Tag Archives: Topic: Feminism

AP: The Senate is poised to strengthen the principal federal anti-domestic abuse law, spreading its protection to gays, lesbians, immigrants and Native American women.

Cass R. Sunstein at Bloomberg: Can the Defense Department overrule the U.S. Supreme Court? Can the Boy Scouts of America? The short answer is: Of course not. But a full response turns out to be more complicated, and it offers a lesson for thinking about the relationship between constitutional law and the evolving nature of rights.

AP: In Washington state, dairymen, freshmen and even penmanship could soon be things of the past.

Jennifer Roback Morse at Public Discourse: Radical pro-choice rhetoric attacks the most basic facts of our human existence: that the human body comes in two different but complementary types, male and female. They cannot forgive women who embrace femininity rather than neuter themselves

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy: The Pentagon’s recent decision to open up combat roles to women has led legal scholar Gerard Magliocca wonder whether our current system of male-only draft registration is still constitutional. Conservative commentator Dave Carter predicts that the courts will rule that it is not, and women will be made subject to the draft.

USA Today: In his first interview since the Pentagon opened ground combat jobs to women, the commandant of the Marine Corps said some occupations may ultimately remain closed if only a small number qualify.

York Daily Record: The Pentagon’s decision to allow women to join combat units is expected to reopen a legal debate the Supreme Court settled in 1981: Should women have to register with the government so it knows where to find them …

Rasmussen: Most voters think women in the military should be able to fight in combat just like men do. But they still believe overwhelmingly that women need to pass the same physical tests as men if they’re in special forces like the Green Berets and Navy SEALs.

CNSNews (includes video): Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that with women now eligible to fill combat roles in the military, commanders must justify why any woman might be excluded – and, if women can’t meet any unit’s standard, the Pentagon will ask: “Does it really have to be that high?”

Wellsboro Gazette: When a young man turns 18, he is required by law to register with the Selective Service System. It’s important to note that this law applies to almost all male U.S. citizens and male aliens living in the U.S. who are 18 through 25.

Boston Globe: Gen. Martin Dempsey is chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He said Thursday the assault problem is due partly to the military’s separate classes of personnel—male ‘warriors’ versus the rest of the force, including women.

AP: Panetta says the military is more capable and more powerful when it is open to, quote, “all of the diverse strengths of the American people.”

Ryan Smith at Wall Street Journal: Yes, a woman is as capable as a man of pulling a trigger. But the goal of our nation’s military is to fight and win wars. Before taking the drastic step of allowing women to serve in combat units, has the government considered whether introducing women into the above-described situation would have made my unit more or less combat effective?

NewsMax: Former Navy SEAL commander and Montana State Sen. Ryan Zinke reacted sharply Wednesday to news the Obama administration will drop the prohibition against women serving in military combat roles, warning it is “nearly certain” to cost lives.

Center for Military Readiness report.

Fox News: Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military’s ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war.

Amy Julia Becker at the Atlantic: Many American women terminate their pregnancies when they discover their child will have Down syndrome. Is that so different from mothers in other parts of the world who abort unwanted girls?

WorldNetDaily: A new report on a U.S. Marines plan to put women in “tip of the spear” combat positions argues females are not “equal” when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. The report by the Center for Military Readiness, or CMR, warns America’s social experiment with the members of its military may become costly.

Christian Institute: The shadow public health minister and feminist Diane Abbott admits feminism is partly to blame for family breakdown. The senior Labour figure told the Guardian that the women’s rights movement in the 1980s caused many to see the family as the place where women were kept down.

Maggie Gallagher at Townhall: But we need, as well, a next generation of culture creators, of storytellers, with the credentials to name reality: empirical social scientists, novelists, poets, preachers and filmmakers. We need donors to invest in building the networks and communities through which such voices are born, flourish and give meaning to the lives of millions. The future belongs to those of us with enough hope to rebuild on the ashes of optimism, a new American civilization — uniting sex, love, babies, mothers and fathers in this thing called marriage.

C-FAM: Advocates for legal abortion in all circumstances continue to make their case in terms of reducing maternal mortality, despite a growing body of evidence showing that dramatic improvements in maternal health worldwide have been achieved without the liberalization of laws restricting abortion.

Jerusalem Post: Activists set to demonstrate against Jerusalem Conference for awarding a prize to Efrat, an anti-abortion organization.

When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defence of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man.

LifeSiteNews: A new study of Canadian women finds that pregnant women who are married suffer less partner abuse, substance abuse, and post-partum depression than women who are cohabitating or single. Dr. Marcelo Urquia, an epidemiologist at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto . . .

Aarathi Prasad at CNN (includes video): In an article in the UK’s “traditional values” tabloid, the Daily Mail, titled “A Terrifying Future for Female Fertility,” Djerassi said, “There are an enormous number of well-educated, proficient women who, when facing the biological clock, first pay attention to their professional ambitions…in the next 20 years, more young people will freeze their eggs and [sperm] in their 20s, and bank them for later use. They will do away with the need for contraception by being sterilised, and withdraw their eggs and sperm from the bank when they are ready to have a child via IVF.”

Boston Globe: A New Hampshire judge has ruled that a high school girl can continue to play on the boys’ varsity ice hockey team even though her school has formed a girls’ team.

Vancouver Sun: Whatever the causes, the loss of church men and boys has caused a dramatic rise in the proportion of female members – and female clergy – in Canada’s liberal-to-moderate denominations. And it’s causing mixed feelings.

The Hill: The president is likely to want a cabinet that reflects the country’s diversity and is made up of more than just white men, who appear to be the frontrunners for the top jobs at the Pentagon, State and Treasury.

The Hill: Prominent abortion-rights groups responded with praise and rancor Friday to Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-La.) proposal that Republicans back over-the-counter birth control.

Washington Post: Taboo-breaking Uruguay is poised to legalize gay marriage, with lawmakers debating Tuesday whether to create a single law governing marriage for heterosexuals and homosexuals. It also would let couples, gay or straight, decide whose surname goes first when they name their children.

The Hindu: Indeed, going by Aarathi Prasad’s book, human reproduction might too go that way. “The reproduction of the future is set to rewrite much of the fabric of human society.” Like a Virgin is a little prelude to that revolution.

Examiner.com (includes video): Accusations are flying in Parliamentary debates concerning whether passing a law to stop sex selection is really just window dressing to re-open the abortion debate, an article in the Huffington Post indicated, Thursday.

The HIll: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is being pressured to address the thorny topic of Irish abortion law when she visits Dublin Thursday on one of her last official foreign trips.

Amanda Marcotte at Slate: Given the choice between two stereotypes—the passive princess whose charm and beauty brings a man to one knee or an insecure needball who nagged a reluctant man into marriage—women will pick the former every time. In order to change that, we’d have to dramatically restructure our cultural understanding of gender and romance, away from stereotypes of promiscuous men who love only reluctantly and overeager women who just want to put a ring on it.

Helen Alvare at Public Discourse: Contraception isn’t the only way to plan a family, and it certainly isn’t cost-free: contraception leads to sexual disillusionment and weakens the marriage culture at the expense of the least well-off women. The second in a three-part series.

Christian Science Monitor: That warning by the Secretary General of the Church’s General Synod, went on to say that the church must begin consecrating women bishops and endorsing them in 2015, when the synod has another opportunity to vote, or risk England’s Parliament taking the issue out of its hands, reported The Times newspaper.

Forbes: This is no civil rights matter. Men and women are legally equal, but are not identical and never will be. Biological, psychological and other innate differences between sexes are undeniable. Even if you believe nature authored these distinct attributes, there is no getting around them. Pretending otherwise does neither sex justice.

Guardian: Archbishops’ Council calls on bishops to bring revised plans before General Synod in July after ‘sadness and shock’ of defeat.

First Things: Pro-life groups that spend time outside Planned Parethood clinics have recorded eighteen recent instances where women have had to be transported to nearby hospitals by ambulance. The most recent case occurred the day before Thanksgiving in St. Louis . . .

Telegraph: Boys will be girls, as they say in Sweden, especially if you’re Toys R Us. The firm’s Swedish franchise has been through its Christmas catalogue and made it gender-neutral. Boys now pucker up to the camera clutching baby dolls. Girls wave guns at the reader to reassure us that females can be violent too.

Reuters: The American Civil Liberties Union sued on Tuesday on behalf of four U.S. servicewomen to challenge a longstanding policy barring women from thousands of ground combat positions, citing the changing nature of warfare and fairness for career soldiers. The civil rights group argued in a legal complaint filed in federal court in Northern California that a military policy to bar women from combat roles on the basis of gender was unconstitutional. | ACLU press release and complaint

Marines Corps Times: Female Marines soon will be required to perform pull-ups, just like male Marines do, as part of their annual physical fitness tests, the Marine Corps’ top general announced Tuesday. The change takes effect Jan. 1, 2014 . . .

Michael O’Hanlon at the Wall Street Journal: As for the two women who started in September, one passed the initial “combat endurance test” and the other failed (as did 26 of the 107 male recruits). The test is akin to an Ironman competition combined with examinations of core infantry fighting skills. The woman who failed was (and remains) a remarkable Marine officer. She was extremely fit and had no trouble with the endurance aspects of the test. Her poise under stress and uncertainty was also impressive. But her upper-body strength wasn’t adequate for the several parts of the test requiring intensive use of the arms, back and shoulders.

LifeNews: New York Times magazine noticed the fertility gap with an article that shows women with families and women with larger families are more likely to vote Republican.

Washington Times: Of the two female volunteers, one washed out on the first day, along with 26 of the107 men, and the other dropped out two weeks later for medical reasons, a Marine Corps spokesman said.

CNSNews (includes video): Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says there will be enough women on the Supreme Court when all nine justices are female.

AP: The Church of England has much explaining to do following its failure to vote to allow women to serve as bishops, its leader said Wednesday – and politicians from the prime minister downward are already demanding action or answers.

Church of England: The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to reject the draft legislation to allow women to become bishops.

Telegraph: The Church of England will face a battle in Parliament and the prospect of legal challenges if it fails to approve women bishops on Tuesday, MPs said on Monday.

Chicago Phoenix: Case and Northwestern law professor Andy Koppelman spoke Thursday in Evanston, breaking down the legal arguments for same-sex marriage and how anyone with a feminist perspective will benefit from its legalization through the court system. “Ratzinger’s dreams are my nightmares and vice-a-versa,” Case said.

AP: A majority of the church’s governing General Synod is ready to say yes, but that doesn’t mean it’s all wrapped up. The vote needs a two-thirds majority in order to be approved, and an unlikely coalition of advocates and opponents of female bishops may have enough strength to derail the motion. Some voices on both sides argue that the church’s compromise asks them to concede too much.

LifeSiteNews: The debate about same-sex “marriage” in the UK is not, as the government and other supporters would have it, about “equality,” “rights” or “fairness,” but about “using law to change the meaning of the social institution of marriage.” So says Julian Rivers, a Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Bristol Law School.

Huffington Post: “The Republicans’ insistence in unilaterally disarming on social issues means that only the left is discussing abortion and marriage,” said Penny Nance, president of the conservative Christian group Concerned Women for America. “Refusing to discuss this important issue left their candidates unprepared to intelligently engage on life.” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said polling showed that if the Romney campaign and its backers had been willing to attack Obama on his support for abortion rights and Planned Parenthood and his contraception mandate, it “could have changed the outcome of the election.”

Scott Yenor at the Ruth Institute Blog: Elizabeth Brake’s Minimizing Marriage breaks new ground in the contemporary liberal critique of traditional arrangements. The object of her critique is what she calls amatonormativity—the belief that society should value two-person, amorous love relationships. Even same-sex marriage (SSM) advocates are too restrictive for Brake in that they would confer benefits on two people alone; SSM advocates are unwitting amatonormativists.

LifeNews: esterday I stumbled across the trailer for a documentary called It’s A Girl. The 3-minute preview stopped me in my tracks – particularly the part in which an Indian woman matter-of-factly describes how she strangled her newborn daughters. Eight of them.

Red State: I’m sending Richard Mourdock some money and you should too. His position is one millions of Americans share, but you’d never know it from the media’s coverage.

LifeNews: According to human rights activist, Reggie Littlejohn, “Experts estimate that between 160 and 200 million women are missing in the world today because of the sex-selective abortion of baby girls.”

Business Insider: In a strange coincidence, just as a pair of females, a colonel and a sergeant major, are suing the Pentagon on the grounds their careers stalled because they weren’t able to hold combat positions, the first two women to volunteer for the Marine Corps Infantry Officer Course washed out of the program.

Timothy P. Carney at the Washington Examiner: When President Obama speaks about women’s issues, it’s a safe bet he’s telling tall tales. When Democrats talk of a “war on women,” they are usually waging a war on facts. And women, it seems, aren’t fooled.

NY Times: According to data from Kantar Media/CMAG, the Obama campaign and Democratic groups have run commercials relating to abortion about 30,000 times since July 2 — about 10 percent of their ads — including one that falsely claimed Mr. Romney’s opposition to abortion extended to cases of rape and incest.

UPI: A judge is considering a motion filed by the Pentagon to have a lawsuit over gender discrimination thrown out. | UVA Law School report that links to the complaint

LifeSite News (video included): Argentina’s National Women’s Encounter attracts thousands of women every year from extremist feminist groups, many of them homosexuals, to angrily demand the acceptance of their political agenda, which includes the legalization of abortion and the vindication of the homosexual lifestyle.

MercatorNet: The latest parliamentary effort to address Canada’s total lack of restrictions of abortion came to an end last week when a motion which proposed setting up an all-party Parliamentary committee to discuss when an unborn child becomes a human being was voted down, 203 votes against, 91 for.

KansasCity.com: Two new polls Wednesday showed Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill leading Republican U.S. Rep. Todd Akin by six points as Akin faced a new round of questions about four-year-old comments about abortion providers.

KMaryn at the Daily Nexus: My first thought is to say that yes, atheism does benefit women. The rejection of a god or gods along with the misogynistic traditions and beliefs that are present in many religions should be beneficial to women. However, misogynistic themes that are perpetuated by religion have so thoroughly soaked into American culture that atheists are not immune to being raging sexists.

LifeSiteNews: Canada’s pro-abortion activists and Opposition parties are lining up against a new motion put forward by a Tory MP to condemn sex-selective abortions, which evidence has shown to be a grave concern in certain sections of the country.

Providence Journal: The School Committee is expected to decide tonight whether to request a change in state law that would allow father-daughter school dances.

AP: A British soldier has given birth to a boy while serving in Afghanistan at the same desert camp where Prince Harry is deployed and a Taliban attack last week killed two U.S. Marines.

USA Today: Female soldiers from Fort Campbell deploying to Afghanistan will field test the first Army body armor that is shorter and better tailored specifically to fit women’s physiques.

John G. Turner at the Huffington Post (8/27): Many of the women in Young’s life, such as Augusta Adams, Lydia Farnsworth and Zina Huntington, were equally bold. They made choices that severed old bonds, opened up new possibilities and perhaps inevitably brought them a measure of grief in the process. Given such audacity, Brigham Young’s life — and his marriages — necessarily produced a heady mixture of failure and success, but it was never dull.

Christian Institute: Mums have told a study that they would like to stay at home and look after their children but financial pressures are forcing them back to work. According to research for a money advice service, 75 per cent of new mothers would remain at home if money was no object.

Providence Journal: In a move that has taken some parents by surprise, the school department has announced that it is banning traditional “father-daughter” and “mother-son” activities, saying they violate state law.

SMH.com.au: An anti-abortion conference has been gatecrashed by a group of feminists who threw a ballet shoe at a keynote speaker, as tensions rise over the approval of a controversial pregnancy termination drug.

Blog of the Legal Times: With a confirmation of a woman to the District Court of the Southern District of Iowa late Monday afternoon, Obama had confirmed as many women to the federal bench in his first term—72—than George W. Bush did in his two terms in office, a White House spokesman said in an email to media.

LifeNews: But the leader of one pro-life group says Fluke’s fiction ignores the fact that women are already dying in emergency rooms, but for different reasons — they are dying after failed abortions.