MOTHER JONES DAILY

As the world turns its eyes to sporty feminist Annika Sorenstam, the first woman to play the PGA golf tour since 1945, it turns away from a few more crucial women’s rights issues. True, as Kevin Sherrington of the Dallas Morning News point out, there exists an innate (and inane) gender bias in sports commentary:

“The LPGA? No winner here, especially if you listen to a reporter tell Annika that it may hurt her league if she plays poorly and render it moot if she plays well.”

But despite its allowance of a woman on the greens and fairways of Fort Worth, the Lone Star State still isn’t up to par on reproductive rights. According to Scott Gold of the Los Angeles Times, a new abortion counseling law in Texas requires that doctors providing abortion services warn women that abortion might lead to breast cancer, in spite of government researchers’ and the American Cancer Society’s scientific rejection that any link between the two exist. Furthermore, the law demands that women sit through a 24-hour “reflection period” before having an abortion, and sort through endless written materials trumpeting the paternal liability of child support and the amiability of adoption agencies. Surely women who consider abortions aren’t familiar with other options, and just need to be reminded of them — by law. Additionally, a Texas woman considering an abortion will receive color photographs that approximate images of her fetus:

“Democrats’ attempts to exempt victims of rape or incest from having to view the photos were defeated, which is “just cruel,” said Peggy Romberg, executive director of the Women’s Health and Family Planning Assn. of Texas.”

And in Kenya, women living near the Archers Post training ground in northern Kenya reported 200 new instances of rape and abuse by British Soldiers, bringing the 20 year total to 400 alleged rapes in the rural, isolated area. Natasha Walter and Richard Norton-Taylor of the London Guardian report:

“The Ministry of Defence originally said it had no record of any complaints being made to the army. But [British lawyer Martin Day] and a Kenyan organisation, Impact, have uncovered evidence of complaints being made to army officers as far back as 1983.”

A woman whose pelvis was broken by her 1983 assaulters said that she was indifferent to compensation, remarking:

“They have brought shame on all the British people.”