Islamist political parties have provided government with a list of 84 “atheist bloggers” and are demanding the death penalty for “insulting religion”.
Author: Ophelia Benson
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Wednesday at the inquest
Fergal Bowers reporting for RTE, again.
The consulting obstetrician said there were system failures.
Dr Katherine Astbury said Mrs Halappanavar’s clinical signs were not checked every four hours after her membranes ruptured, which was a breach of hospital policy.
She told the inquest that when Mrs Halappanavar requested a termination from her on the morning of 23 October, she outlined the legal position to her.
She said that Mrs Halappanavar had told her she was finding it very upsetting and difficult given that the ultimate outcome would be that her baby would not survive.
Dr Astbury told her “in this country it is not legal to terminate a pregnancy on the grounds of poor prognosis for a foetus”.
Pause to rant. That is disgusting. It’s sick. The issue in this case is infection and death and failure to treat, but even if it were “only” a matter of refusing to hasten the end of a doomed pregnancy, that is disgusting. As I understand it the fetus’s chance of survival was closer to zero than a very small percentage, and why should the mother be punished by being forced to wait for the fetus to die inside her? It is sick.
She said it was her view that Mrs Halappanavar was emotionally disturbed, but not physically unwell.
She told Mr Halappanavar’s barrister, Eugene Gleeson, that she felt at the time the prospect of viability for the foetus was poor as opposed to being non-existent. The phrase “inevitable miscarriage” had been recorded in medical notes by a colleague of Dr Astbury on 22 October.
Dr Astbury told Mr Gleeson that “the law in Ireland does not permit termination even if there is no prospect of viability”.
She said this was her understanding based on the X case judgment and Medical Council guidelines.
She told Mr Gleeson it did not occur to her to consult her colleagues about the legal position.
That seems to indicate that Astbury has no idea that a dilated cervix and/or premature rupture of membranes is/are dangerous, while what I get from Jen Gunter is that that’s basic knowledge, in every textbook. Astbury isn’t a cardiologist after all, she’s an obstetrician. I’m wondering what is in Irish medical textbooks. Dr Astbury said she did not see Mr Halappanavar or his wife on Monday 22 October after a scan detecting a foetal heartbeat was performed and that there was no formal request made to her for a termination on that day.
Great. Fantastic. They just shoved her in a corner to wait, then.
Dr Katherine Astbury agreed with coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin there were systems failure at the hospital in relation to the monitoring of Ms Halappanavar and the processing of blood tests.
Asked about her decision to refuse Ms Halappanavar’s request for a termination, she said that under Irish law there had to be a “real and substantial risk” to the life of the patient before this could happen.
Which there was. And if there hadn’t been – why does Irish law want to force women to take risks?
I know why; it’s because priests; but it’s necessary to spell this crap out. Irish law sees fit to make gradations of risk and to force women to take what Irish law considers “unreal and insubstantial” risk to their lives.
At the time of the request, Ms Halappanavar was well and a termination was not permitted because of a diagnosis of poor foetal prognosis.
Dr McLoughlin urged the witness to get away from the “emotive term” of termination, which evoked the killing of the foetus. This was not the intention of the Halappanavars, he said. Dr Astbury said that if a patient was given medication to deliver at the time when there was a foetal heartbeat, her understanding was that this was a termination.
Dr McLoughlin quoted from Medical Council guidelines on obstetric complications, which state that it may be necessary to intervene to protect the life of the mother while making every effort to save the baby’s life.
Asked if she felt she had scope to intervene under these guidelines, the witness said she didn’t believe she could. Her understanding was that these guidelines applied to situation where a mother had been diagnosed with cancer or another life-threatening illness not related to her pregnancy. In that situation, intervention would be justified, Dr Astbury said. The issue was that there was no law to tell someone what was permitted or not. It was a question of law.
What an incredible dog’s breakfast.
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PNG: two women suspected of “sorcery” beheaded
Two elderly women were beheaded in Papua New Guinea after being tortured for three days. Police were outnumbered by an angry mob and could do nothing to stop the murders.
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Left untreated, the outcome is maternal death
Dr Jen Gunter has weighed in; I was hoping she would. She was informative and passionate about it last fall.
Savita Halappanavar was admitted at on a Sunday to Galway hospital at 17 weeks into her pregnancy with ruptured membranes, a dilated cervix, and an elevated white blood cell count (a marker of infection). It is clear that her diagnosis was chorioamnionitis, an infection of the fetal membranes. When left untreated the bacteria of chorioamnionitis march across the umbilical cord into both the maternal and fetal circulation. Left untreated, the outcome is maternal death.
Just walking through the door with ruptured membranes at 17 weeks Ms. Halappanavar baseline risk of chorioamnionitis was 30-40%. Her presentation should not have posed a diagnostic dilemma, not even for an intern. She was a perfect set up.
In Canada and the United States, once chorioamnionitis is diagnosed the treatment is antibiotics and delivery. An “expeditious delivery…regardless of gestational age,” according to the guidelines of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG). If the fetus is not viable there is no waiting for the fetal lungs to mature or waiting for the fetus to succumb. The recommendation is delivery. This is because chorioamnionitis kills women and if a fetus is on the cusp of viability it has a far greater chance of survival without an infection than with one. The infection helps no one, neither the mother nor the fetus.
What I want to know is, what are OB_GYNs taught in Irish medical schools? What are they taught is the treatment for chorioamnionitis? Are they really taught it’s to delay unless the fetal heart has stopped?
Savita Halappanavar’s medical team tells a different story. The testimony of the consultant obstetrician was that Ms. Halappanavar was not sick enough to be allowed a termination on Tuesday according to the Irish legal position. However, there is clear evidence that she was rapidly deteriorating on the Tuesday evening. Ms. Halappanavar’s heart rate was 110 beats/minute and her widower reports that she was shivering and her teeth were “chattering.” Tachycardia (a rapid heart rate) and shaking chills and clear clinical signs that she was gravely ill.
And yet they dawdled. Still.
What is the treatment for chorioamnionitis?
If the answer is delivery then the delay must be explained. One obvious explanation is the swiss cheese effect, where several things are missed culminating in a very bad outcome. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. This problem can be fixed with better staffing, education, and specific protocols.
If the answer is, as the consultant obstetrician suggests, that Ms. Halappanavar was simply not sick enough to warrant delivery then it appears that the current “legal position” in Ireland is that a woman must be left brewing her infection until the stench is bad enough that Death himself gets a whiff and comes calling.
That’s not the legal position here in the US, but it is the de facto position in many Catholic hospitals.
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Tuesday at the inquest
Fergal Bowers reports for RTE.
A midwife who was working on the ward where Savita Halappanavar was being treated has given evidence at the inquest into her death.
Miriam Dunleavy told the Coroner’s Court in Galway that entries were put into Mrs Halappanavar’s medical notes by the hospital’s internal investigation.
Coroner Dr Ciaran McLoughlin raised questions as to the appropriateness of this.
Yes that does sound slightly inappropriate.
Dr Katherine Astbury also testified.
In a detailed chronological account of the treatment she provided, Dr Astbury said that she had requested an ultrasound on Monday 22 October after Mrs Halappanavar’s membranes ruptured.
On the following day when she asked for medication to assist a miscarriage, she said she told Mrs Halappanavar that the Irish legal position did not allow her to carry out a termination at that time, as there was no risk to her life or health.
If that’s true it’s an absolute outrage, because there was great risk to her life and health. Her cervix was found to be dilated on Sunday morning, and on Tuesday an obstetrician told her there was no risk to her life or health. That is frightening.
When her condition deteriorated the following day, Dr Astbury said she had formed the view that there might be no option but to consider a delivery, regardless of the foetal heartbeat.
They waited until she got much worse and then they started thinking there might be no option but to consider an abortion.
It’s disgusting.
Don’t go thinking it’s just Ireland though. I know I keep saying that, but it’s under the radar. It’s the US too. Here it’s against the law, but the law isn’t enforced. Catholic hospitals are allowed to make their own laws. This comment from yesterday on As no threat to Savita’s life illustrates that.
I can attest that termination is not a standard of care I received, even when requested, during a protracted miscarriage. When my water broke on a Friday night at 16weeks and I started bleeding heavily, I went to the ER. No hope for the fetus. I requested termination, and they said they couldn’t because it still had a heartbeat. (30beats per minute. C’mon!). They kept me overnight, sent me home in the morning with a dead fetus inside me with instruction to call my OB on Monday to schedule a D&E at some outpatient surgery center. The next day, Sunday, I delivered a boy without warning. Cut the cord, wrapped him in a cloth diaper and put him in a child’s shoebox. Back to the ER where I eventually had a D&C to remove the very stubborn placenta. Baby Boy was buried in a mass grave.
So, all that to say, I had 2.5 days of slow-motion second trimester miscarriage in which I requested a termination, was denied, was told they could not even perform the D&E after the fetus had died (I can’t remember why…) and some seriously traumatizing moments. I did not get an infection, fortunately. This was in Austin, where even the public hospital is run by the Catholics…
This should not be allowed. Not in Ireland, not in the US, not anywhere.
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Formation of reformatories and industrial schools
I would like to begin by summarising an overview of parts of a report into the historical background of reformatories and industrial schools in Britain and Ireland. The report laid out by *experts was requested by the commission to inquire into child institutional abuse (CICA), which was set up to deal with allegations of child abuse in Irish reformatories and industrial schools. Prominent survivors had raised their voices to tell Ireland and the world of the secretive systemic inter-generational abuse that occurred behind closed reformatory and industrial school doors. They demanded to be heard. Hence the instigation of the CICA by the then taoiseach, Bertie Ahern’s Fianna Fáil-led government. The Commission was thus established on 23 May, 2000, pursuant to the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse Act 2000 and given three primary functions:
▪ to hear evidence of abuse from persons who allege they suffered abuse in childhood, in institutions, during the period from 1940 or earlier, to the present day;
▪ to conduct an inquiry into abuse of children in institutions during that period and, where satisfied that abuse occurred, to determine the causes, nature, circumstances and extent of such abuse; and
▪ to prepare and publish reports on the results of the inquiry and on its recommendations in relation to dealing with the effects of such abuse.
My deep interest in the historical aspects of reformatories and industrial schools stems from a very personal perspective, as I was a product of Goldenbridge industrial school, Dublin. I also attended the CICA to give evidence of very harrowing times spent at Goldenbridge in the mid-fifties and late sixties. It touches my very core learning about the history. I also find it therapeutic, as it brings home to me the memories that need to be faced up to, and the reality that conceivably 170,000 lives were not that disparate to mine.
In order to find out why child slave labour of every inconceivable kind occurred in reformatories and industrial schools, I needed to go all the way back to the roots of how reformatories and industrial schools were first formed – most specifically apropos to Ireland. I needed to discover how those who ran the institutions came to be so doing. I needed to know why it was that so many children came to be together in these institutions.
As Ophelia Benson pointed out in a discussion with me:
I think they needed to understand what they thought their moral principles were and how they reconciled that with the way they treated helpless children. The discrepancy we all keep talking about and being amazed at? They’re churchy, so they’re Good – that’s what we’re told, that’s what we’re supposed to think. So how did they understand “Good”? And how did that harmonise with being so incredibly Bad toward helpless children?
I think the religious sought to reconcile their moral principles that were grounded by the code of Catholicism: Sexual morality thinking that dated back to medieval times. Beating the daylights out of children because parents went astray probably justified the cruelty towards children. The dirt had to be beaten out of children. Clergy routinely warned believers that children conceived on holy days would be born leprous, epileptic, diabolically possessed, blind, or crippled.
Starvation was also a big problem in the reformatories and industrial schools. Is it any wonder when one considers that in medieval times penalties of 20 to 40 days of strict fasting on bread and water were imposed on transgressors who strayed from the beaten track? The reformatories and industrial schools religious management were still abiding in antediluvian times and making children suffer (by proxy) for the transgression of the parents.
I would like to take readers on an historical reformatories and industrial schools journey. Roots of every kind are important – even the tangled ones. In order to let go of a painful past, it’s necessary to try to figure out its root cause. I know this is true in my case, anyway. So many survivors, throughout their lives, have disassociated from the lives they experienced in their respective institutions. They also discovered in recent years when coming together at reunions, or when meeting each other at various survivor centres, that their past institutional lives came back to haunt them. They clashed with each other. I have personal knowledge of this happening. It was also painful being on the receiving end of this perceived rejection. Some survivors just simply cannot be around other survivors because of triggers of the past emanating from their beings. Period! The fear and anguish of the horrors they lived on a daily basis as child inmates are locked in their brains and hauntingly mirrored back when they meet survivors. I now refuse to let go of that loveless; pitiless; isolated; godforsaken miserable past, because of having hidden away from it for so long. I want to get to the bottom of the pain. I want to look deep and dare to thread into the miasma of my deepest pain and hopefully be somewhat wiser for looking back. I don’t mean being in a time warp, or being stuck in a rut. I do feel that by learning all about the history of reformatories and industrial schools it can become a cathartic healing experience.
Workhouses
According to the *experts report, the Act of the Relief of the Poor of 1598 in Britain and Ireland saw appointments in every parish of ‘overseers of the poor’ whose duty amongst others was to work with children whose parent/s were not considered fit to maintain. In 1771 legislation was enacted, under which overseers were appointed to arrange for the maintenance and education of orphaned or deserted children out of money by the parish. It was envisaged, too, that workhouses were to be built, financed either by voluntary contribution, or if these were not forthcoming, by official grants. The needs far outweighed both voluntary contributions and official grants. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in both Britain and Ireland populations grew so much that the parish failed to be a practical component for relief management. Impoverished children perambulated the countryside or streets rummaging for food and purloining for a livelihood. In Ireland, the Famine (1845-1849) made an unsatisfactory situation extensively worse, leading to the abjuration of children by parents. The Poor Relief (Ireland) Act, 1838 was the response Ireland looked to on an official level to sort out the great social problem. Workhouses were established throughout the country under the central authority of the Irish Poor Law Commissioners (replaced in 1872 by the Local Government Board for Ireland). By 1853, 77,000 children below 15 years of age (one third of them orphans), which was 6.5% of the age cohort, were living in workhouses, while an unknown number of ‘street waifs’ were still living untamed in the towns. Families were inevitably separated when they went to the workhouses. However, children had access to the parent/s once a week. It was the workhouse rule. The children were seen as risk factors, given that they had to mix with adult down-and-outs. No education facilities were available to the children. There was a dreadful stigma attached to workhouses, they were seen as the lowest of the low. Officials toyed with the idea of making direct payments or essentials available to those in the workhouses, so that they could live independently, alas, it became frowned upon when it was thoroughly considered that those who were not in need… could possibly take advantage of the ‘outdoor relief’ system. After all the charities were specifically set up for those who were completely dependent on them, and who suffered the ignominy of having to live in dire substandard overcrowded conditions. There were also other individual charities and do-gooders who attempted to lessen the plight of children by collecting and bringing them into orphanages. Think ‘ragged schools’. The brainchild, behind these schools being developed was by John Pounds, a shoemaker in 1818. He began teaching poor children without charging fees.
Reformatory and industrial school beginnings
Even still all these charitable organisations put together could not dampen the seriousness of the social problem that was gaining rampant impetus. So in the first half of the nineteenth century committees and commissions were set up to investigate the wider need of child poverty. This was when the industrial school system was first thought of as a way of alleviating the problem. It was to be based on a ‘Continental model’. By the 1850s, Germany, Switzerland and Scandinavia had already approximately one hundred of these industrial schools. Some were called ‘Farm Schools’. The ethos of them was to provide practical training, as opposed to academic learning. This of course suited very well the Victorian ideas of utilitarian progress. Besides, the skills learned would fuel the Industrial Revolution. There would be a two-pronged approach to helping, 1) the children most in need would be provided for and 2) those seen as a threat to society could be controlled. The Continental model was legislated into British law in 1850. For those found guilty of offences. In Ireland a little later reformatories were established.
Reformatory Schools (Ireland) Act, 1858 A decade later: IndustrialSchools (Ireland) 1868. For those neglected, orphaned or abandoned. In other words not for criminal children, but those exposed to potential crime.
This dichotomy was in line with a fairly well established distinction between a penal school for youthful offenders and a ‘ragged school’ for the poor or vagrant.
A number of charities which had already been in existence took advantage of the, 1858 and 1868 Acts and applied to the government for certificates to act as reformatories and industrial schools. These were for children committed through the courts. Those who were granted certificates could avail of public funds for the upkeep of children. For decades in the aftermath new buildings sprung up, and although reformatories were in existence for a decade longer, industrial schools soon overtook them in both number and inmates. In the seven years after 1858 10 reformatories (five for females) were certified. By the end of the century only seven of the ten original reformatories existed. Some were re-certified as industrial schools. By 1922 only five remained (of which was a reformatory in Northern Ireland) The reformatory school population, which was nearly 800 just after the passing of the 1858 Act, fell to 300 in 1882 and 150 in 1900. In 1875 – on the other hand – there were 50 industrial schools. Even reaching to a total of 71 schools. 56 schools for Catholics and five for Protestant) that were in the 26 counties. At its height, in 1898 the population of industrial schools was 7,998 inmates, compared to 6,000 children in the same year in the miserable workhouses. In 1882 committal entries to Industrial schools were made under the category of begging. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century British social reformers such as Charles Booth and Sebohm Rowntree began questioning and analysing the causes of poverty. They became cognisant of the fact that children were impressionable individuals that were open to all sorts of child abuse. Thus came about change in legislation that was replaced by the Children Act, 1908, popularly known as the Children’s Charter. Though inappreciable, important meaningful changes were made that created a unified structure of law that was applicable to both Britain and Ireland. The Children Act, 1908 covered a lot of topics, for example, the prevention of cruelty to children, protection of infant life, and provision for juvenile offence. The most significant provisioning of the Act was in Part IV, which provided for the constitutional basic for reformatories and industrial schools. It continued that way for susceptible children until its amendment by the Child Care Act, 1991, which became fully operational in 1996. The 1991 Act replaced the Children Act, 2001, which became law in July 2001. Section 44 of the Children Act 1908 mission statement for the schools. This section states:
The expression “industrial school” means a school for the industrial training of children, in which children are lodged, clothed and fed, as well as taught.
The definition of a ‘reformatory school’ is defined in the same terms by section 44 of the 1908 Act, but with the substitution of ‘youthful offenders’ for ‘children’.
*This historical overview has drawn extensively on the research provided to the Commission by Professor David Gwynn Morgan, Dr Eoin O’Sullivan; Professor Se ́amus O’Cinne ́ide; Dr Moira Maguire (who along with Professor O’Cinne ́ide compiled reports to the Sisters of Mercy); Professor Dermot Keogh (who wrote a report for the Presentation Brothers on Greenmount) and Ms Sheila Lunney (who wrote an MA thesis entitled Institutional Solution to a Social Problem: Industrial Schools in Ireland and the Sisters of Mercy 1869 to 1950).
I was prompted to find out about the historicity of reformatories and industrial schools because of first wanting to know the raison d’être behind why so many inmates of these institutions in the past were utterly bereft of any knowledge of their own history. So many lives have been irreversibly damaged because of having been incarcerated into a very cruel system. I wanted to explore the historical roots of the institutions that in turn deprived generations of children of their own natural genealogical roots. There are countless adult survivors to this very day desperately trying to discover their roots, as they without fail were told as child inmates in their respective institutions that their mothers had either abandoned them or were dead, or were worthless beings not worth knowing. Loss of siblings! Loss of mothers! Loss of extended relatives was the price child inmates paid for crimes they either never committed, or, if they did, were so hideously minor to be incarcerated for years. The crimes comprised of mitching from school; robbing orchards or being impertinent. Some children also paid the price because their mothers were not deemed fit enough by the ‘cruelty men’ (euphemistically referred to by all) (ISPCC) to look after the children. The mothers could have been in relationships with men who weren’t the biological fathers. Roots are important to children and adults. So many lives were irreversibly damaged as a consequence of having been incarcerated into a very cruel system. Families were broken up, with many never recovering from the childhood separation that was foisted upon them by an uncaring society, who thought very little of the needs of children. They thought the solution was to set up reformatories and industrial schools. However, the commission to inquire into child abuse and the subsequent Ryan report immensely disproved their worth. They were still in existence in Ireland until the seventies, yet Britain had dispensed with them in 1933.
Related: Industrial Schools – RTÉ
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No threat to Savita’s life
And there’s RTE’s account.
Praveen Halappanavar said they asked for a termination three times over two days.
The inquest has been told that the evidence from Dr Astbury will be that there was only one discussion about a termination of pregnancy and it was on Tuesday 23 October.
Dr Astbury says a termination was not warranted at that time, as there was no threat to Savita’s life and so no reason to consider an abortion.
According to Dr Jennifer Gunter (an OB-GYN) that’s bullshit; there was a threat to Savita’s life.
One wonders if medical training in Ireland is actually shaped according to Catholic dogma and Irish law.
The inquest heard that when Mrs Halappanavar attended Galway University Hospital on 21 October, doctors found her cervix was open and she was told the baby would not survive.
She was told it would be all over soon.
…
The inquest has heard that a sepsis management programme was in place at Galway University Hospital since July last year.
Meanwhile, back with the safe and powerful…
Elsewhere, Minister for Health James Reilly has said he hopes the inquest gets to the truth in a way that not only gives some closure to the Halappanavar family, but also to every woman in Ireland that it has a safe maternity service.
But Ireland doesn’t have a safe maternity service! Never mind “closure”; fix the law!
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Sorry, no can do
The Galway Independent gives a very detailed account of Praveen Halappanavar’s testimony to the inquest today.
On Sunday, they were told the fetus would not survive.
Mr Halappanavar said that he could hear his wife crying and, on returning to the room, was told that there had been some cervical dilation and the foetus would not survive. He said that they had asked if the baby could be saved by putting in stitches but were told that this was not possible.
But waiting around for no reason, giving infection a chance to set in – that was possible.
MONDAY
On Monday morning, Mr Halappanavar said that Savita was taken for an ultrasound and started to cry when she saw the monitor. He claims that he and his wife then had a conversation with the consultant, Dr Katherine Astbury, in which Savita said she couldn’t take waiting for her baby to die and requested a termination. He said he was then told that, as the foetus was still alive, the pregnancy could not be terminated.
Mr Halappanavar said his wife asked if there was anything that could be done to speed up the labour process and Dr Astbury agreed to check and come back to them to discuss later.
The next day
He went on to claim that he and Savita had another conversation with Dr Astbury, in which they were told that the pregnancy could not be terminated, as Ireland was a Catholic country. He said that Savita argued that she was of Hindu faith and was not an Irish citizen and should therefore should be allowed to proceed with a termination but Dr Astbury said “sorry” and left the room.
And on it went, pointlessly, until she was dead.
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Sadly, no, you can’t have everything
That Al-Jazeera report on the “Muslimah pride” reaction to Amina and Femen –
It has some odd stuff.
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This event is open to ALL muslim women, Hijaabi’s Nikaabis and women who choose not to wear it. Muslimah pride is about connecting with your Muslim identity and reclaiming our collective voice. Most importantly it is about diversity and showing that muslim women are not just one homogenous group. We come in all shapes and sizes, all races and cultural backgrounds. Whether we choose to wear hijaabs or not is nobodies business but ours. So please get clicking, get creative, get loud and proud. #Muslimapride
That’s incoherent. It wants everything. It wants to combine all the incompatibles. It wants identity and diversity. Well guess what: there are tensions there!
Look, if you decide to make a big thing about “Muslimah pride” and “connecting with your Muslim identity” then you are relinquishing certain kinds of diversity. Real diversity is much more attainable with secularism than it is with a religious “identity,” especially when the religion is as demanding and all-pervading as Islam (or as Quiverfull-type Christianity, for another example).
It’s reminiscent of advertising campaigns that invoke hipster attitudes and postures as a way to sell things. It works, but it’s full of tensions. No doubt this “Muslimah pride” thing also works, in some sense, but it reeks of bullshit. It’s just dishonest to brandish “your Muslim identity” while at the same time promising diversity. (It would be less dishonest if “Muslim” really were just an identity, as opposed to membership in a strict and demanding religion. But it isn’t.)
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As no threat to Savita’s life
The inquest into the death of Savita Halappanavar has begun in Galway. Today Praveen Halappanavar testified.
The Sunday it all went wrong, they were told Savita’s cervix was dilated and she would miscarry.
Mr Halappanavar said they were both shattered on hearing this news and his wife asked repeatedly why this was happening to her. They were told it would all be over in a few hours when she miscarried.
On Monday October 23rd her obstetrician Dr Katharine Astbury sent Ms Halappanaver for an ultrasound. Dr Astbury told her that “unfortunately” the foetus was still alive, Mr Halappanavar said.
He said the couple asked Dr Astbury for a termination but she told them this was not possible.
Fergal Bowers, health correspondent for RTE, who is live-tweeting the inquest, said Dr Astbury said there was no danger on Tuesday.
Inquest: Consultant obs, Dr Katherine Astbury will say termination not warranted on Tues Oct 23, as no threat to
#Savita‘s life.Really? Because what I learned from a lot of sources – medical sources, especially Dr Jen Gunter on Twitter – is that that’s just flat-out false: a protracted miscarriage is always dangerous. Period. There isn’t ambiguity about it. A dilated cervix is an open door to infection.
So if that’s going to be the line that Astbury takes…it looks like admitting stark malpractice. Or perhaps, more frighteningly, that Irish hospitals allow their standard of care to be warped by Catholic “teachings.”
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Kenya: Kakenya Ntaiya swapped her genitals for high school
When she was 12, she made a deal with her father: she would undergo the Maasai rite of passage of FGM if he would let her go to high school.
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Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina rejects new blasphemy law
In a BBC interview, she said existing laws were sufficient to punish anyone who attempted to insult religion. Whew, that’s a relief!
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If the genitals are severely mutilated, that’s another thing
And then another post the same day.
Chapter 2 of the ‘I’m more postcolonialist than you’ follies.
Another respondent:
Why do feminists still have to analyze everything using the concept of ‘oppression?’ Why are -you- using the term as though everything feminist has to be talked about in terms of oppression. There are times when that’s okay, but there are other times when it is not…When feminists label some kinds of behaviour problematic, by naming them oppressive, for instance, they may be putting other women into situations which could be dangerous for them, or which could at least change the course of their lives, and not always favourably, if they decided to act on this new way of perceiving it. What should be respected is the fact that not all women will be able to make positive change in their lives…For starters, referring to female genital cutting as mutilation is a value judgement. Call it FGE. If the genitals are severely mutilated, thats another thing.
When feminists label some kinds of behaviour problematic, they’re doing various things to other women. Uh…yes. And? That is, obviously, always the case with any kind of suggestion or campaign or movement for social change. Abolitionists may have been putting slaves into situations, union organizers may have been putting workers into situations, anti-apartheid campaigners may have been putting South African blacks into situations. That’s always true, and it is as well to be careful. The protests in Kenya over an allegedly stolen election have gone in a very bad direction and I would not at the moment jet off to Kenya to fire people up for more protests. But is it therefore a general principle that no harmful practice should be called a harmful practice because it’s always safer just to let things be? Well, not for the young girls who get their genitals sliced off it’s not!
‘Referring to female genital cutting as mutilation is a value judgement.’ Yes indeed it is, and that is exactly why I and others do it. We’re making a value judgement: chopping off female genitalia is mutilation, it’s bad, it should stop. No I damn well won’t call it FGE: ‘excision’ is the right word to use for a tumor, not for a normal set of genitals. As I rather heatedly said on the list, calling FGM ‘excision’ is like calling footbinding orthopedic surgery. And I’m not going to call it FGE if it’s just a little bit of mutilation – I’m not going to save ‘FGM’ for severe mutilation. I don’t think mild genital mutilation is okay or that it deserves a pass or a dang euphemism.
And more from the first respondent, the one from ‘Ethnocentric feminism’:
I will note that I was careful to add two citations to my response, the James and Robertson volume, as well as Mohanty’s famous essay (and now body of work) on the problematic application of Western feminist concepts, frameworks, and analyses to non-Western locations…Both of these sources and collection of authors are very careful to make nuanced, complicated claims about both Western feminism and female genital surgeries, rather than the broad-brush condemnations of the latter or caricatures of their critique of Western feminism that have dominated the discussion on this list thus far.
You see, Mohanty’s essay is famous (and now it’s a body of work), therefore it’s important. This is the classic argument from celebrity that is all too familiar to those of us who follow the antics of the trendy. They love to tell us how famous their heroes are – the famous Judith Butler tells us how famous Derrida is, and acolytes everywhere tell us how famous Judith Butler is. Then when they’ve finished doing that they tell us how nuanced and sophisticated the famous work of all these famous people is. They never manage to reproduce or imitate any of the nuance or sophistication, they just keep endlessly waving at it. Very careful, very nuanced, very unlike ‘the broad-brush condemnations’ of – of what? Of female genital surgeries? Surgeries? Excision wasn’t euphemistic enough, now we’re talking about surgeries? When the vast majority of them are nothing of the kind, when the vast majority of them are performed with a pair of scissors and no anaesthetic? Surgeries?
It’s scary, isn’t it?
Indeed, critique of problematic moves in Western feminism should be allowable without it being equated with total dismissal of Western feminism, just as the critique of female genital surgeries should be allowable in a register other than self-righteous moralizing condemnation that seeks to rank the relative measure of women’s oppression in the world, “modern industrialized countries” always (unsurprisingly) coming out on top in this type of analysis…
Good point, excellent point, except for one tiny thing: nobody was seeking ‘to rank the relative measure of women’s oppression in the world’; yet again, that’s just self-righteous bullshit. This particular writer (she wrote all the nonsense in ‘Ethnocentric feminism’ too, as I mentioned) specializes in silly hyperbolic inaccurate depictions of claims that never were. Another tiny detail is that no one said anything about ‘modern industrialized countries’ coming out on top, either.
As many within the literature on transnational feminisms have also shown, the contest to prove some cultures or places or religious communities as “more” oppressive toward women than others is one of many longstanding ways of measuring savagery and barbarism more generally, and was a common strategy used to justify colonialism (e.g., “just look at how they treat their women!”).
Yes…we know imperialists often condemned practices that involved women (like sati for instance, and they were right, even if not all of their reasons were), that is not a newsflash, but so what? Does it follow that contemporary feminists are being imperialist in calling FGM FGM rather than ‘excision’ or (pardon me while I swear) ‘surgery’? No it does not. The ‘feminists’ who call FGM ‘surgery’ are being soft-headed at best and conceitedly self-serving at worst.
Speaking personally, I thought I was quite careful to make specific and nuanced claims which, in this previous email at least (see below), were chopped up (another kind of “cutting”?) to suit the poster’s polemical purposes of caricaturing me as advocating for a nihilistic world wherein nothing – not even hierarchy and women’s oppression – means anything anymore.
That was me – I chopped up the ‘nuanced claims’ – that is to say, I excerpted them, with ellipses to show where the cuts were, in the usual way when one quotes someone else. Yet our commenter is so vain and so self-obsessed and so self-important that she apparently thinks it’s droll to pretend that my excerpting something she wrote is the same kind of thing as an adult gouging out a child’s clitoris and cutting off her labia. She wants me and others to talk of female genital surgeries, as she does, instead of female genital mutilations, yet she’s not embarrassed to compare excerpting from something she wrote (while the original remains in the archive and everyone’s Inbox as opposed to being thrown in the garbage like the child’s bleeding pieces of flesh) with the carving up of a child’s crotch. That’s what I call a healthy sense of priorities!
I am surprised by the responses to my original post, which I thought was a fairly mundane (and even rather dated) argument in the feminist literature; moreover, I am stunned at the level of anger and defensiveness on this issue. If such critiques are still this threatening to the USAmerican feminist establishment, there is much to be worried about. It seems to me a more appropriate response to positions about which we feel strongly, but which have nevertheless been demonstrated by a substantial body of non-Western feminists and feminists of color to be problematically racist or colonialist, is (at a minimum) interest, curiosity, openness, (self-)reflection, and thoughtfulness.
Hmmmmmmmmyeah, except maybe when it’s been presented in such a preeningly self-satisfied yet energetically prosecutorial way, we don’t actually feel all that interested and thoughtful, we feel more like repelled and incredulous and deeply alarmed that this buffoon actually teaches.
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From the archive
The disagreements over “colonialist” feminism caused me to go digging in the archives for an account of a previous such dispute. It was January 11, 2008…and I had jury duty…
I had a hard time tearing myself away from the computer Wednesday and Thursday mornings to catch the bus downtown to the courthouse, because there was a lively (not to say acrimonious) discussion on a Women’s Studies list I subscribe to, about Female Genital Mutilation. I may have done something myself to contribute to the acrimony. Okay I did. I got annoyed. Repeatedly. (But one is limited to two messages a day, so there was a limit to the damage I could do.)
It started with the (astonishing, I thought) fact that the practice was called ‘circumcision’ – which staggered me because I thought it was apologists for the practice who called it that and that opponents all called it Female Genital Mutilation (which is what it is) as a matter of principle. What could feminists be doing euphemizing the horrible practice? I wondered and wondered, then someone rather gently asked the same question, so I decided to provide backup. (I haven’t been posting to the list much, if at all [I can’t remember if I’ve posted before], because I’m not a women’s studies teacher, so I figured I would just read and be silent; but that’s over.) Backup is useful on that list, I think, because there is a strong current of orthodoxy and orthodoxy-enforcement there, and it looks to me as if more people speak up when other people are speaking up. Certainly that’s how it fell out with this discussion. So I expressed my astonishment in stronger and somewhat ruder terms – and there were other comments – and before long out came the classic retort.
This collection of essays problematizes the “M” for mutilation (which I thought was a critique by now well-entrenched in Women’s Studies) as much as an “E” for excision, given regional differences in the types of procedures performed, and “circumcision” is rejected for the very reasons already named – this is not exactly what occurs (one of the editors suggests “S” for sugeries; another option is “C” for cutting). The book does a very nice job of pointing out that while no one is turning cartwheels about female genital surgeries, and that African women themselves have taken steps to end such practices, this is a far cry from the explicitly colonialist and ethnocentric outrage voiced by Western feminists about practices in “other” countries, as performed precisely on cue on this listserv, according to a script that seems not to have changed in 20 years.
You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that there was no ‘explicitly colonialist and ethnocentric outrage’ in any of the messages. None of the messages started out by saying ‘Here is my colonialist and ethnocentric outrage’ – or ‘Here is my outrage as a colonialist ethnocentric Western feminist’ – or ‘My colonialist ethnocentric sense of superiority is outraged at the practices in “other” countries.’ No; no one said anything like that; so what was the accusation doing there? The usual. The usual boring, hackneyed, thought-free, self-flattering attempt at intimidation via orthodoxy-deployment and guilt-mongering.
[D]iscussion of female genital surgeries and potential analogues or comparisons with male circumcision should be possible without the accompanying ethnocentric outpouring of feminist outrage. The notion that female genital surgeries are uniquely violating, singularly oppressive to women, primarily about the control of women’s sexuality, a sign of women’s unique powerlessness and violation in Muslim cultures, or the most pressing problem facing the women who undergo it has been *exhaustively documented* as reflective of Western feminist priorities, a fundamentally imperialist feminist analysis that operates on the basis of Western feminist conceptions of gender, sexual hierarchy, and the oppression of women…The result is the characterization of non-Western women as uniquely victimized, exploited, and damaged by “their” men or their barbaric “culture”…
No it isn’t. It isn’t because the ‘outpouring’ (such as it was) wasn’t ‘ethnocentric’; because not all ‘non-Western women’ are subject to FGM, in fact the vast majority of them are not; because the discussion wasn’t about ‘non-Western women’ in general; because the discussion wasn’t about ‘West good non-West bad huh huh huh’ or any other such brainless grunting; because the discussion wasn’t about trying to ‘characterize’ all non-Western women (which would be a bizarre project) but about calling the practice of cutting off and sewing up women’s genitalia a harmful practice. That’s all it was about – yet it was called ethnocentric, colonialist, fundamentally imperialist, and (horror of horrors) twenty years out of date.
So, not for the first time, I learned that it is simply not possible to satirize this kind of thing adequately, because it’s always more fatuous and delusional and above all self-flattering than one can imagine in advance.
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Sabotaged with scissors
Just after posting a comment about the non-desirability of calling Female Genital Mutiliation FG “Cutting” instead, I check Twitter and see a tweet from Ex-Muslims Forum:
Grace Dent is a wonderful writer – here she is on FGM http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-book-of-mormons-lesson-in-genital-genocide-8554496.html …
@gracedent +So I’m reading it. Grace Dent has no truck with euphemism on this subject.
By rough estimates, there are 20,000 girls at risk of FGM in Britain and 66,000 coping with the botched consequences. There has never been a prosecution, either of a mother taking her child out of the country, or a cutter travelling into Britain. I’ve read cases about little girls in Stratford – home of Olympic hope – being whisked off to Mogadishu. Or of the Somali community in Glasgow where a three-year-old girl and a small baby were sabotaged with scissors. I don’t think polite, concerned mumblings about FGM wholly prepare anyone for the fact that in the majority of cases, after these botch jobs, the whole lot is gone. Here, we have women with missing sex parts.
And it’s mutilation. We’re not talking earlobes here.
Also problematic is the fact that FGM here affects mainly young British African girls of Muslim heritage. In Britain, we are at a sticky point with feminism, where large numbers of women have spent four or five decades being permitted education, the right to work and use contraception, and now believe feminism isn’t needed. No more rights needed here, thank you! “I’m not one of those feminists,” young British women bleat, as nearby, young girls are being whisked off to sunny Mogadishu or being hacked at in a back room in Stratford. This odd idea that “I have my rights, to hell with women globally” shames us. “I have my rights, but I don’t want to say anything remotely culturally insensitive” is a far graver problem still.
As for culturally insensitive – there are plenty of women working to end FGM right there in places where it happens. Be sensitive to their culture.
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A real and substantial risk to the life of the mother
An organization that represents some (or all?) doctors in Ireland has said no thanks to abortion legislation to protect the lives of pregnant women.
The Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has rejected a motion calling for regulation in relation to the provision of abortion where there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.
In a heated and occasionally bad-tempered debate at the organisation’s annual conference in Killarney, doctors also voted against a motion calling for legislation to allow abortion in Ireland in cases of rape or incest. They also voted against a motion calling on the Government to legislate for the provision of abortion for women with non-viable foetal abnormalities.
So the majority is fine with the arrangement that led to the death of Savita Halappanavar.
Wow.
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Are Sharia councils harming women?
The BBC’s Panorama asks, are Sharia councils harming women? It includes a bit of undercover video in which a guy sitting high up as if he were a judge gives a woman a lot of very bad advice. He tells her she should be “brave” and ask the husband who hits her why he does it. “Is it my cooking?” That way she can correct herself.
He also tells her that reporting the hitting to the police is the very last resort and that a shelter is terrible.
In a small terraced house in east London, a woman and her husband argue before an Islamic scholar who sits on a dais above them in a room that looks and feels like a court.
This is Leyton Islamic Sharia Council, and Dr Suhaib Hasan will decide if the woman can have a divorce. Her husband is refusing to grant her one and the couple have been coming here for a year.
She accuses him of refusing to work, ignoring the children and verbally abusing her. He vehemently denies it. When Dr Hasan orders the husband to leave the room, the woman breaks down in tears.
“I hate him, I can’t even bear to look at him, he has ruined my life,” she sobs.
Dr Hasan sends the couple away for another month to try to save their marriage, with the help of Allah.
Allah hadn’t helped before that point, so why would Allah help now?
The BBC article itself is somewhat confusing.
Leyton Islamic Sharia Council is Britain’s oldest Islamic council and one of the most active, hearing about 50 cases a month – mainly marital disputes. Nine out of 10 are brought by Muslim women from all over the country.
With an Islamic marriage, it is far easier for a man to divorce. The only way for women is through these councils.
“We are not here just to issue divorces,” says Dr Hasan.
“We want to mediate first. We try to save marriages so when people come to us we try to reconcile them.”
But Islamic rulings given here are not always in the interests of the women concerned, and can run counter to British law.
That statement “the only way for women is through these councils” is very confusing to me. Surely that’s simply false, because women can get divorces through the legal system…unless of course they are being forcibly prevented, but surely that would be against the law.
Maybe the Beeb means “the only way for women who are determined to have only an Islamic divorce from an Islamic marriage is through these councils”?
Or maybe it means something more sinister, something like “the only way for women who are trapped in these Islamic marriages and don’t know how to get a secular divorce is through these councils.” If that is what they mean I think they should have spelled it out.
As it is, it’s not clear to me why these women who get such horrible instructions from these Sharia councils don’t just decide the hell with Sharia councils and go the secular route instead.
In Leeds I met Sonia, a woman who suffered extreme violence from her husband, who punched and kicked her and threw her down the stairs. He also hit their son. When Sonia got a civil divorce, the courts would allow him only indirect access to the children.
Sharia courts are not allowed to interfere in child access matters, but when Sonia went to Leyton Islamic Sharia Council for a Sharia divorce, they told her she would have to give the children up to her husband.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of such a violent person having my children,” said Sonia.
“What was shocking was when I explained to them why he shouldn’t have that access to the children, their reaction was – well, you can’t go against what Islam says.”
Sonia stood her ground and eventually got Leyton Islamic Sharia Council to drop their demand.
That’s good, but much better would be to ignore Leyton Islamic Sharia Council altogether.
I met another woman who had tried to get a divorce from a different Sharia council in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
Ayesha’s husband was in prison for violence, but Dewsbury Sharia Council told her she would have to go to mediation with him.
“I said I can’t do that because he’s not even allowed near my house and because I am frightened, I can’t face him… but they didn’t take any notice,” she said.
Eventually Dewsbury Sharia Council agreed to see her without her husband but she had to face five men alone without legal representation. It took her two years to get a Sharia divorce.
God hates women.
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Wales measles: 1,200 MMR jabs given at drop-in clinics
Hundreds queued at the four hospitals offering free MMR jabs aimed at curbing the measles epidemic.
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Accused
A little slice of life in Nepal…
The 60-year-old woman was stripped naked and had her head shaved. She was fed excrement and badly beaten.
The woman was reportedly accused of using witchcraft to cause death and misfortune. The assault was apparently sanctioned by the village council.
Such attacks on vulnerable women are not uncommon in remote areas of Nepal.
Last year, villagers burnt alive a 40-year-old woman after claiming she was a witch.
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Nepal: woman attacked as a “witch”
The 60-year-old woman was stripped naked and had her head shaved, force-fed excrement and badly beaten.
