Category: Uncategorized

Mexico Overturns Law That Allowed Men to Claim Rape Vicitims ‘Provoked’ Them

Women’s groups in the Mexican state of Chihuahua recently won an important victory when they pressured the state legislature into repealing a noxious law which had provided for lighter sentences for rape if the defendant could prove that the victim had “provoked” him.

The minimum sentence for rape had been four years, but the revision to the penal code set the minimum at only one year if the convicted rapist could prove that the victim had provoked the rape. This compared to the 6 year minimum sentence in Chihuahua for anyone convicted of cattle rustling.

The penal code had also been revised to reduce the minimum sentence from four years to six months for victims who were penetrated only with an object (which was an even more bizarre revision, in my opinion, than the provocation nonsense). That change was also overturned.

Jorge Ramirez Marin, a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party which has an overwhelming majority in the Chihuahua legislature, claimed that the law had been misunderstood. Apparently the law was intended to curtail a perceived problem that women were charging their boyfriends with rape rather than admit to their parents that they were having premarital sex. Even if that’s accurate, however, it’s hard to see how a reduced sentence for rapes that were “provoked” would be a viable solution to such a problem.

Mexico’s national Congress had threatened to intervene if the Chihuahua legislature did not act.

Source:

Mexican lawmakers revoke law reducing penalties for rapists ‘provoked’ by women. Associated PRess, SEptember 19, 2001.

Is Providing Fertility Information A “Scare Campaign”?

Marjie Lundstrom wrote an op-ed a couple months ago about an odd effort by some feminists to restrict information about female reproductive health. They objected to an ad campaign sponsored by the American Infertility Association and the American Society for Reproductive Medicine to inform women about the difficulty in getting pregnant in their late 30s and 40s.

With text like, “Advancing age decreases your decreases your ability to have children,” the ad campaign was motivated by the high profile media cases of women who successfully conceive and bear children at relatively late ages. Although such stories seem rather common these days, the reality, according to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, is that the odds of becoming pregnant in any given month drop to 20 percent for women over 30 and a mere 5 percent for women over 40.

As Pamela Madsen of the American Infertility Association told Lundstrom, “I have to speak to women every day in their late 30s and early 40s whose biological clock has pretty much tickered out, and they’re asking, ‘Why didn’t anyone tell me?'”

Thanks to technological advances, having children is possible now even for women 45 and up to have children, but usually only for people who can afford expensive fertility treatments and/or donated eggs.

The National Organization for Women was not pleased by the campaign. In a Newsweek article, NOW president Kim Gandy bizarrely ridiculed the idea that women could choose when to have children. According to Gandy,

The idea that you can choose what age you’ll be to have your children is a ludicrous proposition for most women, as though you can simply snap your fingers and say, “OK, I’m the right age,” and then have all the accouterments magically appear — the stable relationship, financial stability, life stability.

That is a very weird view of parenthood. Few people I know who are parents (including my wife and I) were foolish enough to wait until their lives were ideal before having children.

Source:

Should You Have Your Baby Now?. Claudia Kalb, Newsweek, August 13, 2001.

Fertility education is offending feminists. Marjie Lundstrom, Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, August 17, 2001.

Islam, Burials and Women

ABC tonight ran the sort of coverage of the Taliban’s oppressive treatment of women that is becoming very common. Unfortunately in her desire to really drive the point home, Barbara Walters added a touch that showed her ignorance. Trying to imply that hijacker Mohammad Atta must have really hated women, in grave tones she noted that he left behind a will asking that women be barred from attending his funeral.

Because of the exclusion of all women at the high profile funeral of Syria’s King Hussein, some in the West(like me) had the impression that Islam itself forbids women from attending funerals. This, in fact, is not true and there were women in attendance at Prophet Muhammad’s funeral.

But it is true that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both ersatz United States allies, forbid women from attending funeral services. Atta’s request has its origins in cultural customs rather than anything in the Quran, but if his request is a sign of misogyny, what are we to make of the U.S. allies who formalize that stricture within their legal systems?

World Bank: Terrorist Attack In America Will Kill Children in Africa

The World Bank recently warned that the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center would have far reaching worldwide impacts, including a likely increase in poverty and the deaths of children in the developing world.

The terrorist attacks helped accelerate the slowdown in world economic activity, which will ripple throughout the world and impact even the poorest countries of the developing world. As World Bank president James Wolfensohn told the BBC,

We estimate that tens of thousands more children will die worldwide and about 10 million more people are likely to be living below the poverty line of $1 a day because of the terrorist attack.

Before the attacks, the World Bank had estimated that as the developed world recovered from slow growth at the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002, economic growth in the developing world would hit 4.1 percent in 2002. Now it is projecting that growth 2002 in the developing world will fall somewhere between 3.35 percent and 3.6 percent.

That .5 to .75 difference will result in a large rise in the number of people living on less than $1/day and likely slow down efforts to control childhood diseases in those countries (since they will have fewer economic resources to deal with such problems).

Source:

Poverty warning after US attacks. The BBC, October 1, 2001.

Bangladesh Is the Most Corrupt Nation in the World

In June, Transparency International released its annual rankings of corruption among the world’s nations, finding Bangladesh to be the most corrupt nation in the world, with several African countries joining it the sort of top 10 most people would not want their country to place in.

Transparency International, a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce corruption, ranked the countries of the world on a scale of one to 10 based on various factors. While nations such as Finland, Denmark and Iceland all scored above 9, Bangladesh bottomed out the list with a mere 0.4.

As Transparency International chairman Peter Eigen said in a press release, it is “essential that corrupt governments do not steal from their own people. This is now an urgent priority if lives are to be saved.”

One wonders if the governments in question will actually hear, much less act, on that message. The other nine most corrupt nations were, in order beginning with the most corrupt: Nigeria, Uganda, Indonesia, Kenya, Cameroon, Bolivia, Azerbaijan, the Ukraine, and Tanzania.

Sources:

Africans among worst in ‘corruption league’. The BBC, June 27, 2001.

New index highlights worldwide corruption crisis, says Transparency International. Transparency International, press release, June 27, 2001.

Does the World Lack the Will to Conquer Hunger?

Ahead of a November 5-9 follow-up to 1996’s World Food Summit, the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization says that not enough is being done worldwide to stem the tide of hunger.

That 1996 summit set a goal to cut in half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015 — a goal that would require the number of hungry people to fall by 20 million per year. So far this year, the world is on track for only an 8 million person decline in hunger.

“The purpose of this [November] event is to give new impetus to worldwide efforts on behalf of hungry people,” Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO, told Reuters.

For a change, the FAO seems to understand that solving hunger is not something that the developed nations can impose on the underdeveloped nations, but, rather, must come in large measure from political pressure within developing nations.

Among other things suggested by the FAO are internal agricultural and rural development within nations that are not food self-sufficient; more open markets on the part of developed nations (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries spend $326 billion annually subsidizing their agriculture); resolving conflicts, both international and domestic, that undermine agricultural and economic systems; and the development and deployment of genetically modified crops that hold out the possibility of lower costs and higher yields than traditional crops.

On the other hand, it remains to be seen if developed nations will pony up the $500 million the FAO is seeking for its Trust Fund for Food Security. The FAO sounds like it might have the right approach, saying the money will go to teach poor countries how to feed themselves, fight pests, and to build basic infrastructure. But given the prevailing skepticism about such international organizations and efforts, the FAO might find this a tough sell.

Source:

World lacks will to conquer hunger, UN says. David Brough, Reuters, September 14, 2001.