousands of ‘abortion pills’ to women in need.

But when Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion in 2021 on the grounds that abortion bans violated the rights of women, it may have seemed that her organization’s work was concluded. 

Then the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and Las Libres’ mission was suddenly turned on its head.

In recent weeks, the organization has experienced an avalanche of calls from U.S. jurisdictions in which abortion restrictions are already taking effect.

Previously scheduled abortions are being summarily cancelled, leaving the victims with too little time to sift through too few alternatives.

Las Libres packages the pills in orders of 3-5 each, depending upon availability.  They are batched and transported to the U.S.-Mexican border, where an army of volunteers carries them into the U.S. and assures that each is delivered to its final destination within days of order.

Mexican clinics are already anticipating an influx flood of U.S. women seeking abortions, evoking images of abortion clinics dotting the Mexican side of the border like casinos on Native American reservations.

And contraceptives are now a regular part of the mix of drugs making its way north. In an ironic reversal of stereotypes, Mexican Catholics have proven themselves far more tolerant and respectful of human rights than Evangelical Americans.

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Forced birth & adoption

Abortion ban supporters are touting that adoption will deal with the consequences of ‘forced birth’, but the claim rings hollow in the harsh light of the facts.

While it is true that up to 30% of Evangelical Christians may have an adopted child in their families (U.S. average is 2%)…. 

…there remain over 400,000 children in foster care hoping for adoption, and the number is rising each year.  Their chances are nothing but discouraging.

Fewer than 1 in 5 children in foster care are ever adopted. 

A white child is 40% more likely to be adopted than a black child.

On average, a child in foster care waits 4 years for an adoption, so it is unsurprising that the average child spends only 17 months in foster care before turning 18, and unadopted children fare significantly worse than others as adults on almost every significant dimension.

In addition, more than 400,000 more children are taken into custody by Child Protective Services each year.

The paradox is that despite this staggering level of need, only 2 in 5 adoptions originate from foster care.  Some 2 in 5 are completed through private agencies, and 1 in 4 adopts from outside the U.S.

One in four adoptions are actually of children born outside the U.S.

It’s worth noting that some of the Private and International adoptions are driven by laws in 11 U.S. states which allow adoption agencies to refuse service to LBGTQ applicants.

As the human race approaches the absolute limit of the planet to support it, the legislation of forced births appears as nothing less than a self-delusional exercise in self-destruction.

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Gun purchase loopholes

#1: THE BOYFRIEND LOOPHOLE

The National Domestic Violence Hotline says that:

  • More than 1 in 3 callers was threatened with a gun by their abuser.
  • More than 3/4 of domestic violence victims reported being stalked by an ex-partner.

Everytown for Gun Safety says that :

  • In 54% of incidents in which a current or former intimate partner or family was killed… the shooter killed four or more persons.
  • More than half of women killed with guns were murdered by family members or intimate partners of both sexes.
  • The risk of domestic violence ending in a female homicide is 500% higher when a gun is present in the house.

And while Federal law prevents individuals convicted of domestic violence crimes and/or abuse from buying and owning a gun under current federal law…

#2: THE CHARLESTON LOOPHOLE

The FBI typically returns results on a background check for a prospective gun buyer within minutes, but if the system returns no results within 3 business days, the sale relies solely on the seller’s discretion.

That was how the white supremacist shooter at Emmanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina obtained the firearm with which he assaulted a Bible study group in 2015, killing nine African Americans including state Senator Clementa Pinckney.

#3) THE GUN SHOW LOOPHOLE

The “gun show loophole” allows private sellers, including those done at gun shows, to forego a federal background check of the buyer.

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America’s war on women

When Katharine Graham became CEO of the Washington Post Company in 1972, Congress had just ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, and hopes were high that a wave of women would finally shatter the glass ceiling..

50 years later, women occupy just over 29% of chief executive roles in the US, but they are largely relegated to running small and medium-sized enterprises.  Within the Fortune 500, the percentage of women CEO’s remains in single digits.

It is, however, not just C-level jobs in which women are under-represented.  They still represent less than half of Managers in more industries than not.

And women make less for the same work. Fortune 500 female CEO’s earn, on average, 74% of what their male counterparts take home, and wage inequity carries through to the bottom of the labor pyramid. Part-time female workers earn 40% less than their male counterparts, and full-time female workers earn 53% less.

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But the inequality does not end there. Over 18 million American adults alive today were raised in single-parent households… of which 74% are still female-headed.

And two-thirds of of single-parent households receive no child support.

All of which explains why Women food stamp recipients outnumber Male recipients almost 2-to-1.

At a time when abortion is no longer a guaranteed right in every state, forcing a woman to carry a child to full term is only one more aspect of America’s war on women.

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