I’m working away from home this week with somewhat sporadic access to technology so I’ve not followed all the details, but allow me to say how proud I am of our MPs for standing up for a woman’s right to choose last night.

A little over two years ago I posted about an amazing inspirational Zimbabwe trade unionist I met, Tabitha Khumalo. She told us about the dangers she faced, about the times she was thrown into prison, about her fears that she wouldn’t be allowed back into her country, yet she was determined to keep opposing Mugabe. People of my age didn’t stand outside South Africa House, singing “We will overcome”, but we sang it with her, in a conference hall in Coventry, two years ago.

Anyway, about an hour ago, a familiar face was fleetingly on News 24, and I hurried to my computer.

Here’s the confirmation of what the BBC’s caption said: Tabitha Khumalo MP, MDC. Maybe change is coming, at last, in Zimbabwe.

Do you know what? I don’t care that Harriet Harman looked silly in a stab vest when out with the police in her constituency. But here’s something I do care about: tomorrow, for the first time, a Labour woman will answer Prime Minister’s Questions for a Labour government. That’s something to be proud of.

(Yes, I know two women have played a starring role before. But one was a Tory, and one was in really horrible circumstances and in opposition.)

UPDATE, 2 April: she was really rather good. Hurrah!

A couple of shorts:

Some Tory councillor in Kent wants to sterilise benefits recipients. You know the people that write frothingly awful rightwing-as-fuck comments below any blogpost about the welfare state? Well, one of them actually got elected! Christ. You know how, whenever our government has a new idea, someone somewhere says sanctimoniously “This is Britain, we don’t do things like that here”? For once, I feel a chorus coming on (all together now): “This is BRITAIN. GREAT Britain…” It’s never that good an argument, really, but then this one doesn’t really need a good argument, does it?

It would appear that the National Union of Teachers, my mother’s union, have decided to basketweave (it’s a technical term, related to the tendency of (usually student) unions to waste time on irrelevancies). Quite why they think every half-hour on News 24 is a good place to broadcast that their members are worried about the promotion of imperialism (one speaker really did use that word) in schools caused by the armed forces attending school careers events, I don’t know.

This made me laugh: a Conservative envoy to the union movement. Note how the virulent anti-union rightwinger gets hushed up in the comments by the nodding heads.

Onto serious matters. Over here, Alive and Kicking have an American-style database of MPs (literally American-style, with crosses and ticks; next they’ll be saying “Sarah Bloggs MP scores 3%, an extreme pro-death voting record”, just like the Yanks). One MP I spoke to has received more than 100 letters from the other side, arguing for reducing the time limit for abortions (often leavened with interesting views on other aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, such as a spot of homophobia about the removal of the requirement that there be a father involved in IVF.). In contrast, he’s had just one pro-choice letter. And it’s not cos pro-choice people don’t care; I just don’t think we’ve appreciated the scale of the challenge to rights to abortion provision. So take a moment to write a letter - there’s a handy template here.

Some really good news. Several years ago (how can it be that long?) I wrote about the severe underfunding of Rape Crisis services. And last week, Harriet Harman announced a million pounds to help fund Rape Crisis services, working in the immediate aftermath and longterm with women who have been raped and abused. Hurrah! Now the government needs to do that every year, and local authorities need to realise that Rape Crisis centres aren’t an optional add-on, a nice-to-have, but absolutely vital for women year-in, year-out.

Hopi Sen on privacy and politicians is worth a read. Mind you, I could say that about all of his posts:

So perhaps the challenge for the next generation of politicians is to break that wall that divides the public life from the personal life. To put their lives up for inspection as a whole, while pointing out that just like a friend’s past or a colleague’s divorce, it doesn’t really matter all that much

Tom Freeman supplies the detail of why David Cameron’s plans to topslice SureStart are so wrong, and ends with this pithy observation:

If “money is tight and we’ve got to make choices”, why not choose to forsake some of that inheritance tax cut?

Finally, Miss Bimbo. Sigh. An online game with thousands of young users aged 9-16, in which they enter beauty contests, take diet pills, get boob jobs and compete to win over a billionare boyfriend. And what’s missing from all this coverage? The fact that we’re not talking about young people, we’re talking about young women - girls, even. We’re talking about reinforcing regressive stereotypes about what it means to be a woman and what achievement looks like if you’re female. We’re talking about a game in which the ultimate happiness is getting your guy and letting him pay for your next bout of surgery. ‘Scuse me while I go a bit old school feminist crazy.

Interesting news in today’s Oxford Mail: apparently eighty percent of terminations for Oxfordshire women are carried out in London and Reading at Marie Stopes clinics rather than in the JR hospital. Obviously, it would be better if they were all available at the JR without women having to travel, but as they’re all state-funded (can’t find the stats right now, but last time I looked about 90 per cent of abortions to local women were funded on the NHS) I suppose it’s okay.

What really fascinated me, though, were the comments following the article on the Oxford Mail’s site. The lack of provision in Oxfordshire is caused by the JR being a teaching hospital where a new set of medical students come to gynae every six months: the hospital can’t plan consistent services when they don’t know whether they’ll have conscientious objectors on the staff or not. As I write, there are 14 comments on the Oxford Mail’s site, and far from being the usual rants of pro-lifers, there’s a good mix, including some thoughtful contributions. Several go further than I think I would in limiting the right of doctors to opt out of procedures - I think that the crucial point is that doctors must be honest and open with patients seeking abortion provision, not attempt to sway their decisions and swiftly refer them on. I suppose we haven’t had to tackle before the problem of a shortage of doctors willing to perform abortions before, though this has long been a real concern for pro-choice advocates in the States.

People shouldn’t become doctors if there are certain procedures they don’t approve of [...] It’s not the doctors’ job to let their moral judgement cloud how they treat their patients

The sooner doctors realize that they are there to serve ALL people (whether they agree with them or not) the better.

They should be required to participate in procedures when it is tax payers money that keeps them in their jobs and tax payers money that has enabled them to train to do those jobs

DOCTORS ARE NOT THERE TO DECIDE WHAT OUR MORALS SHOULD BE BUT TO DO THE JOB THEY ARE WELL PAID FOR.

Surely, if they are agreeing to work for the NHS, paid by tax-payers money, then they should be required to perform all procedures offered by the NHS? There are many reasons why a woman might require an abortion, and the moralising of individuals within a publicly funded organisation is repugnant and misogynistic in the extreme.

The Oxford Mail has long shown a huge interest in beauty queens. Over the last couple of years, those of us who are regular readers have been treated to the ongoing saga of Eleanor Glynn - first Miss Oxford; then Miss England; then tragically loses her suitcase on the way to Miss World, and, without her dresses, loses; on her return gives advice to aspiring young women dot dot dot. The fact that I didn’t have to look up her name shows you with what monotonous regularity the pronouncements of Ms Glynn (accompanied, always, by a shiny shiny photo) have appeared in my local rag.

Anyway, now they are looking for the next Miss Oxford - and here are the rules of the game:

Qualifications for eligibility are that each contestant:
Shall not be less than 17 years of age nor more than 24 years of age on September 30 of the year of the Miss England final.
Shall live or work in the Oxford Mail circulation area.
Shall be of good character and possessed of charm poise personality and have beauty of face and figure.
Shall be a person whose background is not likely to bring into disrepute The Miss England Contest or the Oxford Mail or any person associated with them.
Shall be a person:
- Who usually uses the prefix ‘Miss’ (or equivalent) before her name and is not married.
- Who has never given birth to a child.
- Who has never previously won The Miss England Contest.

I am speechless. “Charm poise personality”? “Of good character”? “Disrepute”? Unfortunately, I doubt they’ll have a shortage of candidates: after all, three years ago 63% of the thousand young women surveyed said their ideal occupation was to be a glamour model. Sigh.

Don’t often find myself on the same side as Tim Worstall, but he has a point here, about the difference between numbers of teenage pregnancies, which vary according to the number of teenagers at any one time (two pregnancies in a cohort of ten 15 year-old girls is high, two in a cohort of 100 is not) and the rate of teenage pregnancy (as expressed by pregnancies per one thousand young women). I made a similar point about the teenage pregnancy doom-mongers a few years ago. The important figure - the rate - is falling. Now is not the time to give up on the teenage pregnancy strategy.

John Redwood (via Ben Brogan):

…none of us want men to rape women, but there is a difference between a man using unreasonable force to assault a woman on the street, and a disagreement between two lovers over whether there was consent on one particular occasion when the two were spending an evening or night together.

Perhaps I’ve misunderstood, but since when has forcing a woman to have sex against her will been just a disagreement?

The Commons science and technology committee has reported, and has made some excellent practical recommendations:
- only one doctor should be required to refer for an abortion
- 24-week legal limit for an abortion remains
- nurses should be able to carry out early abortions
- the second of the two pills for early medical abortions should be able to be taken at home

Let’s hope these recommendations are taken up by the Department of Health.

When it’s armed robbery, according to Municipal Judge Teresa Carr Deni of Philadelphia. Faced with a defendant who forced a prostitute to have sex with him and three other men at gunpoint, she decided at the preliminary hearing to drop the rape and assault charges and hold him on the bizarre charge of armed robbery for “theft of services”. Apparently she thought this was appropriate as the prostitute consented to sex and - fairly obviously - didn’t get paid. No matter that she had a gun to her head and was forced into sex, regardless of what she does for a living.

The full, unbelievable, story is over at Albert’s, with more info at the Philadelphia Inquirer. This judge is up for election this autumn; let’s hope she gets dumped.