Big news from Canada via the Beeb –
Canada’s Supreme Court has ruled that doctors may help patients who have severe and incurable medical conditions to die, overturning a 1993 ban.
In a unanimous decision, the court said the law impinged on Canadians’ rights. [Read more…]
Muhammed Syed explains about it.
Via the Humanistisk Ungdom page (Norway’s Humanist Youth) – a sizable collection of people on a cold snowy day protest in front of the Saudi embassy in Oslo.
A Google translatation with some adaptations –
For the fifth time we stand together with Amnesty International outside the Saudi embassy and demonstrate for Raif Badawi .
He is sentenced to prison and 1,000 lashes – for a blog post.
This time, we were suddenly chased 10 meters away from the embassy, behind a hedge, entirely without justification or explanation of who gave the order.
We didn’t give up though, and continued to shout: #Free Raif Badawi! #Stop the flogging!
Go there to see a 9 second video of them doing it, with a pan from them to the embassy.
Originally a comment by Anne Fenwick on FGM in the US.
It is frustrating that neither society nor the statistics seem good at separating 1) women who arrive as immigrants having undergone FGM in their previous countries; 2) their daughters who may be considered at risk; 3) those daughters who actually undergo FGM in a western country or ‘on vacation’. I’m glad this article seemed to get the problem – though I do wonder about their choice of age range, I think we would use a different one in the UK. [Read more…]
Pope sweety says it’s ok for adults to hit children, provided it’s done with dignity.
Pope Francis has backed parents who smack their children, providing the child’s “dignity” is maintained.
He made the remarks during his weekly general audience at the Vatican, which was devoted to the role of fathers in the family.
How does an adult hit a child while maintaining the child’s dignity? Is it that the adult doesn’t abort the child in the process? [Read more…]
Nina Strochlic at the Daily Beast reports that FGM numbers in the US have skyrocketed despite strong federal and state laws against it.
In 1997, the CDC estimated that 168,000 girls and women were at risk or had undergone FGM—at the time of the last national census in 1990. A few years later, in 2000, the African Women’s Center upped the number at 227,000.
But according to estimates released on Friday, there currently are around 507,000 girls living in the U.S. who are either at risk of being cut or who have already been cut. That’s more than triple the figure from the very first nationwide count.
These are estimates, not counts. [Read more…]
The New Statesman said something interesting in a piece on January 15th on why protesting the flogging of Raif matters.
Under recent Saudi law, anything from “calling for atheist thought” to “inciting protests” or organizing petitions is now punishable as an act of terrorism.
Despite the crackdown at home, however, Saudi Arabia is angling to present itself as a supporter of free expression abroad.
Oh is it. Is it really. [Read more…]
For the fourth week, the Saudis have refrained from hitting Raif Badawi with a stick 50 times.
Saudi Arabia has again delayed a planned flogging of a blogger, according to a report from Amnesty International.
The Twitter account of the organization’s press office said Raif Badawi was spared a flogging today for reasons not yet known.
Not being able to get away with it without a lot of yelling and shouting, would be one big reason. The embassies would prefer a quiet life. [Read more…]
Greg Epstein later did another series of tweets in order to make clear his attitude to feminism and its more acrimonious opponents.
I’ll start with this one.
Greg Epstein @gregmepstein · 4 hours ago
This Sunday, the organization I direct– the @HarvardHumanist @HumanistHub will present an award to feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian.Ms. Sarkeesian and other online feminist leaders have been the target of an extraordinary amount of harassment by anti-feminists, MRA’s etc.
I want to address those individuals, and anyone else with questions about why we chose this awardee.
Feminism is a core Humanist value. This isn’t something I decided-it’s the consensus view over ~100 years of a “good without God” movement
Here’s a “doctor” who should be struck off.
“I’m not going to sacrifice the well-being of my child. My child is pure,” Dr. Jack Wolfson said in the interview. “It’s not my responsibility to be protecting their child.” [Read more…]