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NEWS & LETTERS, October 2002
WOMEN WORLDWIDE
by Mary Jo Grey At a time of overwhelming government hostility toward just
maintaining, much less improving, abortion rights, the state of California, in
September, passed four bills expanding women's right to abortion. The new
legislation would: 1) ensure that abortion would continue in California even if
Roe v. Wade was overturned; 2) require that all medical residency programs for
obstetricians and gynecologists give abortion training (although there are
loopholes on the basis of religion or "conscience"); 3) mandate that
emergency room staff tell victims of sexual abuse about emergency contraception
and provide it free if they ask for it, as well as allow nurses and midwives to
prescribe abortion drugs like RU-486, and 4) shield abortion clinics, their
employees and patients from harassment by blocking public
access to all names and addresses.
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* Contestants in the upcoming Miss World pageant, scheduled to take place in Nigeria on Nov. 30, are threatening to boycott the event to protest a single mother's sentence to be stoned to death for having sex outside of marriage. Amina Lawal was sentenced by an Islamic Court in August after giving birth to a daughter more than nine months after divorcing her husband. Pageant organizers were forced by angry contestants and international pressure to ask the government not to carry out the death sentence. The European Parliament's committee on women's rights unanimously called for a boycott of the pageant. Participants from France and Belgium have already withdrawn. |
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