There are some people who think that lack of government taxpayer-funded birth control constitutes a War on Women.
I think a court forcing a 16-year-old Moroccan girl to marry the man that raped her so that she can remain ‘sexually pure’ and he can avoid punishment is a War on Women. It’s hard to find sympathy for grad school students that don’t want to shell out $9 a month for birth control when things like this happen in the world.
Last year, Amina Filali was 15 when she was raped by a man 10 years her elder. Her parents pressed charges, but rather than drawing-and-quartering the guy, the judge ordered the two to marry in order to “resolve the damage of sexual violation to her.”
The judge wasn’t even out of order. He was perfectly in line with Morocco’s justice system:
Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code allows for the 'kidnapper' of a minor to marry his victim to escape prosecution, and it has been used to justify a traditional practice of making a rapist marry his victim to preserve the honor of the woman's family.
Amina went to live with her new husband rapist and his family, where she was so traumatized that she killed herself by swallowing a handful of rat poison.
Tragedies like this happen throughout the Middle East. Last week in Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai endorsed a “code of conduct” that allows husbands to beat their wives and encourages gender segregation. So things would go back to the way they were in 2001 -- when women weren’t allowed to leave their homes without being covered head-to-toe in a burka and accompanied by a male relative.
Women in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to drive. They aren’t allowed to exercise either, which kind of makes a girl wonder how they go anywhere. Oh yeah, they’re at the mercy of whichever man they belong to. If they could drive, they’d be tempted to become dirty dirty whores.
In Pakistan, a family made news by refusing to kill their rape-victim daughter. How messed up is that?
This is the real War on Women. Our sisters are suffering tremendous oppression. Radical Islam is not a religion that ‘pampers’ women, but treats them like dogs, completely subjugated by their masters. They are the victims. Not the grad students that had to buy their own condoms.
Image via Maria Rosaria Sannino/Flickr
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Comments 26
First...no one wants gov't /taxpayer funded birth control. Fluke wanted the gov't to require insurance companies cover birth control. Insurance policies which are paid by the policyholder. Not taxpayers. Before you start spouting the kool aid, make sure it's really kool aid, and not guyana punch.
Second, everyone knows that Muslim countries treat women like crap. But that's those countries business, not ours. Our country has enough of its own problems to solve...we don't need to be butting into anyone else's business.
You're using the way your "sisters" are treated to push your agenda of getting us liberals to hush up about those pesky women's rights issues.
Speaking of sisters, do you consider us filthy, birth control-loving, dirty hippy liberals your sisters too, or does that only apply when you're trying to gain sympathy for your cause?
yes, this story is horrible... but it happened in another country where we have no control over voting for leaders. thankfully we do have this right in the US and i am so glad i can use my vote for representatives that aren't interested in limiting my rights as a women to just what THEIR religion deems acceptable. while not as violent as this disgustingact- the war on women you are insistent doesn't exist comes from the same line of thinking: "GOD/ALLAH/BUDDHA/.... says this is wrong and it should be law because my religion trumps your rights"
for someone so fired up about this, i would think you would agree that limiting women's rights to LEGAL activities in this county is abhorrent. guess not.
So NO wacky religious ideal is forced on anyone else! And I'm looking right at you Santorum and republicans and THIER war on women.