Friday, March 04, 2005

Women's rights attacked here and abroad

Well, looks like it is a bad week to be a woman. In Kansas, the fascist state attorney general Phill Kline has apparently decided that the constitution is his own personal toilet paper. The goal of his little fishing expedition is to obtain personal medical records of women who MIGHT have been the victim of a crime. He refuses to let the clinics use numbers to identify patients instead of their real names. The LA times has a great editorial on this story.
On the international front, a Pakistani court has overturned the convictions of 5 men who were convicted of the tribal "honor rape" of woman whose brother was falsely accused of illicit sexual acts. Two of the men released were members of a tribal council that ordered her rape, and three of the men participated in gang raping her. A sixth man who was involved in the gang rape had his sentence commuted to life in prison. I don't think I can ever remember being this disgusted with a court ruling. I just can't believe the courts in Pakistan are letting them get away with this horrific crime.

Update: Nicholas Kristof just wrote a great op/ed piece in the NY Times about the woman in the honor rape case. She has apparently become quite the activist in Pakistan since her attack.