May the New Year bring peace, prosperity and equality for those suffering. Since it is a New Year, I am starting with the good news...
The Good News:
New App For Birth Control, putting the control back to women
http://rhrealitycheck.org/...
Bill Cosby and possible justice for the women he abused over decades
http://www.dailykos.com/...
New Rules for Pregnant NYers that may actually help
http://rhrealitycheck.org/...
Crisis Pregnancy Centers have sought to block the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act, and FAILED!
http://rhrealitycheck.org/...
And the same story — different article, because we need to celebrate the wins!
http://www.feminist.org/...
The 12 most unintentionally hilarious moments of misogyny in 2015.
The Bad News in USA:
All told, lawmakers across the country introduced some 400 abortion restrictions, a tally by the Center for Reproductive Rights found.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Domestic-violence survivors incarcerated in New York State deserve more than a prison cell.
http://www.thenation.com/...
A Tennessee woman accused of using a coat hanger to try to terminate her pregnancy
http://rhrealitycheck.org/...
Campus sexual assault and university admin vs. police
http://www.takepart.com/...
In case you were wondering, yes, we have gone that far down the rabbit hole.
http://feministing.com/...
Well now we got the attention of the UN. USA! USA! oh, wait…
http://feministing.com/...
Thanks Victor Entrepuertas and Anonima P. for this gem, which succinctly calls out male “feminist” allies’ mansplaining, gaslighting, misogyny, abuse, and more.
http://feministing.com/...
Both the idea that feminism needs to be appealing to men and that men should be central to its progress are anti-feminist ideas in themselves.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
Cecil Richards CEO of Planned Parenthood
http://www.alternet.org/...
Republicans still going to try to war against Planned Parenthood for 2016
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Paying extra for pink: if a product is marketed to women, it probably costs you more.
Slowly Changing, Way Too Slowly For Me:
Thalidomide:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
An article from August that made the PPAA blog's best of the year list.
http://advocatesaz.org/...
Samantha Bee's talkshow "Full Front with Samantha Bee" might still be another two months away, but Internet trolls have already started filling her comments section with hateful messages.
On Late Night With Seth Meyers Thursday night, Bee told Meyers that she and her crew have already devised a plan for dealing with hate-watching viewers and/or sexist, hateful commenters. You see, rather than force these trolls to direct their vitriol to the show’s social media feeds, thereby inundating them, Bee’s show has set up a hotline to allow them to shout their misogyny rather than type it into the void. The hotline, 1-844-4-TROLLZ, does work, and features some awful prompts, of which “leave a menacing remark” is probably the least depressing.
http://viralwomen.com/...
The Not For Sale Campaign, a nonprofit dedicated to ending modern-day slavery, estimates that between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked in the United States each year, with 30 million enslaved around the world. The U.S. Department of State reports that 80 percent of all trafficking victims are women and children that have been forced into the commercial sex trade, just as Samantha was.
http://viralwomen.com/...
World Women News
New Rules of Rape for ISIS Slave Girls, because Rape doesn’t have enough rules or somesuch
http://jezebel.com/...
11 year old servant tortured, 11 years old! They have no decency...
http://www.theguardian.com/...
South Korea and Japan reached a landmark agreement on Monday to resolve the issue of "comfort women", as those who were forced to work in Japan's wartime brothels were euphemistically known, an issue that has long plagued ties between the neighbors.
The foreign ministers of the two countries said after a meeting in Seoul that the "comfort women" issue would be "finally and irreversibly resolved" if all conditions were met.
South Korean President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to take the opportunity to boost bilateral ties following the agreement, in which Japan made an apology and promised about one billion yen ($8.3 million) for a fund to help former "comfort women."
http://viralwomen.com/...
Another article — same story:
They were called “comfort women”, words invented by those who exploited and crushed them in the vilest ways, the words of the men who reduced them to sexual slavery, who made war spoils of them.
http://www.theguardian.com/...
In jail for a miscarriage in Salvador
http://rhrealitycheck.org/...