Poor Women Suffer in Uninsured Texas, Kuwaiti Women Vote for First Time

Reproductive Rights

National Group Pledges to Ensure Right to Abortion for Women in South Dakota - National Network of Abortion Funds
The National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), an association of grassroots groups that raises funding for low-income women seeking abortions, announced the launch of the National Reproductive Justice Fund to help low-income women affected by the South Dakota and other state abortion bans. "We will not allow politicians in South Dakota to deny women the right to make decisions about their lives and their futures," said NNAF Executive Director Stephanie Poggi. "Our new national fund will ensure that women have the resources and help they need to obtain abortions - no matter what the South Dakota legislature does." In addition, NNAF supports efforts to overturn the ban including the ballot initiative and the election of pro-choice candidates to the state legislature.

House Leaders Urge Hearings On Anti-Abortion Bills - KOCO
With a legislative deadline looming, Republican legislative leaders urged the Democrat-controlled Senate Monday to schedule hearings on a slate of measures that supporters said would reduce the number of abortions in Oklahoma. Measures to strengthen an informed-consent law passed last year and regulate distribution of the so-called morning-after pill are assigned to the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, where four similar bills died in February when they were not heard.

PanAfrica: Unsafe Abortion: What Role Does Research Have? - This Day
Jemila (not her real name) was just 17 and had looked forward to writing her Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (SSSCE). According to family sources, she had revised her books well enough and nursed a vision of growing up to become a top professional raising her own family. But it was not to be as her dream was cut midstream. Lured into sex by a lover boy, the resultant unwanted pregnancy was too hot for her to handle. Ashamed of revealing her real state to her parents at the onset, by the time she was brought to the hospital, the complications were so terrible that she could not survive it. Jemila's life, cut short by complications of unsafe abortion, typifies the havoc the syndrome is wreaking on the population of both young and old women in sub-Saharan Africa. Statistics arising from deaths from unsafe abortion runs into thousands annually.

Malawi: Minister Asks UNFPA for More Support On Reproductive Health - The Chronicle
The Minister of Economic Planning and Development, David Faiti, has asked the United Nations Population Fund to continue supporting the government in sexual and reproductive health activities in Malawi.


International

Kuwaiti women vote for first time - BBC
Polling is taking place in a Kuwaiti council by-election in which women are allowed to vote for the first time. Two women are also among eight candidates running for the seat in the Salmiya district, south of the capital. The 28,000 eligible voters, 60% of whom are women, are voting in segregated polling booths, a condition demanded by Islamist and tribal MPs.

Women and 'gendercide' - Christian Science Monitor
As I was preparing for this article, I asked a very good friend who is Jewish if it was appropriate for me to use the term "holocaust" to portray the worldwide violence against women. He was startled. But when I read him the figures in a 2004 policy paper published by the Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of Armed Forces, he said yes, without hesitation. One United Nations estimate says that between 113 million and 200 million women around the world are "missing." Every year, between 1.5 million and 3 million women and girls lose their lives as a result of gender-based violence or neglect. As the Economist, which reported on the policy paper, put it last November, "Every two to four years the world looks away from a victim count on the scale of Hitler's Holocaust." How could this possibly be true?

Violence against women in Pakistan on the rise - IRNA
According to studies, violence against women in Pakistan has been highly increased. Violence against women has increased in the past 13 years with the highest record in 2004, when over 8,000 cases of gender-based violence ere registered. Statistics of the Ministry of Women's Welfare showed that 8,385 cases of violence against women were registered in police stations throughout the country, reported "Daily Times" in its Sunday issue.


Health

Health care changes harm poor women - San Antonio Express
Texas holds the dubious distinction of leading the nation in the number of uninsured residents. In the best of times, only one in five women eligible for subsidized family-planning care receives the aid. More women are expected to do without necessary health care as a result of a rider to the state budget that redirects $25 million during the biennium from traditional health care providers.