A story posted this week from correspondents in Enugu, Nigeria working with the Agence France-Presse, reveals that raids by the police have found an apparent network of baby “farms” in Nigeria. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24650838-23109,00.html Twenty teenage girls were rescued earlier this year from a hospital in Enugu.

In the United States, we still harken back to our puritanical roots. It used to be that women who weren't seen as pure were hung as witches or cast out into the wilderness.

Today, virginity pledges, virginity rings, and even a bit creepier, father-daughter purity balls, all promote chastity in young women, who publicly pledge to all who will listen that they are, in fact, virgins.  "I want to wait to have sex until I'm married," said teenage popstar Britney Spears on-camera to a riveted nation. You remember those days?

The title can be read two ways: women don't have a voice in how laws are applied to their bodies, or women demand that lawmakers who know little of what it's like to have a uterus keep their mouths shut.

In case you aren't already convinced that next month's election is pretty frickin' important, here's something else to consider: the next president will almost certainly have the power to shape the future of the Supreme Court for decades to come.

It is a shame that we women cannot be supportive enough of each other to be able to claim that we have been able to elect a women to the highest or at least to the second highest office of government in the United States. Shelly Mandell the president of the Los Angeles NOW chapter, introduced Sarah Palin at a political activity in California.

I read an interesting article in today's Washington Post by Michelle Boorstein, "Survey: Culture War Truce on the Horizon" http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/08/culture_wars.html?hpid=topnews as to whether current trends indicate a reversal in some of the trends among peo

Pop quiz, fellow progressives: how do you refer to the two sides of the abortion debate?

Did you say "pro-life" and "pro-choice"? Those are the terms I generally use when talking about the issue too. And, as I was reminded by a conversation between colleagues this morning, it doesn't make much sense.

For those of us who may have even the slightest inclination to give anti-abortion activists the benefit of the doubt, the time may have come to shed our last feeling of sympathy.

The Bush White House, in another spectacular display of ideology over science, is proposing a regulation that would deny federal funding to any medical facility that does not allow pharmacists to refuse to hand out Plan B, IUDs and even Birth Control pills for religious reasons. In classic right-wing strawman semantics, this is framed as a matter of "religious freedom" vs. patients' rights.

This alone, I expect, should not be too surprising. We have always been familiar with the Right's ongoing desire to overturn Roe v. Wade. But a deeper look reveals a new ideological battle front altogether: contraception. The Dominionist Right is now beginning to frame contraception as equivalent to abortion.

We would do well to remember that those who style themselves as "pro-life" are not simply anti-abortion. They are against modern sexuality and female sexual independence in their entirety. That the Dominionists are increasingly unveiling their radical agenda may be both a blessing and a curse. A short-term curse that hurts families with draconian punishments, but perhaps a useful opportunity that can help us begin to reverse the damage caused by this utterly wicked, perverse and backwards movement.

"I have stated time after time that Roe V. Wade was a bad decision, that I support a woman, the rights of the unborn."

-Senator John McCain

It is nearly unbelievable that a republican candidate, who many Americans consider more moderate than George Bush, has consistently proven he is an opponent of the most important womens health issues of our time. (In some legislation he was even MORE conservative than Bush and his crew on Womens Health!) It is the responsibility of women across the country to bring these issues to the forefront of our election, especially since much of the public isn't aware of his blatently discriminating votes against womens equality.

Watch this video:

Growing up as Catholic, I understood that the Church was not one to endorse candidates, but was rather, issue-based. While mainstream media portrayed the Church as ultra-conservative and seemingly detached from social realities, I knew it be otherwise. Religious leaders from Archbishop Romero, who connoted the term, "liberation theology," God's preference for the poor, to more familiar names including Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa, and the basis of my faith, Jesus, all worked tirelessly to turn the world on its head, taking the risk to challenge the status quo as a means of improving the lives of marginalized groups.