Sorry, no can do

The Galway Independent gives a very detailed account of Praveen Halappanavar’s testimony to the inquest today.

On Sunday, they were told the fetus would not survive.

Mr Halappanavar said that he could hear his wife crying and, on returning to the room, was told that there had been some cervical dilation and the foetus would not survive. He said that they had asked if the baby could be saved by putting in stitches but were told that this was not possible.

But waiting around for no reason, giving infection a chance to set in – that was possible.

MONDAY

On Monday morning, Mr Halappanavar said that Savita was taken for an ultrasound and started to cry when she saw the monitor. He claims that he and his wife then had a conversation with the consultant, Dr Katherine Astbury, in which Savita said she couldn’t take waiting for her baby to die and requested a termination. He said he was then told that, as the foetus was still alive, the pregnancy could not be terminated.

Mr Halappanavar said his wife asked if there was anything that could be done to speed up the labour process and Dr Astbury agreed to check and come back to them to discuss later.

The next day

He went on to claim that he and Savita had another conversation with Dr Astbury, in which they were told that the pregnancy could not be terminated, as Ireland was a Catholic country. He said that Savita argued that she was of Hindu faith and was not an Irish citizen and should therefore should be allowed to proceed with a termination but Dr Astbury said “sorry” and left the room.

And on it went, pointlessly, until she was dead.

Sadly, no, you can’t have everything

That Al-Jazeera report on the “Muslimah pride” reaction to Amina and Femen –

It has some odd stuff.

  • This event is open to ALL muslim women, Hijaabi’s Nikaabis and women who choose not to wear it. Muslimah pride is about connecting with your Muslim identity and reclaiming our collective voice. Most importantly it is about diversity and showing that muslim women are not just one homogenous group. We come in all shapes and sizes, all races and cultural backgrounds. Whether we choose to wear hijaabs or not is nobodies business but ours. So please get clicking, get creative, get loud and proud. #Muslimapride

That’s incoherent. It wants everything. It wants to combine all the incompatibles. It wants identity and diversity. Well guess what: there are tensions there!

Look, if you decide to make a big thing about “Muslimah pride” and “connecting with your Muslim identity” then you are relinquishing certain kinds of diversity. Real diversity is much more attainable with secularism than it is with a religious “identity,” especially when the religion is as demanding and all-pervading as Islam (or as Quiverfull-type Christianity, for another example).

It’s reminiscent of advertising campaigns that invoke hipster attitudes and postures as a way to sell things. It works, but it’s full of tensions. No doubt this “Muslimah pride” thing also works, in some sense, but it reeks of bullshit. It’s just dishonest to brandish “your Muslim identity” while at the same time promising diversity. (It would be less dishonest if “Muslim” really were just an identity, as opposed to membership in a strict and demanding religion. But it isn’t.)

As no threat to Savita’s life

The inquest into the death of Savita Halappanavar has begun in Galway. Today Praveen Halappanavar testified.

The Sunday it all went wrong, they were told Savita’s cervix was dilated and she would miscarry.

Mr Halappanavar said they were both shattered on hearing this news and his wife asked repeatedly why this was happening to her. They were told it would all be over in a few hours when she miscarried.

On Monday October 23rd her obstetrician Dr Katharine Astbury sent Ms Halappanaver for an ultrasound. Dr Astbury told her that “unfortunately” the foetus was still alive, Mr Halappanavar said.

He said the couple asked Dr Astbury for a termination but she told them this was not possible.

Fergal Bowers, health correspondent for RTE, who is live-tweeting the inquest, said Dr Astbury said there was no danger on Tuesday.

Inquest: Consultant obs, Dr Katherine Astbury will say termination not warranted on Tues Oct 23, as no threat to #Savita‘s life.

Really? Because what I learned from a lot of sources – medical sources, especially Dr Jen Gunter on Twitter – is that that’s just flat-out false: a protracted miscarriage is always dangerous. Period. There isn’t ambiguity about it. A dilated cervix is an open door to infection.

So if that’s going to be the line that Astbury takes…it looks like admitting stark malpractice. Or perhaps, more frighteningly, that Irish hospitals allow their standard of care to be warped by Catholic “teachings.”

If the genitals are severely mutilated, that’s another thing

And then another post the same day.

It didn’t stop there

Chapter 2 of the ‘I’m more postcolonialist than you’ follies.

Another respondent:

Why do feminists still have to analyze everything using the concept of ‘oppression?’ Why are -you- using the term as though everything feminist has to be talked about in terms of oppression. There are times when that’s okay, but there are other times when it is not…When feminists label some kinds of behaviour problematic, by naming them oppressive, for instance, they may be putting other women into situations which could be dangerous for them, or which could at least change the course of their lives, and not always favourably, if they decided to act on this new way of perceiving it. What should be respected is the fact that not all women will be able to make positive change in their lives…For starters, referring to female genital cutting as mutilation is a value judgement. Call it FGE. If the genitals are severely mutilated, thats another thing. [Read more…]

From the archive

The disagreements over “colonialist” feminism caused me to go digging in the archives for an account of a previous such dispute. It was January 11, 2008…and I had jury duty…

Ethnocentric feminism

I had a hard time tearing myself away from the computer Wednesday and Thursday mornings to catch the bus downtown to the courthouse, because there was a lively (not to say acrimonious) discussion on a Women’s Studies list I subscribe to, about Female Genital Mutilation. I may have done something myself to contribute to the acrimony. Okay I did. I got annoyed. Repeatedly. (But one is limited to two messages a day, so there was a limit to the damage I could do.)

It started with the (astonishing, I thought) fact that the practice was called ‘circumcision’ – which staggered me because I thought it was apologists for the practice who called it that and that opponents all called it Female Genital Mutilation (which is what it is) as a matter of principle. What could feminists be doing euphemizing the horrible practice? I wondered and wondered, then someone rather gently asked the same question, so I decided to provide backup. (I haven’t been posting to the list much, if at all [I can’t remember if I’ve posted before], because I’m not a women’s studies teacher, so I figured I would just read and be silent; but that’s over.) Backup is useful on that list, I think, because there is a strong current of orthodoxy and orthodoxy-enforcement there, and it looks to me as if more people speak up when other people are speaking up. Certainly that’s how it fell out with this discussion. So I expressed my astonishment in stronger and somewhat ruder terms – and there were other comments – and before long out came the classic retort. [Read more…]

Sabotaged with scissors

Just after posting a comment about the non-desirability of calling Female Genital Mutiliation FG “Cutting” instead, I check Twitter and see a tweet from Ex-Muslims Forum:

Grace Dent is a wonderful writer – here she is on FGM http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-book-of-mormons-lesson-in-genital-genocide-8554496.html …@gracedent +

So I’m reading it. Grace Dent has no truck with euphemism on this subject.

By rough estimates, there are 20,000 girls at risk of FGM in Britain and 66,000 coping with the botched consequences. There has never been a prosecution, either of a mother taking her child out of the country, or a cutter travelling into Britain. I’ve read cases about little girls in Stratford – home of Olympic hope – being whisked off to Mogadishu. Or of the Somali community in Glasgow where a three-year-old girl and a small baby were sabotaged with scissors. I don’t think polite, concerned mumblings about FGM wholly prepare anyone for the fact that in the majority of cases, after these botch jobs, the whole lot is gone. [Read more…]

A real and substantial risk to the life of the mother

An organization that represents some (or all?) doctors in Ireland has said no thanks to abortion legislation to protect the lives of pregnant women.

The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has rejected a motion calling for regulation in relation to the provision of abortion where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.

In a heated and occasionally bad-tempered debate at the organisation’s annual conference in Killarney, doctors also voted against a motion calling for legislation to allow abortion in Ireland in cases of rape or incest. They also voted against a motion calling on the Government to legislate for the provision of abortion for women with non-viable foetal abnormalities.

So the majority is fine with the arrangement that led to the death of Savita Halappanavar.

Wow.

 

Are Sharia councils harming women?

The BBC’s Panorama asks, are Sharia councils harming women? It includes a bit of undercover video in which a guy sitting high up as if he were a judge gives a woman a lot of very bad advice. He tells her she should be “brave” and ask the husband who hits her why he does it. “Is it my cooking?” That way she can correct herself.

He also tells her that reporting the hitting to the police is the very last resort and that a shelter is terrible.

In a small terraced house in east London, a woman and her husband argue before an Islamic scholar who sits on a dais above them in a room that looks and feels like a court.

This is Leyton Islamic Sharia Council, and Dr Suhaib Hasan will decide if the woman can have a divorce. Her husband is refusing to grant her one and the couple have been coming here for a year. [Read more…]

Accused

A little slice of life in Nepal…

The 60-year-old woman was stripped naked and had her head shaved. She was fed excrement and badly beaten.

The woman was reportedly accused of using witchcraft to cause death and misfortune. The assault was apparently sanctioned by the village council.

Such attacks on vulnerable women are not uncommon in remote areas of Nepal.

Last year, villagers burnt alive a 40-year-old woman after claiming she was a witch.