Last month a US district judge ordered the FDA to make the morning-after pill available to females of any age without a prescription. This week the Justice Department announced that it would appeal the ruling.

The judge’s ruling was in response to a lawsuit launched by the Center for Reproductive Rights.

The group was seeking to expand access to all brands of the morning-after pill over the counter, such as Plan B One-Step and Next Choice, so that females of all ages would be able to purchase them without a prescription. [Read more…]

Gita Sahgal explains the situation in Bangladesh, at Open Democracy. (The page is almost unreadable, unfortunately – it’s got so much junk on it that only an average-length paragraph is visible at a time, which is irksome.)

The mass populist uprising occupying Shahbag in Dhaka, calling for ‘maximum punishment’  (the death penalty) for war criminals, was sparked by the triumphant V sign made by a convicted man. He saw his life sentence as a victory.  At first, the political parties courted the Shahbag movement, with the government promising to rush through legislation that  reflected its main demands – allowing the prosecution to challenge the sentence to make it harsher, and amending the law to enable  the Jamaat e Islami  to be put on trial as an organisation. The Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist political party in Bangladesh, responded to the conviction and death sentence of the Deputy leader of the party, Delawar Hussein Sayeedi, with a country-wide campaign of violence, with particularly vicious attacks on religious minorities, including killing Hindus and destroying temples and homes. Christian Bangladeshis also reported attacks, but in some cases people were too afraid to make an official report. [Read more…]

We have a fantastic new blogger here – meet Yemisi Ilesanmi. I met her on Facebook a couple of months ago, and read up on her a little more via Google and thought wow…I wonder if she would like to join us. I shared my thought with the rest of FTB and they all thought wow too.

So I am stoked!

Check out her amazing bio:

Yemisi Ilesanmi is a Nigerian woman, resident in UK. She holds a Masters of Law (LL.M) degree in Gender, Sexuality and Human Rights. She is a trade unionist, human rights activist, an author, a poet and sometimes moonlights as a plus size model. She is a passionate campaigner for equal rights, social justice and poverty alleviation. Her debut book ‘Freedom To Love For ALL: Homosexuality is Not Un-African’ is available in paperback and kindle editions on Amazon (www.amazon.com/dp/1481864815).  In sometimes, what she thinks as a past life, she was-  – National Women leader/Assistant National Secretary, Nigeria Labour Party. – Vice President, International Trade Union Congress – Chairperson, ITUC Youth Committee   – International Labour Conference (ILC) Committee Member on Applications of Standards – Founder/President, National Association of Nigerian Female Students She is the founder and coordinator of the campaign group Nigerian LGBTIs in Diaspora Against Anti-Same Sex Laws.

Welcome Yemi!

And another ex-Muslim atheist is under threat in another majority-Muslim country. This time the country is Morocco, which has Islam as the state religion, and the ex-Muslim atheist is Imad Iddine Habib, age 22.

He posted a message on Facebook on Tuesday.

Hey Everyone,

I would like to thank everyone who supported me, asked about me by any mean!
Those whom I didn’t reply didn’t add me as a friend, as I am blocked, I couldn’t reply at them!

Thank you All, you made me so proud of being part of this big and united family of rational and free thinkers! [Read more…]

Scott Stephens, the editor of ABC’s (the Oz one) “religion & ethics” page (as if the two are automatically linked, and in no way antagonistic), takes a look at Dawkins and Twitter.

Yes well…as I’ve mentioned several times lately, I think Dawkins and Twitter are a bad mix. The reasons for my thinking that are encapsulated in the (hilarious) sequence a week or so ago which went

1. provocative tweet
2. heated responses
3. tweet saying Twitter is not friendly to nuance

Provocative tweets can be fun, of course, but there’s provocative and then there’s provocative.

But then again the same can be said about nuance. [Read more…]

I was on the lower floor and Cooper was on the main floor, and I spotted a stray kibble on the floor. I never leave a stray kibble on the floor because I don’t like DOG SALIVA liberally spread all over said floor, so I picked it up and – decided not to put it in the kibble bin, because the slight noise of taking off the snap-on plastic lid would be sure to summon Cooper to stand around drooling heavily, thus causing more DOG SALIVA liberally spread all over the floor. Instead I put it in the metal scoop next to the bin – thinking as I did so “will he hear this? no of course not, much too faint, plus just a random sound.”

Plink. The instant the kibble hit the scoop with a very faint plink, Cooper shot into motion overhead and rocketed down the stairs. One kibble. Hitting a metal scoop with a tiny plink, on another floor of the house, and around the corner from the stairs. One tiny little plink, and half a second later there’s a dog drooling in front of me.

Skillz.

It turns out that real women don’t need feminism, and that there’s a documentary that “undercuts any strength that might be attributed to the feminist worldview.”

Notable women’s advocate Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum explains it simply.

“The problem with feminism, I think the principal problem, is the cultivation of an attitude of victimization. Feminism tries to make women believe they are victims of an oppressive, male-dominated, patriarchal society. They wake up in the morning with a chip on their shoulder.” [Read more…]

In a village in Afghanistan what? Not a potluck. Not a Chatauqua lecture. Not a quilting bee. Not heartwarming stories of crotchety but lovable neighbors and mischievous but lovable children and the dogs who love them all. No, the other thing – staring eyes, a woman who dishonored the universe by running away with a man (while the man simply had a good time), a father who asked the local “religious leaders” for advice, a fatwa, a mob, a murder of a woman by her own father in front of that mob.

The woman, who has two children, was shot dead on Monday 22 April by her father in front of a crowd of about 300 people in the village of Kookchaheel, in the Aabkamari district of Badghis province in north-western Afghanistan. [Read more…]

He must be following Mehdi Hasan on Twitter.