Friday, January 23, 2009

small step for womenkind

obama signed an executive order today that removes the ban on funding to programs or agencies that support women's right to choose to have an abortion. i hope he also chooses to sign a similar order that would remove the obstacles in obtaining american funding for programs that take a harm reduction approach to commercial sex work because for the last 8 years, organisations that do anything less than remove women from the sex trade were ineligible for funding. proposals written to american donors also had to say 'prostitution' rather than 'commercial sex work' or 'transactional sex.' and it made my job a little tough when i had to go through and find and replace all instances of 'commercial sex work' with 'prostitution' in any work i submitted to them. it also hurt my heart a little bit when i had to do it.

maybe this will also be a sign to countries like kenya that keep abortion illegal, forcing women out to the streets' chopshops when they have unwanted pregnancies, to change their thinking.

may i also mention that in kenya, a wife cannot prosecute their husband for forcing them to have sex as rape cannot legally occur within a marriage under the Sexual Offenses Act of the country...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

It hasn't be all that long that Canadian women could charge their husbands with rape. It's still very much a man's world out there.