Skint: Channel 4 Joins the Tory Party

A friend brought Channel 4's latest victim-blaming bullshit to my attention last week. I was going to actually watch the program before registering my dislike but I have just seen the ad. Again. And, it's pissing me off. The press pack on the program doesn't exactly help their case.

I know the program is scheduled for tonight but I will not be watching it. I will not watch the vilification of the poor for the entertainment of those who lack empathy; for those who have no understanding of poverty and for those who see nothing wrong in the exploitation of vulnerable people, particularly children, for entertainment. I have said this before on this blog but I do not believe that children should be allowed to appear in documentaries. I do not think parents have the right to set their own children up for the bullying that will inevitably follow their appearance in these types of programs.

Whether or not the program Skint will show what it's like to actually be skint remains to be seen but let's be realistic here: the press pack is clearly focussing on two men. Women are far more likely to live in poverty than men and their level of poverty is more likely to be long-term. Will Skint show mothers going without food to feed their children; elderly women trying to decide between heating their poorly insulated flat or buying food? Will it show the sheer number of single parent families headed by women living in poverty solely because the father refuses to pay maintenance? Will it show the sheer number of mothers who are on benefits because they are caring for children with disabilities for whom there is no childcare? Will it show the differential in pay between women and men once women are employed? Will it show the difference in benefit packages?

Will the show explain how women are far more likely to be dependent on the welfare state and the NHS because we care for our families? 

Will the show explain how the destruction of the welfare state and the NHS effects women more than men?

Poverty is gendered. 

That is forever the elephant in the room.

The refusal to acknowledge the gendered nature of poverty allows the othering of those in receipt of state benefits. By producing these types of programs, which are inevitably played for the number of viewers rather than real analysis, channel 4 perpetuates the othering of poverty. 

It's not really surprising for channel 4 though. This is the channel that brought us the racism of My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.

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A Fate Worse Than Debt

By Heather Downs

The Coalition government offers nothing but more propaganda about ‘paying-off the national debt’, giving the perfect excuse to cut public spending and destroy the Welfare State. Around 70% of Coalition cuts so far have come from women. The cause of women’s equality is being pushed back 50 years.

Public sector cuts hit women the hardest.  The public sector has a better record on equality in pay and opportunities. Women make up most public sector workers, so cuts in jobs, pensions, and the pay-freeze, affect women more.  Services specifically for women, such as Women’s Aid and Rape Crisis, are being cut.  Refuges are turning away 230 women every day in Britain. Domestic Violence affects one-in-four women; 19 thousand women flee their homes every year.  Every week two women are killed by current or ex-partners in Britain.  That’s more deaths than soldiers killed in Afghanistan.   Women’s Aid estimate1 in 4 women are subjected to domestic violence in their lifetime and 1 in 4 are victims of sexual violence. If you know more than 4 women, you know someone who has experienced either sexual or domestic violence or will do so at some time in their lives.  Rape Crisis say only 1 in 10 rapes are reported.  Most victims know their attacker - less than 1% see them convicted.

Women of all classes and races are affected, but those who have least money of their own, are the least able to escape the violence.  They depend on refuges and free counselling to help them escape.  These services are under threat from government cuts.  Although Rape Crisis and Women’s Aid remain the most frequently used sources of support, funding is a constant challenge. Coalition cuts threaten the survival of these vital services.  The Condems pay hypocritical lip service to women’s equality but their cuts fall most heavily on women’s jobs, services and pensions. Cuts affect council housing and housing benefit making it more difficult to rebuild and heal disrupted, damaged lives. 

Women do the caring for free when services to the elderly, disabled, children and other vulnerable groups are cut and women’s jobs are lost. Sure Start children’s centres have been cut despite government promises.  Day centres for adults are under threat.  The childcare allowance of Tax Credits has been cut from 80% to 70%, making work unaffordable for many women if there is any paid employment available.  Child Benefit was a universal benefit paid to mothers as a way our whole society could support families with children. New means-testing only affects the middle class earning over £50,000 now – but an important principle has been broken.  Raising the tax threshold will not help low-paid people who don’t pay income-tax.  Raising the qualifying limit for Working Tax Credits will cost £1000’s to people unable to increase their hours.

Disabled women are at increased risk of domestic and sexual violence.  Given what we know about financial abuse and economic dependence being features of domestic violence, it is disturbing to learn that disabled people with partners earning over £7,500 will not receive any benefits once the one year time limit on ESA (Employment Support Allowance) is reached.  As Social Care becomes means tested, more people will depend on family members, including 'Young Carers' as the unpaid chidren of disabled parents ae euphemistically described.  All the worst aspects of the institution of the nuclear family, amplified.  If you don't like that institution, they'll put you in the other kind; cheaper, more efficient decimation of the rights and independence of disabled people

The original plan for Universal Credit would have closed all women’s refuges – that cut was defeated and women’s refuges are now exempt.  We achieved that by effective campaigning.  But now we face a new threat. Women’s Aid says the Welfare Reform Act and the introduction of Universal Credit is a huge step backwards for equality; it will deprive a woman of independent income including tax credits paid to her as a mother. As a result, women will have less control over household income.  Financial abuse is a common feature of domestic violence.  Women’s Aid has serious concerns about plans to pay Universal Credit to one member of the household.  It is estimated that in 80% of cases, it will be paid to the man of the house. Women will be left  dependent, with no money or support to escape violent men.

So what can we do?  Of course, we can get educated about what is actually happening.  We can use resources like False Economy, The Fawcett Society, Spartacus Report.   We can resist the propaganda war against benefits, public spending, the ‘all in this together’ lies of those who will never be ‘in’ anything with us.  Their real aim is to get back to the natural order of life before the Welfare State, the NHS, social security, equal pay,  the minimum wage. 

We can support others in their efforts to defend our living standards.  Public sector strikes are inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as the result of the race to the bottom in pension provision - led by non-unionised private sector employers whose own tax-free pensions are supplemented by obscene bonuses.  We can join with others in our community anti-cuts groups defending hospitals, libraries, day centres.  Coalition of Resistance, Keep our NHS Public and Campaign against Fees and Cuts have local branches.

This is a fight between two visions of society – one ruled by the free market, where atomised individuals take sole responsibility for themselves alone, competing for scarce resources, where the Welfare State is reduced to a safety net for the desperate; and the other based on social cohesion, and shared provision for the vicissitudes of life.  Aneurin Bevan on his creation of the NHS said it would only last as long as people were prepared to fight for it.  That fight is here.

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Chris Rock's Good Hair

I genuinely like Chris Rock. He is incredibly funny and usually on the ball with things which are important. Okay, he frequently misses the whole issue of sexism with his tendency to reinforce it in the same breath as claiming to want a better future for his daughters. He is, however, not on my list of Dudes: the hypocrites who think that voting for Obama and claiming to be pro-choice cancels out any violence against women that they perpetrate. [I'm speaking to you here Zack Braff]. Chris Rock is one of those men who should be too intelligent to be debasing themselves with misogynistic jokes but do it anyways. Every time he opens his mouth, I twitch waiting for the inevitable Kim Kardashian joke. Now, I've never actually see the Kardashian show[s?] because I don't do reality TV. I think it's vile, nasty bullying of vulnerable people. Anyway, apparently, Chris has joined in with the Kim Kardashian bashing which disappoints me. And, pisses me off. I have no idea what Kim Kardashian has done to deserve such nasty bullying off everyone but unless she's a serial killer or personally paying the entire costs of the War on Women, I'm going to guess she doesn't deserve it. So, Chris, you need to stop hangin' with misogynists. They are stupid and you, supposedly, are not.

Good Hair is classic Chris Rock. He is equally snarky and lovely. Plus, it has Maya Angelou and who doesn't love Maya Angelou? I only have two real criticisms. The first is that Rock doesn't ever really delve into the issue of men's hair. It is referenced by Reverend Al Sharpton but many of the other men in the documentary had shaved heads which left me wondering about how much pressure men feel under to have "real" hair. But, that's not a very fair criticism since the documentary was about African-American women's hair and constructions of beauty. This is where I had a problem because I think Rock pulled his punches.

Rock should have been using the terms racism and misogyny but he didn't. He talked about the construction of beauty being about white women with beautiful hair and how damaging it was to the self-esteem of young African-American women. He also talked a lot about how expensive it was for African-American women to buy weaves but, at $1000 minimum each, how many can actually afford to buy weaves for their hair? Or, can afford to buy the "relaxing" cream [which is effectively poison]? Again, I felt Rock skirted around the issue of poverty. He just didn't make the clear correlation between race, poverty and the construction of beauty. Maybe I'm asking too much of Rock and expecting a feminist critique but I just felt he didn't push hard enough. I don't mean he should have questioned the women he interviewed harder. One of the nice things about Rock is that he genuinely seems to enjoy chatting to pretty much anyone and actually listens to what they say [rather than what he thinks they should be saying]. I just wanted Rock to go farther with his own political analysis. I wanted him to be bell hooks and Audre Lorde. 

I wanted Rock to talk about more than his daughters.

I wanted to hear a male celebrity talk about misogyny, racism and poverty.

I didn't want him to subtle; I wanted to hear him say those words. 

I wanted him to call out the billion dollar industry which profits from racism and misogyny.

Most of all, I wanted to hear Chris Rock yelling "Fuck the Patriarchy" so I could mail it back to him and politely request that he stop being so rude about Kim Kardashian. Instead, he ended the documentary with a quote from Ice-T, a man who is not noted for his respect for women.

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Sarah Catt: Reinforcing My Pro-Choice Stance

I've written and erased this blogpost several times now. I've followed the case in the media but I don't feel competent or qualified to comment. As Glosswitch said "I didn’t attend her trial, don’t live in her head and have no idea, in the grand scheme of things, how harshly she deserves to be judged." The case is disturbing and, frankly, asks more questions that I feel comfortable with trying to answer for myself. But, I do think 8 years is an incredibly harsh sentence. It may be that Catt is just a woman who didn't want to be pregnant but I suspect there is more to the case than has been released publicly [or assumed by the men moralising about her behaviour]. I doubt very much a man whose violence towards a pregnant partner resulted in the death of the fetus would have gotten 8 years. Hell, I doubt he would have gotten 6 months. 

I'm still struggling to adequately express my misgivings about this case but it has reinforced my belief that women should have the right to choose an abortion at any point without qualification or artificial hierarchy of "good" versus "bad" abortions. [I also believe that poverty should not be the reason a woman chooses to have an abortion. We should have a welfare state that would support her, regardless of that choice. Obviously, I'm away with the fairies on this one too]. Below is the information about a pro-choice rally on Saturday September 29th in London. Money permitting, I will be there to support women's right to choose so that no other woman ends up in prison for 8 years like Sarah Catt for aborting a pregnancy they did not want.

It's time for Action on Abortion!

Rights for Northern Ireland
Global decriminalisation of abortion
An end to harassment at abortion clinics

What? Demo for Action on Abortion

When? Saturday 29th September, 2.00 – 4.00 pm

Where? Old Palace Yard, opposite the Houses of Parliament

The summer is just about over and that means the next round of 'vigils' outside abortion clinics is almost upon us. This autumn, the start of 40 Days for Life's anti-choice campaign coincides with the events to mark the International Day for the Decriminalisation of Abortion – which we'll be marking with calls for rights for women in Northern Ireland and full decriminalisation in the UK. So now's the time to raise our voices on all these crucial issues.

What's the problem?

• Abortion in Northern Ireland is outlawed in almost all circumstances. Women who want to terminate a pregnancy must travel to the UK or abroad to access services at great emotional and financial cost.
  Women in Northern Ireland need abortion rights.
• Abortion law in England, Scotland and Wales is outdated. Although we have high quality abortion services, there is no 'right' to abortion. The consent of two doctors is required and each abortion must fit certain grounds.
  We need full decriminalisation and abortion on request.
• There are 20 million unsafe abortions around the world every year – most of them in countries where abortion is criminalised or restricted. At least 47,000 women will die as a result and thousands more will suffer ill health.
  We need worldwide decriminalisation of abortion & safe reproductive healthcare for all.
• Anti-choice campaigners are increasingly protesting outside abortion clinics – targeting individual women, causing distress and intimidation and sometimes even filming them.
  Women need privacy and safety when accessing abortions. The government must commit to stopping clinic harassment.

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Child maintenance: Or, Why You Shouldn't Stick Your Cock in a Woman if You Aren't Prepared to be a Father

There is no birth control which is 100% effective. Most women know that every time they have PIV, they are risking pregnancy. We have sex because we enjoy it; despite the knowledge of all the possible lifetime consequences. We know the difficulties of choosing whether or not continue the pregnancy. We know that many women do not have a choice; whether it is because there is no access to abortion in their area or if poverty will force a "choice" on them. We know what pregnancy can do to our bodies in a "normal healthy" pregnancy; never mind one in which we could potentially have SPD, anaemia, gestational diabetes, hyperemesis, or pre-eclampsia. We know the all the possible consequences of giving birth; vaginally or via caesarian. We know the possibilities of post-natal depression, tearing and even the fact that domestic violence frequently starts or gets more severe during pregnancy. We know the statistics because we know the realities. We see them every day in our families and our friends. 

The real question is why do so many men (and their handmaidens) assume that men should face no consequences for fathering a child? And, why does the government support the right of these losers to fuck women with impunity whilst slut-shaming those women for having sex? Why are women the only ones who have to take responsibility for the consequences of their actions? Why does the government think it should punish some women for withholding contact from abusive men without punishing those same men for the abuse or their failure to pay maintenance? Why do men get to do whatever they want whenever they want with no legal or moral requirement for them to act like an adult?

Here's the thing: I think withholding maintenance is child abuse. If you help create a child, then you damn well better financially support them. Men who withhold maintenance to punish the mother are committing child abuse. Failure to support your child is neglect and should be legally recognised as such. If the primary carer, otherwise known as the mother, could go to prison for child neglect for failing to adequately feed and clothe their child, then why shouldn't the erstwhile "father"? These men aren't "good fathers" and the pretence that they are actively harms children. Children need good, kind men in their lives. They don't need abusive arseholes who prioritise fancy cars and booze above the basic needs of their children.

And, yeah, I think men who don't bother to financially support their child, shouldn't be allowed access. Deliberately withholding support should be a legally valid reason to deny contact. Men who use access to control their ex-partners should be prohibited from contact. Men who commit domestic violence against their partners shouldn't be allowed contact with their children. If you assault your partner, then you can't ever be a good father. Good fathers are not abusive. Children deserve the right to be raised in a happy and secure home; not one in which their "father" gets to dictate everything that happens just because he has a penis.

Failing to support your children means you aren't a real man. You deserve to be named and shamed. You are responsible for the feminisation of poverty.

You are the reason our old government had to subsidise single mothers through tax credits and income support. You are the reason that these same women will be pushed further into poverty by our current government of misogynistic arsehats. These are the people who are destroying our families; not single mothers who are desperately trying to feed and clothe their children whilst dealing with abusive men and a society that doesn't think men should be held responsible for anything. Ever.

Canada has a much better track record with child maintenance than the UK. The assumption there is that men should pay to support their children in order to prevent women's dependence on the welfare state. Perhaps our current government of nincompoops should have looked into that instead of slashing the welfare budget creating a whole new generation of vulnerable children being raised in poverty. These are the consequences for failure to pay in Canada

• Make deductions from wages (maximum of 40% gross wage); 
• MEP can take money payable to the debtor from bank accounts, mutual funds, rent or contract fees; 
• Garnish income tax refunds, GST rebates, Canada Pension Plan income, and Employment Insurance payments; 
• The debtor may be prevented from transferring any property he or she wishes to sell, and allows MEP to seize assets including vehicles, shares and bonds; 
• The debtor may have his or her driver’s licence, registration, licence plates, or abstracts restricted or suspended; 
• Recreational licences for fishing and hunting may be restricted; 
• MEP may cancel current driver’s licences for account more than 60 days in late payments; 
• Passports can be revoked; 
• MEP may prevent an owner from re-mortgaging or selling real estate without first making payments. In some cases MEP may force sale of real estate; 
• Failure to make child support payments may be registered as bad debt and affect credit; 
• If assets are being kept in the name of a company, MEP can apply for a court order allowing the company’s assets to be used to pay for the debt; 
• MEP may seize assets the debtor tries to sell; and/or 
• If assets are being put in someone else’s name to avoid collection, MEP can apply for a court order allowing for their seizure 

It's easily assessed via personal income tax which is filed yearly. Yes, there are real holes in the system and some men do get away with child financial neglect but, at least, Canada recognises that men who refuse to support their children are committing a crime which has long-term consequences for those children. The UK needs to take a real stand against abusive men and start forcing men to take responsibility for where they decide to ejaculate.

Gingerbread Campaign on CSA

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SlutWalk Edinburgh 2012

Slutwalk Edinburgh takes place Saturday July 7th 

1:30 pm in Parliament Square on the Royal Mile. 

Those are the details for this years Slutwalk Edinburgh for those who are interested. I won't be attending because I find the whole idea of Slutwalks problematic. I would have marched in the original in Toronto because that had a specific purpose: to raise awareness of the misogynistic discourse normalised within the police as it manifested in that specific incident. The worldwide movement to reclaim the word "slut" bothers me. There seems to have been little real political analysis of the word and its specific connotations for different groups of women due to race, class, and ethnicity. Personally, I don't believe it is possible to re-appropriate the words of your oppressors. I also think its incredibly odd to try to reclaim the word "slut" in order to demonstrate that rape isn't about being a "slut".

Violence against women is endemic and systemic. It is everywhere and it is excused a thousand times a day in a million different ways. Slutwalk doesn't address or even attempt to analyse VAW. It only attempts to address one facet of rape myths without questioning the rape culture in which those myths are perpetuated and perpetrated. Rape isn't just about controlling women's sexuality as Slutwalk seems to imply. The act of rape [and the fear of the act of rape] are about controlling every facet of women's lives. Rape isn't about how women dress [or don't dress]. Rape is the practise of misogyny. It is misogyny that we need to eradicate but we need to do this by attacking every facet of VAW. Slutwalk privileges the lived experiences of middle class, white women. It merely reinforces the racist constructions about the sexuality of Black and Ethnic Minority women. It ignores the structural oppressions of poverty. It ignores how the structural oppressions of poverty specifically target Black and Ethnic Minority women.

I want the eradication of the patriarchal-capitalist structures which oppress women. I don't want to reclaim or re-appropriate the words of my oppressors. I want them gone.

I wish my sisters luck [and sunshine] for Slutwalk Edinburgh. I won't be on the march but, if Slutwalk becomes the catalyst which destroys the Patriarchy, I will be the first one to apologise.

Some interesting blogs and articles on Slutwalk:

Amplify Your Voice: In Context: Criticisms of the Slutwalk

People of Colour Organize: Four Brief Critiques of Slutwalk's Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics

Black Women's Blueprint: An Open Letter From Black Women to the Slutwalk

The Crunk Feminist Collective: I Saw the Sign but Did We Really Need the Sign? Slutwalk and Racism

The F Word: Feminist Critiques of Slutwalk Have Forgotten That Language is Not a Commodity

Gail Dines & Wendy J Murphy: Slutwalk is not Sexual Liberation

Alternatives to Slutwalk:

Reclaim the Night

Million Women Rise

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FFS: School Uniforms DON'T improve children's learning or behaviour.

It doesn't matter if you stick a bunch of preschoolers in ties or teenagers in bright orange prison jumpsuits, dressing children the same doesn't make them better learners. It doesn't make them behave better. Children learn best in safe environments where they are respected and where the staff and management respect one another. I know I've ranted about this before [and all over MN] but I have NEVER seen any research-based evidence that says uniform increases student outcomes or changes their behaviour positively. I have seen lots of studies which imply this [and media coverage which swears blind that this is the case] but in these studies the inclusion or formalising of school uniforms has always been part of a wide-ranging number of changes to the schools including a new management team and a new behavioural contract policy.

This article in the BBC just made me want to rip my hair out. Now, I don't necessarily agree that teenagers calling their teachers by their first names is a good thing. That's the type of behaviour that comes after positive relationships already exist between the students and staff [and I frigging loathe the diminutive "Miss" for women teachers. Totally demeaning that shit is]. But, this pretence that British children learn better wearing ties and shorts in the winter is just nincompoopery. American, Canadian and German children don't wear uniforms and their children aren't running about like Barbarians blowing up schools and assassinating their teachers. Violence does occur but that is reflected, particularly in the US, in the exclusion of poor, ethnic minority students into sinkhole schools and gang culture. It's about poverty and racism. Children aren't stupid. They can tell when their school is funded properly or when they are being dumped somewhere with teachers who don't care and they respond accordingly.

Could we just stop with this freaking cognitive dissonance about ties making kids learn better. It just seriously farks me off.

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Women Power: Family Planning Saves Lives

The lack of access women, all over the world, have to birth control and abortion directly impacts on family and community structures. Where there is little or no access, there is an increase in maternal and infant mortality with the practise of unsafe abortions, occasionally infanticide, or the birth of unwanted children [particularly due to economics] causing untold problems in communities. There are cultural prohibitions against some forms of birth control but the lack of access to basic medical care [or even clean water] means that too many women are suffering from unwanted pregnancies and too many children are being born into families that can not support them. This is without getting into the issue of women being allowed to control what happens to their own bodies by having the power to control whether or not they conceive without being coerced via government policy or economics. Even ignoring the US governments cowardly policy, during the Bush administration, of not funding any family planning clinic that mentioned abortion, the impact on women's lives has been horrendous.

There have been several high profile campaigns bringing media and world attention to this issue; notably the White Ribbon Alliance on Maternal Mortality whose global patron is Sarah Brown. Their information page contains numerous links to important research into maternal mortality, including the research into feeding infants during emergencies; a piece of information that the large multi-national corporations like Nestle like to pretend doesn't exist. It might sound counter-intuitive but donations of formula and baby-food in disaster zones, particularly where access to clean water is non-existant, lead to increases in infant mortality. It is much safer for infants to be breastfed and any woman who has previously lactated can feed an infant as the female body is designed to respond to the nutritional needs of an infant. The White Ribbon Alliance works in partnership with other organisations in a variety of nations to advocate for safe motherhood as a basic human right.

The newest campaign on safe motherhood and reproductive rights kicked off with the International Reporting Project sending 11 bloggers to Kenya to report on reproductive health and population issues. The bloggers, including the very lovely Lynn Schreiber, spent the first day in Kibera, one of the largest slums in East Africa where population estimates range up to 3 million [although this generally considered too high]. This is part of the lead-up to The London Summit on Family Planning held jointly by the Gates Foundation and the UK government in July [with any luck Melinda Gates will shame Cameron into at least pretending to be human].

There are some obvious questions which need to raised when dealing with the issue of family planning, particularly in relation to issues of coercion and the, quite violent, history of population control polices such as those enacted in Nazi Germany and China not to mention places like California which had enforced sterilisation programs for those deemed unfit. Dorothy Roberts' Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty lists some of the coercive policies enacted in the US to prevent poor African-Americans from having children. It included the use of mandatory birth control in New Jersey in order to receive public benefits. In the 1990s. We may think of Nazi Germany and China when thinking of coercive population control but they are by no means the only guilty party and it isn't "history". Coercive reproductive measures happen everyday anywhere that access to birth control, abortion and medical facilities are not present [and this is without getting into the issue of rape and sexual violence which severely impact on women's health, particularly in war and disaster zones].

This is why I was glad to see that Amnesty International, the Centre for Reproductive Rights, Action Aid and dozens of other human rights organisations, academics and women's rights activists have signed this declaration:

We, civil society organizations working to promote women’s and young people’s human rights, call on world leaders on the eve of the “Family Planning Summit”, hosted by the UK Government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, to ensure that sexual and reproductive health and rights are at the centre of all efforts to meet reproductive health needs, including family planning. Contraceptive information and services – “family planning” – form an essential part of the health services that women need throughout their lives. Any steps to increase demand for contraceptives must actively support efforts to improve comprehensive and integrated sexual and reproductive health.  

Contraceptives must be provided through primary healthcare, with full regard for women’s human rights and the specific needs of young and unmarried women and other groups. Our experience, built over decades of work around the world, has taught us that the failure to take actions guided by women’s human rights – to health, to life, to live free from discrimination among others – can have devastating consequences. Policies that accept or tacitly condone forced sterilization, the coercive provision of contraceptives, and the denial of essential services to the young, poor and marginalized women that need them every day have violated, and continue to violate, women’s human rights. 

Nearly twenty years ago, governments at the International Conference on Population and Development agreed that respect for women’s reproductive autonomy is the cornerstone of population policy. Any return to coercive family planning programs where quality of care and informed consent are ignored would be both shocking and retrograde. The Family Planning Summit must ensure that the clocks are not put back on women’s human rights: women’s autonomy and agency to decide freely on matters related to sexual and reproductive health without any discrimination, coercion or violence must be protected under all circumstances. ...

Save the Children are also involved in the Family Planning Summit and have started a petition requesting that the British government make a firm commitment to the issue of family planning and safe motherhood. Please sign this petition to help women around the world give birth and raise their children with access to real health care [and education].

Free access to birth control, family planning and safe motherhood should be a basic human right with every woman having the control over her own body and her own family. Anything less is nothing more than a return to the normal coercive practises but this time tied up in a different fancy box with a UN ribbon on top.

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Loving the NHS: Why Privatisation Kills

Someone on Twitter linked to this document Dying for Coverage: The Deadly Consequences of Being Uninsured by Families USA. And, I read it. And, I was horrified. One of the statistics quoted is that more people in California in 2010 died because of a lack of health insurance than in car accidents. Now, I'm not unfamiliar with the shite which passes as the US healthcare system. You can't grow up in Canada in a place which only had American TV channels accessible or attend uni in a border town without getting at least a passing understanding of its all-round crapness. But, the idea that more people die from lack of adequate healthcare than in car accidents [with the sheer number of stupid people who are apparently legally entitled to drive; some as young as 15] is just jaw-dropping.

Living on the border with the US, you see lots of healthcare tourists. Many are elderly people on pensions travelling several days on buses in order to buy their prescription medications for pretty basic conditions like asthma and diabetes [and I say basic because the treatments like ventolin have been on the market for years and cost very little in Canada or the UK]. The use of the term "tourism" is just farcical. Travelling 4 days on a bus when you're 75 to get treatment for diabetes is not the sign of a civilised nation. And, it's hardly surprising that the states with the highest amount of deaths due to lack of health insurance are the states with the largest populations of Hispanics, African-Americans and other ethnic minorities. Nothing says racism quite like poor access to healthcare. Nothing says racism quite like institutionalised and systemic murder through lack of basic healthcare. And, there can be no debate on this. A child who dies of cancer because they can't afford the treatment isn't dying because of cancer. They are being murdered by a society that doesn't give a shit.

The Affordable Care Act comes into effect in 2014. It still won't guarantee basic health insurance for every person living in the US and that's only if the evil Republicans don't get it vetoed [and anyone who participates in that should be going straight to hell]. This bill still doesn't cover universal access to birth control, abortion or maternity services. The US has one of the highest rates of maternal death in "Western-Industrialised" economies. The misogyny inherent in killing women through lack of access to these services is astronomical.

 I am proud to live in a country which has free healthcare at the point of service. Where a child with cancer is treated at ANY hospital, regardless of their insurance. Where abortion and birth control are considered human rights. Where prescription medications are available for all and not just those lucky enough to be wealthy.

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