The Week in Women

Lately, there have been so many stories that are really about women & girls that I decided to do a link round-up just of stories about women this week:

Drop in NYC teen pregnancy rate proves that sex education and availability of contraceptives 1) reduces unwanted pregnancy and 2) does not increase sexual activity.

Mary Ingalls, one of the real-life girls in the Little House series, did not go blind from scarlet fever, but most likely from "brain fever," a.k.a. viral meningoencephalitis.

Serial flashers in Houston spend little time in jail.  Creepy!

 Al-qaeda goons rape the women of Timbuktu.  Jihad is just a cover for men behaving badly.

Poor women in India receiving unnecessary hysterectomies for the insurance money.

Ministry reaches out to strippers to help them get out of the biz.  Now this is a cause secularists should take on!  Instead of asking "what does God want you to do?" we should reach out to these women and say "imagine your income if you earn a scientific or engineering degree!"  Of course, there are a lot of women stripping for their tuition money (I knew one personally in Texas), so it would be tough to top that money.

In Egypt, women protesters have been raped at protests.  Now they have even more to protest about.

Women and young people in Saudi Arabia are working against extremism.   Women can't even drive a car there.  They have a long way to go.

Biblical justification for women in combat.  Let's hope this trend doesn't slide down the slippery slope to justifying slavery, genocide, and capital punishment for minor offenses.

The best news, Malala goes home after successful surgery.  I wish she hadn't credited prayer for her recovery, but from the point of view of her cause that's the best thing she could have said.  Women have much greater chances of equality if it can be presented as compatible with religion.  Religion is just a tool for weak men to suppress women.  Strong men don't feel threatened by an educated woman.