Women's Rights

Police walk into a shady club full of women "dancers," including at least one minor, being paid next to nothing, forced to make up selling quotas with sex acts, without proper immigration documentation. They arrest the 81 women and aim most toward deportation proceedings, while the club is free to hire replacement dancers and continue its illegal and exploitative business practices. The club is obviously happy, and the police are happy, because they get to claim usefulness with a mass arrest. The only people not happy are the women. Oh, and people who care about sex trafficking.

A recent raid on Club 907 in Los Angeles was ostensibly to investigate club management's illegal behavior, as Lauren Markem points out on Immigrant Rights, it ended up being nothing more than an excuse for an immigration raid, which law enforcement would not have been allowed to conduct. The people arrested as "criminals" were the dancers, while the patrons were sent home, and the club management left free to hire replacement dancer, despite police uncovering cocaine, unauthorized alcohol, and evidence of illegal prostitution.

As Amanda Kloer writes on End Human Trafficking, this incident gives off clear red flags for sex trafficking. The 17-year-old missing girl, first off, cannot be a criminal, because of her age, and is automatically a sex trafficking victim if engaged in prostitution. And an illegal brothel front full of vulnerable undocumented women kept as essential slaves because the "owe" the club a certain amount of money each night before they can get paid, women who have no idea of their rights in this country or ability to escape the forced labor or sex, should inspire police to charge management with human trafficking like a red flag in front of a bull.

Never doubt that a small or large group of concerned citizens can make a big difference.

Thanks to the hundreds of emails sent by Change.org members and action taken by advocates and concerned police officers themselves, the New York Police Department is changing how it handles sex crime statistics. According to the Wall Street Journal, The NYPD is accepting six recommendations from the recently convened Sex Crimes Working Group to change the way reported rapes and sexual assaults are handled to ensure that victims of these crimes are treated respectfully. In other words, we're hopeful that the downgrading of sex crimes in NYC will soon be a thing of the past.

In a post by Women's Rights editor Alex DiBranco and my own earlier post on Change.org, we have been reporting on the ways in which the NYPD has been "manipulating" statistics on rape and sexual assault in the city. The Village Voice initially uncovered, earlier this year, a pattern of undercharging reported rapes as misdemeanors instead of felonies -- or simply ignoring them altogether -- by the NYPD. Officers were ordered by their superiors to underreport or cover-up sexual assault cases in order to meet "performance measurements" for specific crimes.

Police officers themselves came forward to expose the false reports; a tenacious journalist who had been assaulted herself demanded answers from the Manhattan District Attorney; and groups like the NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault consistently made claims that the downgrading of rape and sexual assault charges was a chronic problem.

Earlier this week, I told you about an unbelievably offensive card for sale online. A user on Etsy — an online marketplace for handmade and vintage items — operating under the name "youstupidbitch" is selling cards that read "Congratulations. You've been bad touched" that are marketed to survivors of sexual violence.  Yesterday, I learned the same user also sells cards that mock breast cancer and mothers of special needs children.

The card for breast cancer patients features a drawing of a woman getting a mammogram and is emblazoned with the words "Congratulations, You've Got Breast Cancer!" If possible, the cards (there are two) for mothers of children with Down Syndrome are even worse. The first one has a crudely drawn picture of a man with Down Syndrome saying "I can count to potato!" and the card reads "Congratulations, Your kid has Down Syndrome!" The second one, which you can see here, is even more foul.

There was a glimmer of hope yesterday when, after receiving hundreds of emails from Change.org members over the course of a day, Etsy took down these horrible cards. Within hours, however, the cards were all back up on the site. By allowing youstupidbitch to continue to peddle his horrible wares on their site, Etsy is saying that nothing is too low, too offensive for them. It is time to tell them that this is unacceptable. Please sign the petition asking Etsy to remove these offensive cards and then share the link with your friends and family. Post it on Facebook and Twitter. Let's get the word out that we won't stand for Etsy's permissiveness of woman-bashing.

Photo credit: audreyjm529

GOT A TIP FOR US? Is there a story or campaign in your area that we'd want to know about? E-mail us at womensrightstips@change.org. Please also follow Change.org's Women's Rights page on Facebook and Twitter.

St. Joseph's, a Catholic hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, generated a heap of controversy earlier this year for making the apparently profoundly un-Catholic decision to save a woman's life. Even though the woman had a "close to 100 percent" probability of dying without the recommended abortion, meaning her 11-week-old fetus also had no chance of survival, the Catholic Church's stance remained that it's better to allow a mother of four to die than perform that evil medical procedure. Now, due to the hospital's principled refusal to deny life-saving medical care to women, it has been kicked out of the Catholic Church.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot understand the stance of Rev. John Ehrich, medical ethics director for the Diocese of Phoenix, who argued that, making the right decision under Catholic doctrine, "There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child." Even though, abortion or no abortion, the fetus will not survive, the woman must also be sacrificed. His viewpoint enjoyed the support of Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmstead, who issued an ultimatum: promise to let women die in the future, or you're out of the Catholic Church. St. Joseph's chose life.

St. Joseph's gave a statement about their principled refusal to give in to the bishop's demands: "Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save." This hospital's stand is heartening, but Bishop Olmstead's decision that Catholic hospitals cannot provide live-saving medical care has frightening ramifications. Fifteen percent of all hospital beds in the United States are Catholic-run. And not all Catholic hospitals are willing to reject this anti-life decree to protect women; in fact, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) raises concerns about other religiously affiliated hospitals denying emergency care. They are asking Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to investigate these infractions, since these hospitals, receive federal money and are bound by law to provide emergency abortions.

The success of the #MooreandMe Twitter protest, launched by Sady Doyle of Tiger Beatdown, has demonstrated the power of internet activism and a swift netroots campaign.

On Tuesday, I wrote that Michael Moore was being targeted by Twitter protesters using the hashtag #MooreandMe to decry his decision to dismiss the rape charges against Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, as "hooey" and donate $20,000 to the accused's bail. At that time, Moore remained silent. But the Twitter protest turned its focus toward Rachel Maddow, who was hosting Moore on her show last night, requesting that she ask her guest about his statements on air.

"Every woman who claims to have been sexually assaulted or raped has to be, must be, taken seriously. ... For too long, and too many women have been abused in our society , because they were not listened to, and they just got shoved aside. ... So I think these two alleged victims have to be taken seriously and Mr. Assange has to answer the questions." That's not one of the protesters speaking. It's Michael Moore himself, answering Rachel Maddow. Standing up for the women who charged Assange with rape.

And Sady Doyle writes that she received her own Twitter message from Moore: A thank you. An apology for not responding sooner, because, wrote Moore, "I needed more than 140 charctrs 2 say what I said 2night-& it needed 2 b said on TV." Oh, and a "Merry Xmas."

In November, the Washington State Board of Pharmacy was ready to capitulate to pharmacies who threatened a big bad lawsuit if they weren't permitted to refuse to dispense emergency contraception (EC). Never mind that these pharmacies had a weak case; the Board didn't want to shell out any money to defend women's contraceptive access, so they were all ready to give in. But concerned Change.org members, Washington state residents, and NARAL Pro-Choice Washington took advantage of the public comments period to let the Board know just what they thought of that kind of spineless behavior. And their voices were heard.

Fellow Women's Rights blogger Amie Newman reports on RH Reality Check that, last week, the Board of Pharmacy voted that there would be no rule change, and women will retain access to legal drugs at any pharmacy in the state. Under the preserved rules, any individual pharmacist may refuse to dispense a given drug on grounds of their "conscience," but the pharmacy as a whole must have somebody willing to dispense the item in their place. This latter regulation is what a group of pharmacies led by Ralph's Thriftway wanted to change, so that an entire pharmacy could bear the "no EC here" stamp.

Since Plan B emergency contraception is a time-sensitive drug, barring people from purchasing this at a number of pharmacies in the state could cost many women the opportunity to protect themselves against unwanted pregnancy. And though EC was the main target of this push by pharmacies claiming a "moral" opposition, the proposed change would have allowed them to refuse to dispense any legal drug to any person they didn't feel like serving. One of the concerns Newman brought up along these lines would be a pharmacist refusing to dispense HIV/AIDS medication to a gay person out of homophobia.

With over 80% of the 5,300 comments directed at the Board of Pharmacy being registered in opposition to changing the rule on contraception access, including a couple hundred emails from Change.org members signing a petition from NARAL Washington, it seems clear that the outpouring of criticism pushed the Board members to do an about-face. And though the pharmacies plan to go through with their threatened law suit, women's rights legal defenders feel confident that the current rule will stand up in court.

Photo credit: Michael Lemmon

It's shaping up to be a Happy New Year for gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) troops in the military: over the weekend, the Senate finally passed Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, and this morning, President Barack Obama signed the bill into law.

DADT was an absurd policy which forced GLB servicemembers to stay in the military closet about their sexuality — they weren't supposed to tell, others weren't supposed to ask, and we could all live in a little fantasy land pretending that the only people who serve and die for our country are straight perfect zeroes on the Kinsey scale. It's the same land where the Air Force rides on magic carpets and members of the Army steer unicorns instead of tanks.

But back in the sphere of reality, there were gay, lesbian, and bisexual persons serving and dying for the American flag, and thousands of others being found out and shipped home no matter how important their expertise might be to the military. The policy came down hardest on lesbian and bisexual women in the service, who were discharged at a higher rate than their male counterparts. Meanwhile, challenges to the law from women like flight nurse Margaret Witt helped to bring the attention and criticism to the policy needed to bring it down.

In fact, DADT repeal ame about in large part due to the concerted efforts of LGBTQ organizations and activists, servicemembers and veterans organizations, the star power of celebrities like Lady Gaga, and finally military leaders who admitted that doing away with the absurd policy would just strengthen our military. DADT was not a gift from the Democratic party leadership: it represents a hard-fought victory by advocates and countless people who stepped into the role of "activist" with their opposition to this destructive policy. Kudos to them.

And a Happy New Year to everybody in the military service.

Photo credit: DVIDSHUB