On the first International Women's Day in 1911, rallies were held across Europe, where women and men demanded the right for women to vote, work, and hold public office. They wanted the same thing we are still fighting for today: equality.
Ninety-nine years later, where are we? It's a completely different world for women -- and yes I mean world, because the movement for equality is global. Compared to just ten years ago, more women today have jobs and are saving money for their families. More girls are attending primary school than ever before. The number of women in positions of authority in governments, including in legislatures, has nearly doubled in the past decade. While this is progress that we joyfully celebrate, we still have a long way to go.
Advancing global equality for women starts with reproductive health care. Every year, more than 500,000 women die unnecessarily from pregnancy-related causes. More than 200 million women want to use to contraception but don't have access to it. And each year, 20 million pregnancies end in unsafe abortions, killing 70,000 women and injuring hundreds of thousands more. This is failure.
And this is what failure looks like: A 16-year-old girl in Kenya without access to contraception gets pregnant. A woman in Sudan dies while she is delivering her sixth child because her clinic doesn't have surgical supplies or a clinician trained in emergency obstetric care. A pregnant woman in Nicaragua with metastatic cancer cannot begin chemotherapy because the treatment she needs to save her life might harm her fetus.
Countries that invest in family planning get an incredible return on their money. Women who plan their pregnancies face fewer health risks, go to school longer, and save more money. Good reproductive health policies lower unintended pregnancy rates, reduce unsafe abortions, and decrease maternal and newborn deaths. This means less government money is spent on emergency health care and social services overall, and women and their children live better lives, which is a priceless commodity.
And on our side fighting for women is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is making reproductive rights a priority in the U.S.'s international development agenda. This is more than rhetoric. For the first time, the U.S. State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices will include a section specific to reproductive rights.
And yes, it is up to you and me to make sure we do even more.
Specifically, we need to:
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Or perhaps men who don't want a child should confine their intimate congress to women who they consider to be suitable mothers to their children.
We don't get pregnant all by ourselves, you know.
The global gag rule is the sticking point--when you look outside of our own situations, its gets complicated. In most of the developing world, women don't have the right to say no to sex. They also don't have the right to ask their husbands to take only one wife, or to practice some kind of family planning. The global gag rule keeps money away from any organization that would offer women any type of service, such as neo-natal care, or domestic violence protection and counseling--if the organization discusses safe abortion, even if they don't offer abortion services.
So in this case, it goes beyond a man being able to rescind his parental rights--that's a nice, clean example that works in a setting where a woman has the right to ask for paternal support and not be beaten. We're lucky to live in a comfortable world where that situation is feasible--but we are in the minority.
The issue I have is that, as I read it, abortion rights interweave tightly within this article and I believe it is a separate issue. To be perfectly honest, Planned Parenthood have a very chequered history of using abortion for racial reasons (look up Planned Parenthood's history and you'll see there was a reason why they focused on people of colour... Even now, a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic women receive abortions). It is, frankly, too easy to use international organisations in developing communities to encourage abortion (even over prevention or, heaven forbid, adoption).
The other issue is that, in some parts of the world (e.g. India and China), unborn children are aborted because of the fact that they are female. (This is tied into issues, in India at least, of dowrys and a general view that women are somehow inferior. The problem is so severe that there is actually a gender imbalance in the population). How is this helpful to promoting women's rights and creating a gender-equal society?
"Every year, more than 500,000 women die unnecessarily from pregnancy-related causes. More than 200 million women want to use to contraception but don't have access to it. And each year, 20 million pregnancies end in unsafe abortions, killing 70,000 women and injuring hundreds of thousands more. This is failure."
She also calls out the US for not yet ratifying CEDAW, and calls for a permanent ban on the global gag rule, and then ends with:
"We know how to improve women's health. We know how to save most women who die unnecessarily in childbirth. We know how to prevent unintended pregnancies and create conditions for safe deliveries. We know how to advocate for women and make governments more responsive world wide.
So let's do it."
She's asking "Are we there yet?", and answered it with ways to get there and "Let's do it."
She's agreeing that it's way past time, and laying out the major policy recommendations to fix it.
But no, now we have working pharmasist who refuse to give out prescribed birth control. Perhaps they shouldn't be working at a pharmacy.