From early marriage and increased gender-based violence to a higher risk of death during pregnancy, the consequences post-war continue. The blockade and successive wars are also taking a toll on the mental health of Gaza residents.
Maya Dauber is a sports legend in Israel and now she’s busy training the next generation to surf. She hopes that one day she’ll get to meet the young Arab female surfers in Gaza from whom she is currently cut off by geopolitical divide.
A 14-year-old in Gaza Strip does not like the new rules that segregate her schooling from that of boys. She has plenty of company. But Hamas, which wants to impose Sharia, shows no sign of slowing down its drive to impose socially conservative regulations.
She had been through an air attack in Gaza before. But this time she had a daughter and was 9 months pregnant. Eman Mohammed looks back on waiting to give birth, so her second daughter wouldn’t be born during the horror of war.
India may soon allow abortion services in its 25,000 primary health centers, which are the first points of care for India’s rural population, Times of India reported Nov. 20.
The new veiled female police officers in Gaza had just begun to assume their duties last December when a concerted attack on 60 police facilities threw them into unexpected roles.
In the Gaza Strip, women gave first-person accounts of the ordeals they suffered in the 22-day war that ended Jan. 17. One woman’s baby was born to the sounds of missiles.
In one Gaza hospital the maternity ward curtails normal operations and mothers of neonates hover over incubators threatened by power disruptions. The World Health Organization says all of Gaza’s 56 primary health care clinics face fuel shortages.
Some women’s activists in the Gaza Strip are nervously reopening centers for women and girls following civil war clashes. Others have stayed off the streets fearing a crackdown against them and their work by militant Hamas forces now in control.
(WOMENSENEWS)–CheersThe federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled 2-1 on Oct. 30 to continue blocking the enforcement of a 2005 South Dakota law requiring doctors to give additional warnings to women who seek abortions, including one that the procedure will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being.”In Britain, the House of Commons voted 187-108 to reject a bill that would reduce the period to obtain a legal abortion from 24 weeks to 21 weeks and introduce a compulsory 10-day “cooling off period” in which women would receive counseling and be informed of the medical risks and implications of the termination, reported the British Web site Politics.co.uk. Currently, British women are required to wait to have an abortion for five days after seeing a doctor.Member of Parliament Christine McCafferty called the bill “ill-informed” and said it would force a small number of vulnerable women to continue pregnancies against their will. “Restrictions on legal rights would leave some women in a desperate predicament.”More News to Cheer This Week:The Peter Gruber Foundation awarded three activists its prestigious $300,000 Women’s Rights Prize Nov.