Monthly Archives: March 2002

Nigerian Woman’s Adultery Death Sentence Thrown Out

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A sharia appeals court recently overturned the death sentence of Safiya Husaini, 35, who had been ordered stoned to death after being convicted of adultery. Safiya’s case had become a worldwide cause and an embarrassment to Nigeria’s government.

The sharia court ruled that the adultery in question took place before the sharia law had been passed, and so the crime was beyond the court’s jurisdiction.

The issue is not likely to go away, however, even though Nigeria’s justice minister, Godwin Agabi, recently ordered sharia state courts to rewrite their rules to bring them in harmony with Nigeria’s national criminal statutes. But, in fact, just as the decision to throw out Safiya’s conviction was announced, it was revealed that another divorced woman had been sentenced to death after being convicted of adultery by an Islamic court.

Nigeria is deeply divided between Muslims and Christians. The imposition of sharia law in parts of Nigeria have led to riots that have left thousands of people dead.

Muslims have had enough influence to impose sharia courts on 12 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The Nigerian justice minister insisted that it is illegal for sharia courts to impose harsher sentences on Muslims than the national law allowed for.

Nigeria will hold elections in early 2003, however, and the issue of Islamic law will be a major issue in those elections.

Sources:

Woman spared Nigeria stoning death. CNN, March 25, 2002.

Sharia court frees Nigerian woman. The BBC, March 25, 2002.

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More on Infant Murder

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Last week I wrote about a new study about the incredibly high risk that infants have of being murdered during their first year of life. Richard Bennett was the first to point out that the rate of infant murder turns out to be much higher than the murder rate of women.

In the CDC study of infant murders, the CDC found that from 1989 to 1998, infant murders occurred at a rate of 8.3 per 100,000 person years. By contrast, the incidence of single killer/single victim homicides where the victim was a woman was 1.35 per 100,000 in 1999.

But, of course, infant murder is not anywhere on the feminist agenda except in the 11 percent of cases where men are the perpetrators.

Source:

Variation in Homicide Risk During Infancy — United States, 1989–1998. Centers for Disease Control, March 8, 2002, 51(09);187-9.

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NOW Hypocrisy on Rape Testing

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The National Organization for Women sent out a press release last week asking for funding of DNA testing of rape evidence. Just for a second I thought maybe NOW had gotten its head out of its rear end and was going to call for judicial reform to make sure men convicted of rape who claim their innocent get a chance at clearing their name with DNA testing. But, of course not. Instead NOW wants $250 million to process a backlog of rape kits stored by police around the country.

According to NOW, there are thousands of rape kits sitting in police evidence lockers that have never had a basic DNA analysis conducted. Why? Because it costs $1,500 and those silly police seem to think that the best time to do a DNA test is when there is a suspect in hand to compare the DNA to. NOW, on the other hand, seems to think that women’s will be helped by a $250 million effort to make sure that DNA test results sit in evidence lockers until a suspect is in hand (and without some sort of national DNA database, that’s what will happen with almost all of these results).

On the other hand, NOW has yet to call for any sort of funding to allow convicted rapists who claim they are innocent to avail themselves of DNA testing. In many cases, they cannot afford such testing and even if they can, in some cases inmates long ago exhausted all appeals and courts are wary of taking another look at the case, even just to examine DNA evidence.

But when it comes to justice, the NOW is satisfied to remain an girls-only club.

Source:

NOW urges funds for DNA testing of rape evidence. NOW Press Office, March 13, 2002.

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NOW Continues to Defend Yates, Avoid the Real Issues

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After trying to distance itself from the Andrea Yates trial, National Organization for Women was back in the spotlight after the jury’s verdict (which this writer wholeheartedly agreed with) as Deborah Bell defended Yates and attacked the jury in the case.

According to an Associated Press story shortly after the verdict was announced,

But Bell, president of the Texas chapter of the National Organization for Women, said she was stunned at the conviction in light of so much evidence of mental illness.

She said Yates was “persecuted, not prosecuted,” and the verdict unveiled a need for public education, understanding and compassion about mental illness.

Leave it to NOW to want a reeducation campaign to make Americans better understand a woman who murdered her vie children and repeatedly said she knew what she was doing was wrong.

Bell is correct, however, about the need for a public education campaign, but that campaign needs to be about child and infant murderers.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta released a report in early March noting that homicide was the 15th-leading cause of infant deaths in the United States. Children have a greater risk of being murdered during their first year of life than at anytime until they reach the age of 17.

Oddly enough, unlike Yates, murderers of infants rarely spend much time in jail. Typical of such killers is Melissa Drexler. On June 6, 1997, she gave birth to a baby boy in the ladies room of a catering hall where her high school prom was being held. She suffocated the newborn infant, threw the body in a trash can and returned to the prom. Drexler was released after serving just barely over 3 years in jail.

Such short sentences for killing infants are typical. Were the fathers of these infants responsible for the vast majority of them, you can be sure that NOW would have a special campaign to crack down on such a lenient court system. But the reality is that 89 percent of the known killers of infants under one year of age were females — usually the mother. Which, of course, means NOW and other groups are simply uninterested.

The jury that convicted Yates did an important service by sending the message that as a society we will not tolerate the murder of children. The next step is to have an equally strong response to people who murder the most vulnerable members of society, infants. A woman who suffocates her newborn son and then goes to the prom should not be able to walk out of prison after only two to three years.

Source:

CDC: First year of life a dangerous one. Associated Press, March 8, 2002.

Verdict sparks passionate reactions. Associated Press, March 12, 2002.

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Our Bodies, Ourselves? Of Course Not!

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On March 19, 2002 a group made of liberal, pro-choice advocates held a press conference in Washington, DC, to speak out in favor of a proposed ban on cloning for research purposes. Once again, pro-choice advocates demonstrated that they really do not believe that women have the right to control their bodies and make their own reproductive decisions.

A group calling itself the Center for Genetic and Society has obtained 100 signatures on a petition in support of the bill which includes some prominent pro-choice feminists and liberals. There’s Judy Norsigian, author of Our Bodies, Ourselves; Alice J. Dan of the federally-funded Center of Excellence in Women’s Health at the University of Illinois; Barbara Dudley, former executive director of Greenpeace USA; Todd Gitlin, the former radical activist and now a professor at New York University; Tom Hayden, former radical activist; left wing radio commentator Jim Hightower; and a host of others.

The petition they signed not only calls for an outright ban on bringing a cloned human to term which makes sense given the limits of the technology at the moment, but also calls for a moratorium on the cloning of human embryos for research purposes. The petition says,

Second, the United States should enact a moratorium on the creation of clonal human embryos for research purposes (often prematurely called “therapeutic cloning”). The widespread creation of clonal embryos would increase the risk that a human clone would be born, and would further open the door to eugenic procedures. Fortunately, important research on embryonic stem cells does not yet require the use of clonal embryos. A moratorium would allow time for alternatives to research cloning to be investigated, for policy makers and the public to make informed judgments, and for regulatory structures to be established to oversee applications that society might decide are acceptable. A moratorium on research cloning is a middle ground between the two positions of an immediate permanent ban and an unconstrained green light.

So much for my body, my choice. Norsigian is the grossest offender. According to The New York Times, “She fears the science will place an undue burden on the women who donate their eggs for the experiments.” Of course isn’t this simply a rewording of the case against abortion, that society will put pressure on women to abort their fetuses? Norsigian is simply reverting to the anti-abortion claim that women cannot possibly make free choices about whether or not to terminate a pregnancy.

Similarly, a lot of the signers of this petition are clearly uncomfortable with what they mistakenly call potential “eugenics” — manipulating fetuses to have one characteristic or another. But wait a minute — I though pro-choice advocates did not think that fetuses had any rights at all. All of a sudden, it is still okay to kill an embryo but not for scientists to clone that same embryo to conduct research? These folks are trying to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

This is why the pro-choice movement is doomed in the long run. Too many people in that movement do not have any sort of philosophical view that informs their beliefs on abortion, but rather simply have a gut reaction in favor it (in many cases, I suspect, simply because the Right generally opposes abortion). Contrary to the rhetoric, few people in the pro-choice movement really believe that men and women should have complete control over matters of reproduction.

The only difference between the pro-choice movement and the pro-life movement is merely a minor disagreement over which group gets to control men and women’s reproductive options.

Sources:

Some for Abortion Rights Lean Right in Cloning Fight. Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times, January 24, 2002.

Liberal anti-cloners up to bat. Kristen Philipkoski, Wired, March 19, 2002.

Open Letter To U.S. Senators On Human Cloning And Eugenic Engineering. Center for Genetic and Society, March 19, 2002.

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An Egregious Example of Paternity Fraud

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Glenn J. Sacks turned up the most egregious example of paternity fraud that I’ve heard of.

Larry Nicholson received a notice that he was in arrears to the tune of $75,000 for a child he knew nothing about. When he showed up in court to find out what the case was about, Nicholson thought it would be open and shut — Nicholson is black, but the child in question is white.

No matter. Nicholson did not contest paternity of the child within the time specified by the state of California — a whopping six months. Nicholson said he knew nothing about the child until receiving the notice that he was in arrears.

Still, he is legally the child’s father according to California and must pay child support. Sacks reports that Nicholson currently pays 40 percent of his take home pay to support this child.

Sackrs reports that the Californian legislature is considering a new law which would remedy these sorts of problems by, among other things, requiring courts of vacate support judgments where the claims of paternity are clearly false.

Source:

California Paternity Justice Act: If the Genes Don’t Fit, You Must Acquit. Glenn J. Sacks, GlennJSacks.Com, March 16, 2002.

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Wendy McElroy on 21st Century Feminism

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A frequent question I get via e-mail is exactly what exactly I mean by Equity Feminism. I stole the term from Christina Hoff Sommers who used it to describe a wide ranging movement that began in the 19th century, and continues to this day, which seeks to ensure that women and men have the same legal rights. This liberal and humanist ideal is contrasted both on the right by traditionalist anti-feminists and on the left by radical academic feminism, both of which end up opposing such a liberal agenda because they are wedded to the view that women and men are fundamentally different in a morally relevant way. Equity feminism, however, asserts that while women and men may be different biologically, there are few, if any, legal and moral distinctions that arise from this biological distinction.

Wendy McElroy captures this idea perfectly in her recent article for iFeminists.Com, 21st-Century Feminism. McElroy writes that,

The 21st-century feminist is anyone — female or male — who rejects gender privilege and demands real equality for men and women under the law. She makes her own choices and takes personal responsibility for them, without asking government for protection or tax dollars.

McElroy calls this view individualist feminism, and notes that this is originally what feminism was about in the 19th century. Today, of course, mention “feminism” and many people think of the illiberal views of academic feminism replete with its obsession with the triumvirate of “patriarchy,” “oppression,” and “victim.” Whereas equity/individualist feminism is concerned with ensuring that laws and public institutions are gender neutral, academic feminism is more interested in realizing a peculiar utopian vision of relations between men and women — whether men and women would prefer that peculiar vision or not.

Equity/individualist feminism is about ensuring that women and men are able to choose for themselves how to live their lives without interference from Big Brother or Big Sister. Apparently, even in the 21st century that is still too radical a notion to find support on either the right or left.

Source:

21st-Century Feminism. Wendy McElroy, iFeminists.Com, March 12, 2002.

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Saudi Arabia’s Religious Police Allegedly Contribute to Death of 15 Girls

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On Monday, March 11, 2002, a fire destroyed a school in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, killing 15 girls — most of whom were crushed to death in a panic to exit the building. But rescue efforts at the fire were hampered when members of Saudi Arabia’ religious police — the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice — refused to allow either girls to leave the building or firefighters to enter the building. The reason? The girls were not wearing their traditional head scarves or black robes.

The English-language Saudi Gazette quoted witnesses as saying that a member of the COmmission told men trying to enter the building to try to save the girls that, “it is sinful to approach them” because they were not wearing the required garb.

Meanwhile, a civil defense officer told Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Eqtisadiah that he saw members of the Commission “being young girls to prevent them from leaving the school because they were not wearing the abaya . . . We told them that the situation was very critical and did not allow for such behavior. But they shouted at us and refused to move away from the [school's] gates.”

The official response from the Saudi Arabian government has been to claim that the people blocking access to the school were not really members of the Commission. In an article in the Saudi English-language newspaper Arab News, the Civil Defense Department now claims that it has information “which casts doubt on whether the members of the Commission for Promoting Virtue and Preventing Vice who allegedly played a role in hampering rescue operation at the fire-hit Makkah girls? school were really members of the organization.”

As the Wall Street Journal put it, this claim smacks of a bad cover-up, but either way this is exactly the sort of attitude toward women and girls that Saudi Arabia’s leaders have long promoted with their funding and promotion of Islamic extremism.

Source:

Were commission members at fire tragedy impostors? Khaled Al-Fadly & Saeed Al-Abyad, Arab News, March 17, 2002.

Saudi police face deaths criticism. Reuters, March 14, 2002.

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Turkey Ends Virginity Tests

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In February, Turkey formally eliminated a law that allowed school officials to conduct physical exams on female students to ensure they were still virgins.

The law allowed schools to expel girls who engaged in pre-marital sex, and gave them the authority to conduct physical exams of girls as young as 14 suspected of having sex.

It had not been applied since 1999, however, when a judge ordered a halt to the virginity tests unless required for a criminal inquiry. Unfortunately this judicial decision only came after a horrible tragedy — five girls tried to killed themselves rather than undergo the virginity tests.

Source:

Turkey scraps virginity tests. The BBC, February 28, 2002.

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What Is Behind Fiji’s High Female Suicide Rate?

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Fiji has what is believed to be the highest rate of female suicide in the world. But a new State Department report suggests that many suicide victims are in fact victims of the despicable practice of “bride burning.”

The high suicide rate occurs among Fiji’s ethnic Indian population. Of 288 people who attempted suicide in Fiji, 88 percent were ethnic Indian. According to the U.S. State Department, however, many of the suicides are suspicious,

In addition to the rise in domestic violence, there have been approximately 30 ‘suicides’ by Indo-Fijian women that appeared to have been bride burning. Police investigations report that the women burned themselves so severely as to cause death, but the women’s rights community believes that the deaths are the result of bride burning.

Murdering brides by burning them is a practice that occasionally occurs in India when there is a dispute between the groom’s and bride’s families over payment of a dowry.

Not everyone is buying the claim that all 30 suicides are the result of bride burning, however. Angela Devi, an Australian social worker from Fiji, said, “I know there are some instances of violence against women in the Indo-Fijian community but… it would be wrong to assume that all the 30 suicide deaths were results of bride burning.”

On the other hand, a Fiji governmental committee recently documented high levels of domestic violence in Fiji’s Indian community.

Sources:

Indo-Fijian women targets of bride burning: US report. NewWindPress.Com, March 12, 2002.

U.S. highlights Fiji ‘bride-burning’. Phil Mercer, The BBC, March 11, 2002.

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