…is the basic principle of all social progress.
From Reproductive Rights, via Feministing:
” Two months pregnant and bleeding, Yanira Then says she went to a clinic in her low-income Santo Domingo neighborhood, where her doctor said she had suffered a miscarriage.
Then was still in her hospital gown that February morning when her doctor’s office was stormed by police, prosecutors and television news cameras. Accused of having had an abortion, Then, a 27-year-old law student, was arrested along with two other patients, the nurses and her physician.
She faces 3 to 10 years in prison. The doctor faces 50.”
A miscarriage is a traumatic enough event. This, this is just piling vile abuse of human rights on top. Vile, wrong, apalling…
…we ourselves act in the certainty that violence is no longer acceptable, that it’s tired and outdated no matter how many cling to it in the stubborn belief that it still works and that it’s still valid.
A prominent tech/geek blogger, Kathy Sierra, is having to hide because of threats of violence and sexual assault on a number of blogs, in response to criticisms and responses to debates. This is not free speech, it is abuse, and it is intolerable. Noone is required to agree with anything anyone else says, but you damn well should be not be violent in your response.
The police regard this as criminal behaviour, and rightly so. This is unacceptable, whether on or offline, and we must not allow this sort of behaviour to continue unopposed.
From a Manic Street Preacher’s song:
If you tolerate this, then your children will be next.
UPDATES
Robert Scoble, who has been criticised by Kathy in the past, has blogged in revulsion and shock at her treatment….
Feministing also has a discussion on it.
