UK abortion movement gets Americanised, the dark side of the Guatemalan baby trade and the Kenyan village where men fear to tread
LONDON/NEW YORK (TrustLaw) – Here is our selection of this week’s stories on women's rights from TrustLaw and other media.
EUROPE
The Americanization of the UK Anti-Abortion Movement
The Atlantic, U.S.
British anti-abortion activists are learning from their U.S. counterparts, adopting tougher tactics and harsher rhetoric. Relatively new in the UK, vigils and protests under the banner of "40 Days for Life" are popping up in London, Brighton, Manchester and Birmingham.
NORTH AMERICA
Mississippi could become abortion-free state under proposed law; Sole abortion clinic threatens to sue
Associated Press
The owner of Mississippi's sole abortion clinic says she will sue the state if her business can't comply with a regulation that will soon become law. The bill would require doctors working at abortion clinics to be OB-GYN certified and have admitting privileges to a local hospital. The clinic's owner told Associated Press that all its physicians are OB-GYNs, but only one has admitting privileges. She said most hospitals will not grant the privileges to out-of-state physicians, which is a problem since her clinic doctors live out of state to protect their safety, with many having been stalked and threatened.
LATIN AMERICA
Fernanda's story: The dark side of the Guatemalan baby trade
TrustLaw, Guatemala
Stolen through deception from her natural mother, Fernanda was promised in adoption to a U.S. woman, but never made it to the United States. In “Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child and a Cross-Border Search for Truth”, journalist Erin Siegal chronicles the terrible personal cost to two families ensnared in the corruption and human trafficking that fuelled Guatemala’s booming adoption industry until 2008.
The changing face of the Americas
Trinidad Express Newspaper
Despite Central and South America's reputation for machismo, five of the presidents and prime ministers among the 34 countries in the Organization of American States are now women. This will be apparent at the Sixth Summit of the Americas in Colombia on April 14-15. And for the first time this year, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights itself has a female majority - four out of seven commissioners.
AFRICA
The village in Kenya where men fear to tread
Inter Press Service, Kenya
No man, except for those raised here as children, has lived in Umoja village in Kenya for two decades. It is a village only of and for women, women who have been abused, raped and forced from their homes.
DRC: Kinshasa fashion show highlights lack of ARVs
IRIN News, Democratic Republic of Congo
Twelve HIV-positive women held a fashion show to highlight the plight of tens of thousands of people with HIV/AIDS who lack access to anti-retroviral drugs in Democratic Republic of Congo, which has one of the world’s lowest treatment rates.
Mauritania – Small Steps Towards Ending Female Genital Mutilation
IPS NEWS
A multi-pronged strategy to end female genital mutilation in Mauritania is making gradual progress, though campaigners acknowledge much more remains to be done in a country where more than two-thirds of girls suffer excision.
ASIA
Cultural killings of women have social sanction in India - U.N.
TrustLaw, India
"Honour" killings, “dowry deaths” and the lynching of women branded as witches persist in India, partly due to such practices being socially sanctioned and with police often not even treating such murders as crimes, the United Nations has said.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
