Category: Social Equality

Irish abortion referendum: The people travelling #HomeToVote – BBC News

~ mcequality

From car shares, to offers of beds for the night, the movement has been propelled by social media. A similar movement also took off ahead of the 2015 vote that legalised same-sex marriage.
People on both sides of the argument are travelling back to vote, but the movement has been spearheaded by the London-Irish Abortion Rights Campaign – a pro-choice group that believes some 40,000 people who recently left Ireland could be eligible to vote.
The Eighth Amendment came into being after a 1983 referendum, so no-one under the age of 54 has voted on this before. For many, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity to have their say on Ireland’s abortion laws.

via Irish abortion referendum: The people travelling #HomeToVote – BBC News

Angelina Jolie’s Breadwinner spotlights Afghan girls’ plight – BBC News

~ mcequality

The Breadwinner, made by Irish film-maker Nora Twomey, is an animation written, produced and directed by women, and adapted from the Canadian bestseller by author Deborah Ellis.
It features the voice of teenage Canadian actor Saara Chaudry as Parvana, an 11-year-old growing up under the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001.
When her father is wrongfully arrested, Parvana disguises herself as a boy to save her mother and sisters from starvation, as women are unable to leave their house without a male relative.
Although it’s a story for children, it doesn’t disguise the details of life under the Taliban – including what happens when a woman is caught in the street without a burka.

via Angelina Jolie’s Breadwinner spotlights Afghan girls’ plight – BBC News

Scott Pruitt Twice Proposed Anti-Abortion Legislation Granting Men ‘Property Rights’ Over Fetuses

~ mcequality

Progressive super PAC American Bridge tipped HuffPost off to the latent legislation. American Bridge’s senior director, Dawn Huckelbridge, told HuffPost, “It’s not surprising that another member of Trump’s inner circle is hostile to women. But framing a fetus as a man’s property is a new low.”

via Scott Pruitt Twice Proposed Anti-Abortion Legislation Granting Men ‘Property Rights’ Over Fetuses

Trump Fantasizes About Abolishing Immigration Courts

~ mcequality

In a surprisingly and wildly out of character turn of events, President Trump is questioning why our immigration court system isn’t even more cruel to undocumented immigrants than it already is.

After Trump’s MS-13 fear mongering session on Wednesday, the president met with Fox and Friends minion Brian Kilmedee for a brief interview. Trump lamented the current state of America’s immigration court system and the “thousands” of judges he imagines work within it.

via Trump Fantasizes About Abolishing Immigration Courts

‘Like a Bad Dream’: In New Orleans, Witnesses Are Going to Jail Instead of Perpetrators

~ mcequality

But since 2010, Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro has sought more than 150 such warrants to arrest witnesses, including a significant number of victims, according to a data analysis by the Yale Law School students of the legal scholar James Forman Jr. that was shared with In Justice Today.
A 19-year-old victim of sex trafficking was arrested in November 2014, shortly after giving birth to her daughter. She had failed to appear at a hearing during her pregnancy because she was supposed to be on bed rest and had a doctor’s note to prove it. Even so, she was held in jail for nearly four months until she testified against the father of her child.
Another victim who was shot with a semiautomatic rifle was jailed as a material witness on a $100,000 bond in December 2016. Two victims of assault were arrested and jailed on $250,000 bond after they tried to recant their testimony against their alleged attacker.

via ‘Like a Bad Dream’: In New Orleans, Witnesses Are Going to Jail Instead of Perpetrators

The “Unintended” Consequences of Successful Employee Rights Litigation in California.

~ mcequality

This test lays out the three elements a business must meet in order to designate a worker as an Independent Contractor
A) that the worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in connection with the performance of the work, both under the contract for the performance of such work and in fact;
B) that the worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hiring entity’s business; and
C) that the worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.

via The “Unintended” Consequences of Successful Employee Rights Litigation in California.

Trump’s Plan to Punish Abortion Providers Is Deadly, Horrific, and Totally Predictable

~ mcequality

Feminists and health care organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, warned the policy would kill pregnant people without preventing abortions — ironically, since the gag rule works to shut down clinics that provide birth control, abortion rates spike in the affected countries, even as more people die in back-alley procedures. Family planning organization Marie Stopes International predicted that, in Nigeria alone, “there will be an additional 660,000 abortions…with 10,000 women dying as a result.”

via Trump’s Plan to Punish Abortion Providers Is Deadly, Horrific, and Totally Predictable

The Recent Mass Shootings in the US All Have One Thing in Common: Misogyny

~ mcequality

The massacre at Santa Fe high school last week that left 10 people dead — most of them students — seems to have something in common with so many other mass shootings that happen in the US: misogyny. The shooter, one victim’s mother claims, targeted her daughter as the first victim because she rejected his continued harassing advances.
How many more tragedies have to happen before we recognize that misogyny kills? The longer we ignore the toxic masculinity that underlies so many of these crimes, the more violence we’re enabling.

via The Recent Mass Shootings in the US All Have One Thing in Common: Misogyny

Watch Trump Get Off on Taking Away America’s Reproductive Healthcare 

~ mcequality

Donald Trump, a man I am certain has never paid or asked someone to abort a fetus he helped put inside them, proposed last week to withhold federal Title X grant funds from healthcare providers that offer abortions or abortion referrals. The so-called domestic gag rule would financially punish places like Planned Parenthood that provide abortions and other health services. It would also make it difficult for many women and other marginalized genders, especially those with low income, to obtain abortions, birth control, and other necessary care. Trump, who has been loudly “Pro-Life” for all of maybe three years now, and anti-woman for decades, is immensely pleased with himself.

via Watch Trump Get Off on Taking Away America’s Reproductive Healthcare 

Danish minister Stojberg provokes Ramadan row – BBC News

~ mcequality

Denmark’s immigration minister has been widely rebuffed after she suggested Muslims should take time off work during Ramadan because of potential safety risks to the rest of society.
Inger Stojberg, who has a reputation for hardline immigration policies, said fasting throughout the working day raised challenges for modern society.
She cited potential risks for bus drivers and in hospitals.
Bus companies were among the first to say they had no problem with Ramadan.

via Danish minister Stojberg provokes Ramadan row – BBC News