Women's eNews (https://womensenews.org/tag/morocco/)
If some of the $100 million in U.S. aid goes to building girls’ dormitories, fine. But construction projects should not be the focus. Instead aid should be spent on helping local leaders boost the cultural status of girls and their education.
The Republican-controlled House committee approved an extension of abortion coverage to Peace Corp volunteers. Also this week, a human rights activist in Benghazi was assassinated.
Chile has taken steps to decriminalize abortion under certain circumstances. Also, during a press call this week, activists highlighted how the LGBT community is at risk in developing countries.
President Barack Obama marked the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision this week. In Alabama, a women’s prison was found to be a “toxic” house of horrors in which “repeated and open sexual behavior” is the norm.
Morocco may toss out part of its penal code that allows rapists to go unpunished if they marry their victims. Also this week, Republicans in the House of Representatives are looking to make 2014 another banner year for anti-abortion laws.
For the country that glows like a beacon of women’s progress in North Africa, the government’s first shelter for survivors of domestic violence finds it lagging far behind neighboring Morocco.
Credit: U.S. Army Korea (Historical Image Archive) on Flickr, under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
(WOMENSENEWS)–
Women on Waves hopes to offer medical abortions and publicize misoprostol, a drug that can induce an abortion. It’s in Moroccan pharmacies and elsewhere in the region under the brand name Artotec. This marks the ship’s first trip to a Muslim country.
Morocco has blazed a reputation as a can-do country when it comes to improving its maternal health statistics. But a birth attendant in the remote Atlas Mountains shows the steeper climb that lies ahead for the country as it tries to reach rural women who live far from any health clinic.
Morocco is on target to be one of the few countries to meet the U.N.’s goal of lowering maternal mortality by 2015, in part thanks to a strong Peace Corps program and smaller families. A woman waiting at a clinic dramatizes how things are changing.