Famous Irish Women. Buzzle.com.

Quotes by Famous Irish Women. Think Exist.

Boudicca: Famous Celtic Warrior. Women’s History.

The Story of Boudicca. University of North Carolina.

The signs picture a cute baby with the headline “Black Children are an Endangered Species.” For me the most disturbing part of the sign is how they are treating black children as if they are a separate species from other babies. These groups claim that Planned Parenthood targets black women. This is an insult to black women and continues the dehumanizing theme of the billboards. It is as if black women do not have the intellectual capacity to make educated decisions for themselves, but instead are prey of the abortion providers.  

Reproductive issues for black women have been trying throughout history. During slavery, women were rewarded for reproducing thus increasing the plantations workforce, while an infertile woman would suffer more abuse and ridicule. Later, black women were more affected by threats to take away welfare benefits if they didn’t get sterilized.

The signs in Atlanta are supposed to bring attention to the fact that black women disproportionally have more abortions than other races. They point to Center for Disease Control and Prevention statistics and the number of Planned Parenthood clinics in minority neighborhoods. However, they don’t look at the whole picture. Could there be an inequity in prevention education, economic development, healthcare access and self-empowerment programs in these areas as well?

I actually would love to decrease the number of abortions women of all colors have each year. However, the bill currently in the Georgia legislature won’t be effective at helping any women, especially minority women. Real change requires comprehensive sex education and giving women the power to demand their rights in and outside the bedroom.

So much women’s history goodness, such little time…

Over 200,000 Women were raped in conflict in DR Congo, now its time to ‘get cross’ and say no. Say No-Unite.

Women’s History Month: Writing Women Back into History. Library of Congress.

Origins of Women’s History Month has roots on Campus. Sonoma State Star.

Women’s History Month Spotlight: Dr. Mae Jemison. Haven Hollywood.

Famous Women Scientists and More for Women’s History Month. The Smart Mama.

Women Describe 70 years of liberation. The Columbian.

Gone with the Wind and Feminism. L Magazine.

Why I’m Still a Girl Guide at 18. Tribute to the Girl Scouts of America. The F Bomb

A Month of Historic Celebrations. Veteran Feminists of America.

Contrary to an old view of sexual development, Michael Clinton and his colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh say in the March 11 Nature, individual chicken cells can maintain their own strong male or female identities during development instead of being directed by hormones.

Clinton says his research group ended up considering hormones and sexual identity in the course of studying three peculiar chickens donated to the Roslin Institute. Each bird looked like a rooster on one side, with a long wattle jiggling under its chin, robust legs and bulging muscles. The other half of the same bird — the right side on two birds and the left on the third — had the darker plumage, reduced wattle and dainty ankles of a hen.

Such male-female mashups, called gynandromorphs, have turned up spontaneously in zebra finches, pigeons and parrots as well as in other kinds of animals, Clinton says. These cases challenge the traditional view that genetics takes a back seat to hormonal signals in guiding vertebrate sexual differentiation.

Holy chicken nuggets, Batman! Are the chickens intersex, transgender, or what? Maybe they’re “two-spirit.” But whatever word you want to use, that’s pretty freakin’ awesome that the chickens have both male and female parts, and they’re literally split down the middle of the chromosomal line.

I once saw some fish at an aquarium that could change their sex in order to perpetuate the species. Females could become male if there was a sex imbalance in the group, in order to reproduce and perpetuate the species. Transsexual fish.

You might be wondering what the heck does this has to do with anything. Well, I think the chickens and the fish show that transgender identities exist throughout nature. Kind of cool if you ask me.

(Hat tip to the Shanman for the story link.)

An Interview with Michael Moore – Poponthepop
A Ban on Race-Based Abortions? – Broadsheet
“Famine Marriages” a Biproduct of Climate Change – IPS News
Mifepristone (aka “The Abortion Pill”) is Ruled Out as HIV Treatment – AIDSmeds.com
Let’s Appreciate Abortion Providers Every Day – The Abortioneers
Is Violence Against Women Really Taken Seriously? – Womanist Musings

According to the Women’s Media Center, HB 1155, or the “Sex and Race Selection Bill,” seeks

[T]o ban the solicitation and targeting of women of color by abortion providers throughout the state. If implemented, this bill will adversely impact abortion providers by requiring them to prove that they are not targeting women of a certain race or ethnicity. … While the anti-choice HB 1155 legislation might seem at first glance to be a positive step in preventing gender and race discrimination, SisterSong and other reproductive rights organizations believe that it is important to discourage sex selection while still protecting abortion rights. Abortion bans have not stopped sex selection and they are additionally harmful to women

For more information about the bill, check out SisterSong, an Atlanta-based reproductive health collective.

“No one has ever given me a good reason why we should obey unjust laws.” Helen Keller, 1914.

The same year that Helen Keller made the above statement, Margaret Sanger was publishing articles advocating birth control in her journal The Woman Rebel, and knowingly breaking anti-obscenity laws by doing so.

Margaret Sanger and Helen Keller shared more than a love of justice. The two women had remarkable lives that were intertwined in many ways.

The women’s names were first associated in 1915 when Keller publicly commented on the Bollinger baby case. In a manner similar to the Terri Schiavo controversy, the Bollinger’s story acted as a line in the sand for individuals to publicly proclaim their position on birth control and eugenics. And just like the Schiavo case, everyone in America seemed to have an opinion, making it one of the year’s biggest news stories.

Newspaper clipping from 1915 Bollinger baby case

Keller sympathized with the Bollinger’s and cited the Sanger’s efforts to help poor families control the number of children they had through birth control. Keller applauded the Sanger’s efforts and even blamed capitalists for trying to keep poor families in poverty with many children in order to supply cheap labor to their factories.

Keller concluded that “Only by taking the responsibility of birth control into their own hands can they roll back the awful tide of misery that is sweeping over them and their children.”

Some of the other ways the lives of these two remarkable women were connected included:

• Both joined the Socialist Party and Industrial Workers of the World within a year of each other.
• Both were outspoken pacifists and wrote for New York Call (a leading Socialist paper).
• FBI kept files on both women.
• Hitler burned both of their books in the mid-1930s.
• Both saw birth control as a way to liberate women.
• Both named in Time Magazine’s “Most Important People of the Century.”
• Both women had offices on the same block, just a door away from each other. Despite this, the women did not meet until 1944 when a mutual friend introduced them in upstate New York.

I find it odd and almost disturbing that these two politically influential women would not have made a stronger effort to meet. I find it hard to understand how and why they did not meet while working a mere door away from each other. After all, Helen Keller was one of the most respected Americans during the time when Sanger faced the most backlash for her birth control activism. Surely Keller would have made a formidable ally for Sanger. Both women were highly connected in liberal New York circles, leaving one to wonder about the reason for the delay in their introduction.

After they finally met in 1944 the two remained close friends, socializing often and constantly making public tributes to each other. The women died two years apart, Sanger in 1966 and Keller in 1968.

Non-web references:

Margaret Sanger Paper’s Project Newsletter Number 53: Winter 2009/10, as “Battling the Powers of Darkness–Helen Keller, Margaret Sanger and Birth Control.”

According to a recent article in Poz Magazine:

The particulars of women’s heightened risk include the specifics of female biology; high rates of sexual abuse and gender-based violence; battles for self-esteem and respect; women’s need to be accepted by sexual partners; a chronic lack of resources and income; and homophobia, which can drive lesbians to unsafe and unhealthy practices.

Another part of the challenge is that the stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS prevents women from getting tested or seeking support services for themselves. One woman interviewed in another Poz article about HIV and women pointed out that if you have breast cancer or heart disease, there are races and other public events for people to show their support. But with HIV, people would rather look the other way.

Let’s stop looking the other way. If you don’t know your HIV status, you should get tested. There are 1 million people in in American who are HIV+, but 25% of them don’t know their status because they haven’t been tested.

For more info about HIV and women, check out the articles that I mentioned earlier. You can also get the facts from Planned Parenthood.