Abortion in Poland is legal only in cases of fetal impairment, threats to the life or health of the woman—when confirmed by a second doctor—or in cases of rape or incest, which must be verified by a prosecutor. These restrictions on a woman’s right to reproductive freedom are relatively new for women in the country. From 1956 to 1993, first-trimester abortions in Poland were legal on broad grounds.

The narrow exceptions to the country’s current abortion law can be hollow guarantees for women facing the most harrowing of circumstances. Many doctors—even entire hospital administrations—invoke conscientious objection, some as a pretext for performing more expensive abortions in private clinics, illegally.

Take the case of Barbara, a 28-year-old woman with a son who suffers from a disease that causes severe pain, disfigurement of the joints and underdevelopment of the limbs. When Barbara became pregnant for a second time—despite contraceptive use—she wanted to consider the option of abortion if her fetus had the same genetic disorder as her son. But the medical manager of the hospital she visited refused to give her referrals for prenatal testing. He told her that nobody in the hospital would perform the abortion even if her fetus showed signs of the same disorder that afflicted her son.

After an unsuccessful battle with the Polish health-care bureaucracy, Barbara gave birth to a daughter with the same disorder as her son. She and her husband don’t receive any government assistance and are struggling to support the medical needs of their children.

Barbara is not alone. In 1999, the Warsaw-based Federation of Women and Family Planning (FWFP) surveyed 193 Polish doctors and nurses, and found that one-in-four knew of situations where a legal abortion was refused to a patient.

Conscientious objection clauses invoked to deny reproductive health care services discriminate against women because they pertain to services that only women need, thereby violating European and international law. Under the European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine, to which Poland is a signatory, governments have a duty to provide "equitable access to health care of appropriate quality."

The CEDAW Committee, which oversees compliance with the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), has stated, "It is discriminatory for a State party to refuse to legally provide for the performance of certain reproductive health services for women."

Poland should fall in line with international legal standards. Furthermore, Poland’s Ministry of Health should ensure that doctors who decline to perform abortions refer their patients to those who will provide the service.

Many of Poland’s health-care providers agree that strict monitoring of conscientious objection is needed. The FWFP survey found that six out of ten health-care providers agreed that there is a need to regulate conscientious objection clauses and that health-care facilities should identify abortion providers who refuse to perform the procedure.

The CEDAW Committee is in agreement on this point: "if health service providers refuse to perform such [reproductive health] services based on conscientious objection, measures should be introduced to ensure that women are referred to alternative health providers."

It is time for the Polish Ministry of Health to stop anti-choice doctors from flouting the law and endangering the lives of thousands of women by guaranteeing women the right to access safe and legal abortion services.

By : Christina Zampas (the Center’s legal adviser for Europe)

From : http://www.reproductiverights.org/rfn_03_09_2.html#2




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4 - Canada

* A propos des pères...

(...) Les militants patriarcaux ont habilement créé un écran de fumée, tissé de clichés inexacts, de pseudo-anecdotes et de mensonges éhontés, pour s' approprier la sympathie populaire. Cliché numéro un : « Chaque enfant a droit à deux parents » et « Un enfant, il lui faut un père ». Astucieux ça, de déguiser des prérogatives paternelles en « droits de l'enfant ».
Pourtant, cet énoncé n'a pas le moindre fondement scientifique, Bien sûr, un père affectueux est un bienfait pour n'importe quel enfant. Mais n'importe quel père? Un ivrogne, un batteur de femme, un tyran, ou un masculiniste au comportement infantile? Un homme qui exploite les tribunaux pour harceler son ex-conjointe?

Je ne crois pas.

La « paternité essentielle » dont parle le lobby des pères est affaire d'autorité, de règles,  de discipline stricte et d'hétérosexualité imposée.
Ils extrapolent à partir des conditions des ghettos des grandes villes américaines pour affirmer sans ambages que « l'absence du père » est la source de tous les malheurs, de la délinquance à la promiscuité des jeunes filles.

Dans les faits, les sociologues ont établi de longue date que les familles monoparentales découlent surtout d'un contexte de pauvreté et de désespoir et que c'est cette pauvreté sans cesse aggravée qui est le facteur le plus nocif. (V.C. McLoyd, « Socioeconomic Disadvantages and Child Development », American Psychologist, 1998)

Judith Wallerstein, qui fait autorité aux États-Unis quant aux incidences du divorce chez les enfants, conclut d'une étude menée sur 25 ans : « Il n' existe aucune preuve empirique de liens entre la fréquence ou la quantité de contacts entre le parent non gardien et l'enfant et des résultats positifs chez l'enfant. » L'absence de conflits, écrit-elle, pèse beaucoup plus lourd dans la balance. (Family and Conciliation Courts Review, 1998).

(...) Les lobbyistes du droit paternel insistent, avec fureur, que tous les tribunaux sont biaisés et accordent automatiquement la garde aux mères.

Dans un rapport officiel déposé devant la Cour suprême de l'État du Massachussetts en 1990, des chercheurs ont reconnu avoir amorcé leur étude avec cette même perception d'un biais judiciaire en faveur des femmes. Ils ont constaté le contraire. (New England Law Review, 1990) Si la plupart des femmes conservent la garde physique de leurs enfants après un divorce, ce n' est pas par discrimination mais par consensus des parents. Lorsque des hommes s'adressent aux tribunaux pour obtenir la garde, on leur accorde une garde exclusive ou conjointe dans plus de 70 pour cent des cas.

La situation est depuis longtemps la même au Canada. Glenn Rivard, conseiller supérieur du ministère fédéral de la Justice, m'a à deux reprises confirmé, au cours des années 90, que, même si les statistiques officielles étaient dans un tel désordre qu'il était impossible d'y lire un portrait  fidèle de l'ensemble des décisions judiciaires rendues partout au Canada, il était d'opinion bien informée que « lorsque des pères demandent la garde, ils l'emportent dans environ 50 pour cent des cas ».

(...) Le problème beaucoup plus répandu est celui du père erratique ou entièrement absent qui déçoit ses enfants en n'exerçant pas ses droits de visite. Plus de 40 pour cent des parents disposant de ces droits ne voient que rarement ou jamais leurs enfants. (Évaluation de la Loi sur le divorce, Ministère de la Justice, 1990)

Et qu'en est-il de toutes ces horribles « fausses allégations » de violence sexuelle, réputées avoir détruit les vies de tant d'hommes, à en croire les sanglots et les cris des lobbyistes patriarcaux devant le tristement célèbre Comité mixte conjoint sur la garde et les droits de visite des enfants? Témoignages de pacotille. Une foule d'études démontrent que les fausses allégations se limitent à de 8 à 16 pour cent des cas (Professeur Susan Penfold, Revue canadienne de la femme et du droit, 1997). Et ce n'est que dans deux pour cent des cas que ces allégations surviennent dans le contexte de litiges acerbes de divorce. (Penfold, Id.)

Fait révélateur : 21 pour cent des allégations de violence formulées par les pères sont des mensonges délibérés, alors que les allégations des mères ne sont intentionnellement fausses que dans 1,3 pour cent des cas. (Nicholas Bala, Canadian Family Law Quarterly, 1999)

J'ai des tonnes d'autres statistiques mais, vous savez, j'en suis aussi saturée que vous. Il demeure que nous ne pouvons risquer de porter préjudice aux enfants en laissant le gouvernement céder face aux prétentions sans fondement du lobby des pères aigris.

7 - Egypt : After 50-year fight, the first woman sued for the right to become judge ! 

In Egypt, about 20 percent of lawyers are women, and women have served as ambassadors and cabinet ministers. But the judiciary has remained off-limits.

Egypt gave birth to the women's movement in the Middle East back in 1924 when feminist Hoda Sharaawi tore off her veil. But 30 years ago, when US women began demanding more rights, an Islamic fundamentalist movement was building in Egypt that may have crested only now. The militant groups declared a ceasefire in 1997, and since then the tone has softened. (...)

The recent Arab Human Development Report, whose lead author is Egyptian, says Arab women have the lowest level of political and economic participation in the world and adds that sidelining women is bad for democracy, and bad for the economy. "Society as a whole suffers" because of it, the report concludes.

This year, the Middle East garnered international applause when Bahraini women voted for the first time, and through affirmative action, Moroccan women won 35 seats in Parliament.

In Egypt, women have long played a significant role in society, but attitudes dating from the pre-Islamic era and beyond are proving difficult to snuff out. "There's been a lot of talk, but most people here still think it will be very difficult for women to be judges," says Murgan.

Egypt's most famous feminist, Nawal el Saadawi, is refraining from weighing in on whether the new judges will be able to right the imbalance in rights for women. After all, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, she says, contributed to a backlash against women's rights. (...)

By Gretel C. Kovach

From : http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0107/p01s03-wome.html




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8 - Iraq : Women choosing to hide behind a veil

"Under Saddam we could drive, we could walk down the street until two in the morning," a young designer told me as she bounced her 4-year-old daughter on her lap. "Who would have thought the Americans could have made it worse for women? This is liberation?"

In their palace surrounded by armed soldiers, officials from the occupying forces talk about democracy. But in the same cool marble rooms, when one mentions the fears of the majority of Iraq's population, one can hear a representative of the Ministry of the Interior, which oversees the police, say, "We don't do women." What they don't seem to realize is that you can't do democracy if you don't do women.

In Afghanistan, women threw off their burqas when American forces arrived. In Baghdad the veils have multiplied, and most women are hiding at home instead of working, studying or playing a role in reconstructing Iraq.

Under Saddam, crimes against women - or at least ones his son Uday, Iraq's vicious Caligula, did not commit - were relatively rare (though solid statistics for such crimes don't exist).

Last October, the regime opened the doors to the prisons. Kidnappers, rapists and murderers were allowed to blend back into society, but they were kept in check by the police state. When the Americans arrived and the police force disappeared, however, these old predators re-emerged alongside new ones.

Many women are now at risk for the honor killings that claim the lives of many Muslim women here. Tribal custom demands that a designated male kill a female relative who has been raped, and the law allows only a maximum of three years in prison for such a killing, which Iraqis call "washing the scandal."

This violence has made postwar Iraq a prison of fear for women. (...)

By : Lauren Sandler (NYT) September 17, 2003 
http://www.iht.com/ihtsearch.php?id=110138&owner=(NYT)&date=20030916164022

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9 - Malawi : Women Gang up against Child Labour

BLANTYRE, Sept 15 (IPS) - Women activists in Malawi have waged war against child labour saying it is one of the many forms of violence that women in the country suffer from.

In the fight against child labour - especially among the girl-children - women activists, educationists and entrepreneurs are using education as weapon to empower girls. They say the rampant violence in Malawi is partly due to the high levels of illiteracy among women and girls.

”We have decided to fight child labour by ensuring that as many as possible girls attend formal education because access to - and the attainment of - educational qualifications is necessary if more women are to become agents of change,” says Catherine Munthali, executive director of the Society for the Advancement of Women.

Munthali says women rights organisations have penetrated in the rural areas where child labour is rampant so as to fight it from the grass-roots level all the way up. ”We are currently fighting child labour because most of the victims of the oppressive practice are girls,” Munthali says.

Efforts by the activists to uproot child labour appears to be bearing fruits. One rural based woman in northern Malawi's district of Rumphi has opened a community primary school on the outskirts of Rumphi district where children, who used to work on tobacco estates, are now attending school.

According to the businesswoman, Bessie Chirambo, about 300 school-going children failed to attend school and were subjected to all sorts of child abuse on the tobacco farms as well as at home where they had nothing to do but manual work all day.

(...) Malawi's Labour and Vocational Training Minister, Alice Sumani, says that keeping children out of school to work is promoting and sustaining poverty in the country. There is no better job for a child in this world than going to school. Parents must appreciate this fact, said Sumani.

She further agrees with women rights activists that providing children with an educations would contribute to a drop in cases of poverty induced violence against women in the future. She said that studies indicate that there are high levels of domestic violence against women in countries where illiteracy levels are high. Currently about 60 percent of Malawi's 11 million population is illiterate.

Sumani says Section 24 to 26 of the Employment Act of Malawi states that it is an offence punishable by the law to offer employment to children under the age of 14.

Meanwhile the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training is carrying out spot checks on tea and tobacco estates to make sure that child labour is completely brought to a halt.

Malawi is one of the countries that has ratified the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 182 on Child labour in 1999. The Convention resolved that all children under the age of 16 should not be given employment. (ENDS/IPS/AF/SA/HD/CR/BL/SM/03)

By : Brian Ligomeka / http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=20132

From : cdumonteil@yahoo.com (SOS Sexisme)

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10 - Tanzania : Activists Challenge Gender Inequality As Women Marry Women