Post this week from my blog (tenderhooligan/ wordpress).

• Recently in the US, the Indiana State Representative (Eric Turner) expressed his concern about an exception that may be written into legislation that makes abortion after 20 weeks legal only in cases in rape or incest. Turner is worried, apparently, that this will result in numerous women “crying rape” in order to gain access to an abortion. My instant reaction to this statement was, “Yeah, he’s right”. But I didn’t think that in the way you think I thought it. There’s a quote from somewhere I can’t now recall that says that women don’t want an abortion in the same way they may want a porsche (a criticism often levelled at us), they want an abortion in the same way a rabbit wants to chew off its own leg to get out of a trap (I paraphrase). It doesn’t and she doesn’t. Abortion is never an easy option, despite what the anti-choicers would have you believe. What it is, more often than not, is a necessary option. So, yes, if a woman knows that the only way she can have a legal and safe abortion is to lie about being raped, she’ll do it. And who could blame her? A quote from the abortiongang on this issue.

We know that women have died to get an abortion. Women self-aborted or had abortions by unlicensed practitioners in back alleys before abortion was legal. Even while legal, but often prohibitively expensive or with numerous hoops to jump through, women have died in unsafe clinics like ‘Dr.’ Kermit Gosnell’s in order to obtain an abortion. We know that a desperate woman will do anything to get an abortion – including risking her own life. Place yourself in the shoes of a woman in Indiana who finds out at 16, 17 or 18 weeks that she is pregnant and she needs an abortion. Maybe I didn’t know, maybe you ignored the signs because you were desperate for it not to be true. Somehow you’ve gotten to 20 weeks and abortion is only legal in 2 circumstances: rape or incest. Now you have a few choices: 1) carry to term, 2) self-abort and risk your life, 3) say you were raped. Option 3 gets you what you need without risking your life. Damn right you are going to do whatever you need to do to get that abortion; damn right you will say you’ve been raped.

I am NOT condoning lying about rape; I’m saying that this is what happens when you remove choices and force women into impossible positions. Turner et al should probably think about that instead of demonising and slut-shaming the women in their charge.

• From amptoons, it seems that most Americans now favour same-sex marriage. Well, that’s some good news at least! There’s a long way to go, of course, and we know that it often takes a long time for the public’s desires to make their way into the statute books, but every progress is good progress. I mean, of all the things in all the world to oppose, why would you oppose same-sex marriage? I have never understood the rationale behind that. (Please don’t tell me it’s because it’s written in the bible and if it’s written in the bible then it can’t ever be refuted. That sort of talk doesn’t wash around these parts.)

• Finally, from the f-word. You may have heard, recently, that the Poppy Project is losing its funding. The Poppy Project is a UK-based charity and does immensely important work for victims of sex trafficking and forced prostitution (yes, that’s right, despite what my idiot colleague says to turn himself on: the vast majority of women do not enter into the sex trade willingly and because it is their preference in a vast array of choices). If the Poppy Project goes, so too will the support for women who really, very badly need it. The f-word worryingly reports, however, that this is just the “tip of the iceberg” and that it is likely that that this is one of themany women-only projects which will lose funding in the coming months.

The decision to award the funding to the Salvation Army troubles me for several reasons but not least because I think this is likely to be just one of many women-only services that will lose funding over the coming years. With the Government tightening its belt - and forcibly tightening the belts of local councils across the country - specialist services are in grave danger. Public sector commissioners are wrestling with the conundrum - do we spend money on services that only one part of society can access, or throw what money we have left at generic services that are open to all? This clearly doesn’t just pose a risk to women-only services but also to services targeted at Black and Minority Ethnic communities and other equality groups.

In a time when sex trafficking is increasing (and that’s another iceberg whose tip is all we know yet), we can’t afford to lose services such as these. One does wonder how far it’s going to go…

The Government has not signed up to new rules which aim at preventing human trafficking in the EU. These new guidelines would work towards making sure EU countries work together to prevent trafficking, ensuring successful prosecution and making sure victims of trafficking are properly looked after. 

We can’t afford to miss out on this chance to make the fight against trafficking more effective. The Government can’t be allowed to lose its nerve on this. We’ve teamed up with Anti-Slavery International, the Independent on Sunday and ECPAT UK to convince the Coalition not to opt out of the new rules.

If thousands of us sign a petition to David Cameron and Nick Clegg, we can persuade them to make the right decision and ensure the coalition does not wriggle out of signing up to these new rules.

Please sign the petition now, then ask your friends to get involved too.

(Source: petitefeministe)

The Nevada state legislature convenes on February 7 – and several bills will be introduced to address the brutal criminal industry of human trafficking here in Nevada! You can help combat this crime by joining advocates from across the state in contacting your state legislators to let them know this issue is important to you. With just a few minutes of your time, you can help make a tremendous difference in changing the law to better protect victims of human trafficking and ensure strong penalties and deterrents for the crime!

Four human trafficking bills have already been introduced for the 2011 legislative session, including:

- AB4 which would expand the definition of involuntary servitude to include commercial sex acts.

- AB5 which would increase the penalties for pandering.

- AB6 which would create a procedure for victims of sex trafficking who had convictions for prostitution while they were a victims of trafficking, to make a motion for a new trial. If granted, the court must vacate the judgment – giving victims of sex trafficking a fresh start as they rebuild their lives.

-AB106 which will increase penalties for living off of the earnings of a prostituted person and enhances those penalties if the person prostituted in a minor.

In 2009, anti-human trafficking advocates like you successfully advocated for the passage of key legislation to help combat human trafficking. While this was a good first step forward, there is more that we can do to help end human trafficking in Nevada, and to help the victims of this awful crime. Advocating for these bills will make a tremendous difference! Click here to visit this action alert on our website.

I am opposed to some of the rhetoric in this petition but it is worthwhile nonetheless and I signed the petition. 

Comment on piece: I have signed this petition but it is unfortunate that you have resorted to unhelpful rhetoric in your wording (e.g., Germany indoctrinating the world). Such inaccurate claims may risk the petition’s success which would be shameful. Child trafficking and suffering speaks for itself; do not jeopardise the message with propaganda.

We have been concentrating only on developing countries but the reality looks different

SOS… we need help in Germany
Money rules the world and so is with Germany
Germany indoctrines the whole world and the whole world is naive enough to believe the shinging facades of Germany

The truth behind is  a shock ..
Child trafficking
Child abuse
Germanizing like Hitler days thru german regime
Human right violations on Refugees from other countries living in Germany ( some are already killed). Children are abused and raped in Foster Cares of German regime and many more
The worst is that the child trafficking in Germany

believeinfreedom:

Did you know that…

• 12.3 million people are enslaved today worldwide
• In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation eradicating slavery, yet more than one million people are enslaved in the U.S. today.
• Two million children are bought and sold in the global commercial sex trade
• The average age of entry into commercial sex slavery in the United States is 13 years old
• The global sex slavery market generates $32 billion in profits each year
• Every 10 minutes, a woman or child is trafficked into the United States for forced labor
• Most “johns” are quite ordinary: 70-90% are married, and most are employed with no criminal record
• 76% of transactions for sex with underage girls are conducted via the internet
• The U.S. government spends 300 times more money per year to fight drug trafficking than it does to fight human trafficking
• Approximately 55% of girls living on the streets in the United States engage in commercial sex slavery. Girls from middle and upper class neighborhoods are also at risk

Open your eyes to human trafficking. Get informed, educate yourself and stand up against human trafficking and exploitation of Men, Women and Children.

(Source: loveisjustice, via rightsandhumanity)

Want to combine the practicality of buying book bags and pencil cases with the thrill of human trafficking? The Girl Store, in a wildly inappropriate philanthropic effort, is selling school supplies on a website designed to mimic the sale of children into sexual slavery. The Girl Store is a charity that claims to help keep young Indian girls from being sold into marriage or sexual slavery. The idea is that you buy school supplies for girls that otherwise couldn’t afford them and that, in…

redlightpolitics:

Great post at RH Reality Check, The Lie We Love about international adoptions. From the piece:

Westerners have been sold the myth of a world orphan crisis. We are told that millions of children are waiting for their “forever families” to rescue them from lives of abandonment and abuse. But many of the infants and toddlers being adopted by Western parents today are not orphans at all. Yes, hundreds of thousands of children around the world do need loving homes. But more often than not, the neediest children are sick, disabled, traumatized, or older than 5. They are not the healthy babies that, quite understandably, most Westerners hope to adopt. There are simply not enough healthy, adoptable infants to meet Western demand—and there’s too much Western money in search of children. As a result, many international adoption agencies work not to find homes for needy children but to find children for Western homes.

More at the link above, specifically, a great analysis about who is driving the supply of these adoptions and the devastating effects on children who, in many cases, end up victims of a gray area trafficking situation.

petitefeministe:

TRIGGER WARNING

When police turned up at the Shangri-La, it was quiet. Marinela Badea was catching up on sleep and was awoken by the commotion. Minutes later, on a grey Manchester morning, she and half a dozen other women were handcuffed and marched out of the red-brick massage parlour in Openshaw in the east of the city.

Marinela, 17, was terrified. Trafficked from Romania, she had been coerced into prostitution by a pimp who beat her with numbing regularity. Now there was something new to fear. “I didn’t even know where I was going,” she says now. “I couldn’t trust anyone, I had no idea of the law. I was so scared.”

The sex crimes unit of Greater Manchester police arrested her for prostitution-related offences, but at least Marinela was safe behind bars. Her first day in custody was the first since her arrival in England six months earlier that she had not been forced to have sex. She had been raped by different men 50 times a week on average, often violent, drunken strangers. And if she was released from prison, Marinela was convinced she would be murdered by the gang who trafficked her.

Eventually police would discover that Marinela was an innocent victim of Bogdan Nejloveanu, 51, and his son Marius, 23, a Romanian trafficking team who last month received the longest sentence for trafficking in UK history. Her extraordinary story, revealed here for the first time, offers a troubling insight into Britain’s vast “off-street” prostitution trade. It also raises questions about the apparent indifference of the authorities to tackling trafficking and protecting vulnerable women imported into Britain as sex slaves.

priskillingly:

Today in totally misguided philanthropy, we have “The Girl Store,” a presumably well-intentioned girl empowerment project that—for some utterly illogical reason—masquerades as a child pornography site.

Head on over to The Girl Store and you’ll be greeted by shaky footage of a disheveled Indian girl smiling bashfully as an unknown cameraperson pans up and down her body, lingering on her little hands, before finally settling on her face. The accompanying text reads:

100% genuine girls
…young…
…innocent…
…and available.
Experience the sensation of buying a girl
….her life back.

…Buy a girl before someone else does.

In case that disturbing, voyeuristic intro didn’t clearly communicate the website’s purpose, let me clarify: It sells school supplies. To whom it sells these school supplies is debatable, but let’s just give the site’s creators the benefit of the doubt and assume that they’re not trying to exclusively solicit donations from internet pedophiles. (While we’re at it, let’s also assume that the homepage—which features a number of miserable-looking little girls swaying against a white backdrop—isn’t supposed to resemble an auction block.) But that said, why does the sale of notebooks and pencils warrant the clear and deliberate eroticization of small children? Is the video suggesting that the alternative to education is sexual abuse? Is it supposed to make us—the hapless and happy-go-lucky consumer—feel complicit in that sexual exploitation? Or are we just supposed to feel creeped out? Most importantly, what the hell does this have to do with school supplies?

Her ankles and wrists are shackled. She’s wearing used sweats in the bright colors of the jailhouse, orange, blue and yellow. She shuffles to the courtroom to face the judge, her mother, and an uncertain future.

Selena is a 13-year-old who was sold for sex.

She wants to go home to her house in the suburbs and the baby sister she hardly knows. And now, facing a sympathetic judge and a loving mother who wants to make sure she’s safe, Selena is being told she can’t go home.

“I want to go home and I want to be with my family, that’s all I want,” she tells Juvenile Court Judge William Voy, her face bathed in tears. “This isn’t making me any better in here.”

Selena was arrested by undercover police on the Vegas strip on prostitution charges. But although she exchanged sex for money, in the eyes of the law, she’s a victim, by virtue of her age and the circumstances under which she was sold: by a pimp on the website backpage.com, a pimp who used drugs to entice her, and took everything she earned.