New Brunswick Denies Women's Rights as Abortion Clinic Prepares to Close

Women’s reproductive control is still a highly contentious issue in many parts of the world, and as we have seen through recent Supreme Court decisions in the United States, the divisive issue is not solely one for developing nations. 

As women are painted as second-class citizens, subject to prejudice and sexual harassment, unable to access consistent and affordable birth control and with their bodies seen as familial or spousal property, the consequences are often that unplanned pregnancies are high and unsafe abortions prevail. India is a prime example: although the country allows for abortion on broad grounds, it still accounts for exorbitantly high numbers of deaths and complications due to unsafe procedures, with accounts of one woman dying every two hours as a result. 

Hobby Lobby : Birth Control is Now Your Boss's Business

I was not going to comment on the recent US Supreme Court's deeply disappointing decision.  But then I read Penelope's piece, and although it too is long-winded, I stuck with it, because she argues what I've been thinking: People who don't actually experience what you're experiencing should refrain from giving set-in-stone decrees on how to manage your experience. No judgements, no armchair advice. Certainly no legal rulings with far-reaching negative effects.

Enter the US Supreme Court Hobby Lobby decision. Is it justly conceivable that five male Justices weighed the balance accepting corporate entities to deny coverage of all forms of birth control - a ruling that will affect mainly women?

The Hobby Lobby case is the first time that a Court has allowed a corporate entity to deny employees a federal benefit, entitled to by law, (birth control - in all its forms) because of its owner's religious beliefs, embodying corporations with personhood. The ruling is steeped in a gendered outcome: negatively affecting mainly women (with men being a secondary casualty, and economic progression and access a viable third) and, as usual, will most severely affect poor and minority women. Women, who, it is widely argued, need the easiest access to consistent birth control if they are to enjoy the very basics of our first world society: access to the workplace and reproductive control. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote exactly this, powerful dissenting to a ruling she viewed as denying women their reproductive freedom and allowing commercial enterprises to "opt out of laws (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs."

Women's Issues are About Men Too

As with time, I'm a bit obsessed with language. I strongly believe that healthy and developed communication is the key to our interactions, and I am especially interested in how language can shape our perceptions and actions. This is true within several dynamic issues in the 'women's rights' realm.

It's time to admit and actively advocate that 'women's issues' stop being such a gendered thematic. Education, daycare, women's health and violence against women are as much men's issues as they are the women's. But as we devolve the language around these subjects into purely female words and experiences, we not only remove men from the dialogue, but from any actionable involvement and solution as well.

The US Supreme Court is currently hearing arguments in the Hobby Lobby case, pitting the Affordable Care Act against a woman's access to contraception. In short, if the Justices favour the department store's arguments, they will be allowing, for the first time, a for-profit corporation to claim religious rights and protections which may then directly prevent insurance from covering women's access to birth control, if these corporations can prove that such coverage is a 'substantial religious burden.'

Fitness Competitions: A dissection of fitness, health and beauty ideals

It seemed farcical. An ardent women’s rights advocate, and outspoken feminist, especially on body issues, I would be entering a fitness competition where winning meant being judged solely on appearance, presence and onstage personality. 12 weeks later, I've rarely been so humbled. Stepping on stage for the first time, I took first place in the morning Open division against 30 other fantastic women, and then 1st overall in the Elite division at night, winning my pro card.