Category Archives: Feminism

Infographic: Planned Parenthood is sole safety-net provider of birth control for many

Our analysis shows unequivocally that Planned Parenthood plays a major role in delivering publicly supported contraceptive services and supplies to women who are in need of such care nationwide. In two-thirds of the 491 counties in which they are located, Planned Parenthood health centers serve at least half of all women obtaining contraceptive care from safety-net health centers. In one-fifth of the counties in which they are located, Planned Parenthood sites are the sole safety-net family planning center.Of course, many so-called “abortion opponents” actually oppose the work Planned Parenthood does providing contraception too. Take, for example, the arson attack on a Planned Parenthood in Washington state this past weekend. The fire was bad enough that the clinic will remain closed for at least a month. It doesn’t provide any abortions at all.

Source: Infographic: Planned Parenthood is sole safety-net provider of birth control for many

Dutch reporter detained in continuing harassment of foreign journalists – Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders calls for the immediate release of Dutch reporter Frederike Geerdink, who was arrested in southeastern Turkey yesterday, and urges the government to stop harassing foreign journalists operating in that part of the country.Foreign reporters are clearly no longer welcome in the southeast, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish rebels led by the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are growing in intensity by the day.Geerdink was arrested in Yüksekova, a town near the Iranian border in Hakkaria province, while covering a group of Kurdish activists who were also arrested for trying to act as human shields in an attempt to prevent attacks by government forces.She was reportedly detained for “traveling in a forbidden area.” An official even told Reuters that she had been arrested “for her own safety” because of the fighting in the area.“Coming just days after the arrests of three VICE News journalists, Frederike Geerdink’s arrest constitutes yet another intimidatory message for the foreign news media, one that is equally unacceptable,” said Johann Bihr, the head of the Reporters Without Borders Eastern Europe and Central Asia desk.

Source: Dutch reporter detained in continuing harassment of foreign journalists – Reporters Without Borders

An ‘Appeal to Affection and Empathy’: Barcelona’s Mayor Wants Spain’s Cities to Welcome Refugees · Global Voices

she also thanked all the families who offered their homes as shelters, whose solidarity “dignifies our city,” and announced that her council will start working on a project very soon, creating “a volunteer families database” and “organizing networks for sheltering and assisting refugees.”She finished by highlighting the human lives behind the refugee quotas with which European governments seem to be bargaining, and the responsibility of cities, families, and citizens to take action:Translation Original QuoteIn Turkey, Greece, or Lebanon they are taking in millions of refugees, [but in] Spain [it’s] barely 2,000, in spite of having many more resources. These are no quotas: they are human lives. And if states refuse to understand this, [then] here we are, the cities and the citizens, ready to take action. Because yes, we can… and we must.

Source: An ‘Appeal to Affection and Empathy’: Barcelona’s Mayor Wants Spain’s Cities to Welcome Refugees · Global Voices

Moving Company Helps People Escape Abusive Relationships, Free Of Charge: LAist

Meathead Movers was founded in 1997 by two brothers, Aaron and Evan Steed, when they were in high school. They called themselves ‘Meathead Movers’ because they enjoyed playing sports and lifting weights. They’ve partnered with seven area shelters where they help victims of domestic abuse get out of those relationships for good.Good Shepherd, a transitional domestic violence shelter for women and children, is one such partner. Kathleen Buczko, Good Shepherd’s Director of Institutional Advancement, told LAist that Meathead Movers will move their client’s belongings from the transitional housing to their new, permanent housing “after their healing is complete.” With other shelters, Meathead Movers will go to homes where men or women are living with abusive partners and move them from that home to a shelter.”We know how hard it is to pack up someone’s life and move it to a new location, but it’s unimaginable to think about a woman and her children trying to pack up all their belongings and flee before the abuser returns home,” CEO Aaron Steed said in a statement.

Source: Moving Company Helps People Escape Abusive Relationships, Free Of Charge: LAist

Desparate and drowning for attention: Jeb Bush says Planned Parenthood shouldn’t get a penny

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush continued his attack on Planned Parenthood on Tuesday during a town hall in Colorado, saying the women’s health organization shouldn’t get “a penny” because “they’re not doing women’s health issues” and that they were involved in something “way different than that.”

I’ll go ahead and assume that the “way different” thing Bush thinks somehow doesn’t qualify as a “women’s health issue” is the 300,000 abortions Planned Parenthood provides each year — no matter that insignificant organizations like, oh I dunno, the World Health Organization define access to safe abortion as a human right and public health imperative. That still leaves him on the hook for explaining why the 400,000 Pap tests and 500,000 breast exams provided annually by the organization don’t count as health care. There are also 4.5 million people who got STD tests and treatments and 3.7 million who got contraception services at Planned Parenthood last year who might be surprised to find out this wasn’t health care they were receiving.

via Quote of the Day: Jeb Bush says Planned Parenthood shouldn’t get a penny.

“I saw the text messages from other women before we got…

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“I saw the text messages from other women before we got married. My parents warned me but I married him anyway, without their permission. I thought he’d change. Now he leaves for days at a time. He tells me: ‘Calm down. It’s nothing. They come and go. But I live with you.’ But I can’t calm down. I think about it all the time. Whenever he’s out, I think about it. I try to keep busy and calm my mind but it’s gotten so bad that I’m seeing a doctor.”

(Rasht, Iran)

via “I saw the text messages from other women before we got….

Back in the 1950s, This Pre-Teen Girl Intimidated Musclemen with Her Insane Strength

April Atkins — a cute, perpetually grinning pre-teen who, for one brief, bonkers moment in the mid-1950s, routinely blew minds at California’s famed Muscle Beach by performing utterly improbable feats of strength. Here are some of amazing photographs taken in 1954 by LIFE’s photographer Loomis Dean.

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<a href=”http://www.vintag.es/2015/08/back-in-1950s-this-pre-teen-girl.html

via Back in the 1950s, This Pre-Teen Girl Intimidated Musclemen with Her Insane Strength.