April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

abortion

Day 4 (Dec. 6th Action)

by

I don’t know what to write today to introduce you to this video.

It covers many subjects and it is of course up to the viewer to make their own interpretation.

If you think the voices sound familiar, it is Judy Collins and Joan Baez.

*some images are graphic*

For some reason the embedded player was cutting out half way through, it is fine on the youtube site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqewiVEemww

Day 3 (Dec. 6th Action)

by

Today I would like to pay tribute to some women I have known.

My mother. Who taught me never to unquestioningly accept authority. Never to expect less of myself, or accept less for myself because I’m a women. Never to assume you know why others make the decisions they do. To accept other races and cultures and learn from them. To accept that each person has the right to control over their own body, because in the end it is all we really have. To always share what I have and be willing to take from others.

My birth mother. I could focus on the negative but instead I’d like remember how she taught me about fun and laughter and not taking the world too seriously. She taught me to accept myself at any size and since I have been many sizes this has come in handy.

skdadl who I have come to know over the past 5 years from blogs, boards and emails. I’m sure there were times she despaired of me, however, I have learned so much from her. And there have been times we argued but I’ve gone and considered her arguments and often amended my position because of her words. She has taught me about strength, friendship, kindness and good grammar. (though I fail miserably at the grammar)

Although there are too many to mention one by one, I also pay tribute to the women at Bread and Roses all of whom have taught me about having a strong voice, standing up for myself and others and being gracious in disagreement.

Though I don’t know them personally I’d like to pay tribute to the women that were brave enough to go against the religious and conservative voices of the day and fight for women’s rights.

To the women who continue to fight for a women’s right to choice. To the women who brave those who say the are pro life (and yet not adverse to threatening or taking life that is born) in order to exercise that choice.

Tribute to the women who live daily with violence yet manage to get their kids to school or hold a job and care for others while their own bodies and spirits are need of care.

Tribute to the women in war zones in constant fear of death, rape, loss of home, family and life. No quiet moment, no putting your feet up at the end of a hard day knowing that tomorrow may bring rest. No putting children to bed confident that tomorrow they will play carefree. Wondering where the next meal, or next mortar is going to come from.

Tribute to the women living in poverty, fending off questions from their children as to when they can get the cool toy or cool outfits the kids at school have. Wondering how to tell them Santa might not be coming. Having to go to food banks for dented, expired cans of food. The seniors living in poverty not knowing who will care for them should they become unable to care for themselves. To the widows who are romanticized in story and victimized in reality.

Tribute to the women whose fears cause them to live lives that destroy their spirits but who cannot make that next step. Who spend their lives pleasing everyone and lose their selves and their dreams in the process.

Tribute to those dealing with the pain of sexual assault. Many who have never been able to share their pain. Whose fear of being shamed, or ostracized kept their secret to be expressed only as nightmares.

My love and heartfelt wishes to each and every one of you, that you may see yourselves as the strong, smart, influential, sacred people you are.

Update on Nicaragua’s abortion ban

by

The let women die law abortion ban has not even officially passed and yet it is already taking lives.

After 19-year-old Jazmina Bojorge bled to death in early November at a public hospital in the Nicaraguan capital due to complications from pregnancy, her family appeared on local television and tearfully accused doctors of delaying her treatment for fear of being prosecuted under the nation’s abortion ban.
Bojorge, five months pregnant, arrived at the hospital with painful, premature contractions. After staying the night, she was sent to a different medical center for an ultrasound because hospital equipment was inadequate. Doctors tried to stop the contractions, but they were unsuccessful and the fetus died. Efforts to induce labor to expel the fetus failed and Bojorge went into shock. Her placenta had separated from the uterine wall and her uterus filled with blood. She died two days after arriving at the hospital.

It was Bojorge’s second pregnancy. She left a young son behind.

Poor women in particular will suffer from this law as the better off will be able to travel or to attend private clinics.

n a nation where 8 of 10 people struggle to live on less than $2 a day, poor women with limited access to maternal health care will be most vulnerable, say activists and health workers.

“Women who can only go to public health services will die,” said Blandon, of Ipas.

Surely it is preferable to save a woman’s life than to leave her young child/ren motherless.

“The new penal code doesn’t just go against basic human rights: It goes against fundamental principles of humanity,” said Jose Miguel Vivanco, the Washington-based director of the Americas for Human Rights Watch, headquartered in New York.

Those involved in the religious effort to deny women their rights are still saddened by the loss of life.

“It is a prosperous business,” said Max Padilla, a Catholic activist who helped organize a lobbying effort and massive public demonstration in favor of the ban. “Now the people involved in that business are defending their livelihoods, presenting false cases.”

For women who still have the choice of birth control and the luck that their method doesn’t fail, not getting pregnant seems to be the answer to this law.

In May, Chevez had an emergency therapeutic abortion two months into her pregnancy when doctors discovered the fetus was forming outside the uterus and had ruptured a fallopian tube, causing severe internal bleeding.

“I would like to try again, but I’m afraid to get pregnant. That operation saved my life,” Chevez, 28, a swimming teacher, said in an interview at her home in Leon, where she lives with her two children, 9 and 11, from a previous marriage, and her second husband. Her husband wants a child, she said. “But he is afraid of losing me.”

Women will still demand control of their bodies. It may be through illegal abortion, it may be through suicide, it may be through methods of birth control, but all women deserve, want and have a right to control their reproduction.

You are a human being. You have rights inherent in that reality. You have dignity and worth that exists prior to law. ~Lyn Beth Neylon