Court Nixes Sex-Work Pledge; Kansas Stifles Choice

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More News to Jeer This Week: Hundreds of women marched in the Ugandan capital Kampala, protesting the country's high maternal mortality rate and the twice-delayed lawsuits filed by the families of two mothers that died giving birth, reported the Associated Press July 7. For every 100,000 Ugandan women giving birth, 435 die, according to reports from the health ministry. Uganda's high number of maternal deaths gives it ranking of 140 out of 181 countries. From the end of the Great Recession in 2009 until May 2011, women lost 218,000 jobs, while men gained 768,000 in the same time span, according to a report released by the Pew Research Center July 6. This is a change from what Pew called "modern norms," that indicated women fared better than men in obtaining employment in the first two years of all other economic recoveries since 1970. Around 15 women and five children were arrested in Saudi Arabia after they assembled outside of the Ministry of Interior, demanding fair trials for their male relatives who where detained without charge, reported Amnesty International July 4. Thirteen of the 15 women were released after signing a pledge not to protest again. Detaining government critics without publicly stating charges or providing trial has been a common practice in the kingdom since Sept. 11, 2001, according to Amnesty International.   The accuser in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexual assault cases is suing The New York Post and five of its journalists for libel, reported The Huffington Post. She accused the Post of publishing defamatory articles between July 2-4 that claimed she was a prostitute. The newspaper is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the media czar who shut down the News of the World in London Thursday. In a related development, a French writer who recently said Dominique Strauss-Kahn tried to sexually assault her in 2003 will officially accuse him of attempted rape, The New York Times reported July 4.