By
Paul Silva
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From right, Erin Burnett, host of “Erin Burnett
OutFront” on CNN, led the discussion with three IWHC
partners: Sheena Hadi, director of Aahung, based in Karachi, Pakistan; Yvette
Kathurima, head of advocacy of FEMNET, the African Women’s Development and
Communication Network, based in Nairobi, Kenya; and Fadekemi Akinfaderin,
co-founder and executive director of Education as a Vaccine (EVA), one of
Nigeria’s leading nonprofit organizations.
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“A woman’s control of her own body, her
choice, whether, when to reproduce, that’s essential to women and it’s most
basic to women’s health to have the ability to have access to whatever
contraception she chooses.”
Those were the words of U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Tuesday as she captivated the nearly 300
women and men attending the International Women’s Health Coalition’s 30th
anniversary celebration. The event promised an “evening of bold and independent
voices,” and based on the reaction in the blogosphere, IWHC delivered.
Despite her actual physical size,
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—or the Notorious RBG as her many fans have taken to
calling her online—is a giant in the history of women’s rights in the United
States, and around the world.
In a candid dinner discussion with IWHC
President Françoise Girard and IWHC board member Aryeh Neier
(who in 1971 enlisted Ginsburg to start the Women’s Rights Project at the
ACLU), Ginsburg discussed her work to advance gender equality as a litigator
and commented on several Supreme Court decisions related to women’s
reproductive rights.
Speaking about her fiery dissent in the
recent Hobby Lobby case (where the Court majority – all
men – held that corporations have religious beliefs and don’t have to provide
employee insurance plans that cover contraception if they are morally opposed
to it), Ginsburg said: “the Court has stepped into a minefield.” But she
noted some good may come of it yet:
“One couldn’t think of a health care
package today responding to the needs of people in the community that wouldn’t
include contraceptives. So maybe the reaction to Hobby Lobby will get maybe
even some of my colleagues to think a little more than they did. When the court
goes the wrong way it can be a very effective tool. Think of the Lilly
Ledbetter case . . . [After that court decision] Congress in record speed, with
overwhelming majorities on both sides of the aisle, passed the Lilly Ledbetter
Fair Pay Act and Obama signed it as his first act. So sometimes good can come
from a bad decision. And maybe Hobby Lobby will turn out that way.”
Cosmopolitan Senior Political
Writer Jill Filipovic blogged extensively about Ginsburg’s comments on Roe
v. Wade, which was perhaps one of the most thought-provoking moments of the
evening:
Ginsburg… was careful to say she
thought the heart of the ruling in Roe was correct — that the
Texas law, which made all abortions illegal except those to save the pregnant
woman’s life, was unconstitutional. But, she said, the court’s decision to
issue a sweeping judgment establishing the right to abortion in all 50 states
was a strategically poor one and led to modern-day political battles over
reproductive rights.
“There might have been a backlash in
any case,” Ginsburg said. “But I think [because of Roe] it took on
steam.”
The decision in Roe, too,
“was as much about a doctor’s right to practice medicine” as it was about a
woman’s right to abortion, she pointed out. “The image was the doctor giving
advice to the little woman, not the woman standing alone.”
While the discussion with Justice
Ginsburg, Aryeh Neier, and Françoise Girard provided an overview of setbacks
and advances for women’s rights in the U.S., an earlier panel discussion gave
the audience insight into progress on women’s and girls’ health and rights in
Pakistan, Nigeria, and across Africa.
Sheena discussed Aahung’s innovative
life-skills education program that teaches girls and boys about gender
discrimination, sexual abuse and domestic violence, family planning, and a
woman’s right to decide if, when, and whom she marries.
This program has been
adopted by both Muslim and Catholic school boards and is now in more than 250
schools in Sindh Province. The success of this program required building
bridges with educators, parents, and even religious leaders. (Read more
about Aahung.)
Fadekemi noted that sex and puberty are
still taboo topics in Nigeria, and parents are reluctant to talk their
daughters about basic health issues like menstruation. To fill this gap,
EVA reaches youth directly through peer outreach, social media, and a text
messaging hotline that receives 15,000 messages a month.
Since its inception, EVA has reached
more than 700,000 young Nigerians with information about HIV prevention,
sexuality, and contraception. Fadekemi also addressed the Boko Haram kidnapping
of school girls in northern Nigeria and urged the audience to use social media
to put pressure on the government to #BringBackOurGirls. (Read more about
EVA.)
Yvette and FEMNET work closely with
women’s groups in 40 countries across Africa to amplify women’s voices and
increase women’s participation in political debates and decision-making. They
are currently spearheading a number of campaigns, including efforts to end
harmful cultural practices like child marriage and female genital mutilation by
working with cultural leaders.
Yvette noted that Africa has a number of pro-women
policies like the Maputo Protocol (what Yvette calls the “African
women’s bible”), but what’s lacking across the continent is the political will
by governments to enforce these policies. (Read more
about Femnet.)
One person in the audience, Adenike
Esiet, founder and director of Action Health Incorporated (also an IWHC
partner)—and a veteran feminist activist—thanked the young leaders for their
work and for inspiring a new generation of young people working to advance
women’s rights.
Source:
http://iwhc.org
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