reproductive justice

A Few Notes on Those New Sexual Assault Statistics

by Cara December 15, 2011

Chances are, this morning, that you’ve seen the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control statistics on sexual violence and domestic violence. Most notably, you’ve probably seen the new statistic that almost 1 in 5 women have experienced rape in their lifetimes. That’s a terrifying statistic, though not [...]

7 comments Read the full article →

Rape or “Bondage Session Gone Haywire”? Rape Apologists Speculate.

by Cara July 20, 2011

Trigger Warning on post and links for graphic descriptions of sexual violence against sex workers, including sexual torture; rape apologism This past April, a woman who was doing sex work was picked up by one John Hauff and driven to his home to engage in a pre-negotiated sexual encounter. Hauff requested some bondage elements in [...]

13 comments Read the full article →

Arizona Bill Would Require Hospitals to Check Patient Immigration Status

by Cara February 15, 2011

Arizona legislators are working on a new anti-immigration bill that is essentially the hospital equivalent of their notorious SB 1070. The new bill, SB 1405, would require all hospitals within the state to verify the immigration status of all patients. If a patient cannot prove that sie is in the country legally, hospital staff would [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Help Kelley Williams-Bolar, Mother Jailed For Sending Children to “Wrong” School

by Cara January 26, 2011

Yesterday, I wrote about the horrific case of Kelley Williams-Bolar (pictured left), a woman who has been jailed for ten days and slapped with a felony record — which will prevent her from obtaining her teacher’s license — for sending her children to a school district other than the one they lived in. My analysis [...]

14 comments Read the full article →

Mother Jailed For Sending Her Children to the “Wrong” School

by Cara January 25, 2011

Last week, a woman was sent to jail for ten days, placed on two years probation, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. Her crime was fudging documents so that she could send her two daughters to the “wrong” school district, in the richer Akron, Ohio suburb where her [...]

13 comments Read the full article →

Berkeley Considers Some Trans-Specific Health Care Benefits; Outrage Ensues

by Cara January 20, 2011

Berkeley, California has recently been considering beginning to provide some benefits to its trans employees for sex reassignment/affirmation surgery. It’s unclear precisely which procedures would be covered under such a plan, since all news reports merely use the outdated and offensive term “sex change” to describe what is being considered.1 A vote on the very [...]

3 comments Read the full article →

Book Review: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

by Cara January 5, 2011

Trigger Warning for sometimes graphic descriptions of human experimentation and medical research on non-consenting individuals There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. [...]

5 comments Read the full article →

Study Finds 10% of Teens Who Say They’ve Never Had Intercourse Test Positive for STDs

by Cara January 4, 2011

A new study purports to show a disturbing discrepancy between the number of teens who say they’ve “had sex” with those who test positive for STDs. Of those who supposedly said they’d been abstinent, 10% tested positive for at least one of the three common STDs (chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis). As such, researchers and journalists [...]

2 comments Read the full article →

Illinois Considers Laws to Revoke Medical Licenses of Sex Offenders

by Cara November 29, 2010

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence within a medical context. Earlier this year, I wrote about part of a Chicago Tribune series that exposed how Illinois doctors can pretty easily sexually assault patients and get away with it with few to no negative consequences for their violations, frequently even being allowed to keep their [...]

Read the full article →

Study: Too Many Fat Women Don’t Even Know They’re Fat

by Cara November 23, 2010

So there’s a fascinating new study out about how women perceive their weight, with the results being that a significant proportion of women who were deemed “overweight” by the BMI did not view themselves as such. Cue the body-shaming, junk reporting, and photographs of fat1 people with their heads cut off. In the most neutral [...]

10 comments Read the full article →