International law & Liberty

By now many will have read that on this Independence Day Liberty's crown reopens to tourists willing to walk the 168 steps to the top of the 125-year-old Statue about which we've posted. It's the 1st day since September 11, 2001, that visitors will be permitted in this part of the statue.
But few may know that there's another off-limits part of the statue. It's the torch -- it too was closed on account of a terrorist act, and long before 9/11.
On the night of July 30, 1916, land in and around New York's harbor was rocked by "massive explosions, in quick succession." The devastation is evident in photos available here. What came to be known as the Black Tom blasts could be felt in Philadelphia 90 miles away, and shattered nearly all windows in Manhattan and New Jersey. The island on which Liberty stands was shaken, and her torch closed. (credit for Works Progress Administration poster)
There're 2 international law twists to this story:
► The bombing, which occurred as war raged in Europe, was attributed to agents of Imperial Germany. But by the time the American-German Mixed Claims Commission formed after World War I found Germany liable for $21 million plus interest, Hitler-led Germany refused to pay. (p. 500)
► Following the end of World War II, one German on whom suspicion for the Black Tom disaster had settled, Franz von Papen, was charged based on other conduct with crimes against peace and tried before the International Military Trial at Nuremberg, which acquitted him in the Trial of the Major War Criminals.
And the closed-off part of the statue? Later replaced and now on museum display, Liberty's original torch never reopened.

1/2 a year & no vote

Our timer has reached the 180th day since our colleague Dawn Johnsen was nominated to become Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. A new Democratic Senator, presumptively a "Yes" vote, is a good thing; a couple who are ill and a couple more who say "No," not so good. We keep counting.

On July 4

On this day in ...
... 1960, the 50th and final star was placed on the current U.S. flag in commemoration of Hawaii having become the 50th state on August 21, 1959, nearly 8 months after its closest predecessor, Alaska.
... 1971, a lowland gorilla named Koko was born at the zoo in San Francisco, California. As detailed here, since Koko was an infant Dr. Penny Patterson (right, with Koko) and colleagues have studied the language abilities of this member of an endangered species. They say that Koko has learned more than 1,000 American Sign Language signs.

(Prior July 4 posts are here and here.)

On Art! Unveiling Gender and Ethnic Identity

(On Art! is an occasional item on artifacts of transnational culture)

The eve of our nation's birthday seems an appropriate time to reflect on the numerous dimensions of American identity, particularly those that are not often brought to the fore. “The Seen and the Hidden: [Dis]Covering the Veil,” an exhibit at the Austrian Cultural Forum in Manhattan through August 29, offers an excellent opportunity for readers to do just that. While I must admit that I've not yet seen the show, I am a great fan of one of the artists, Negar Ahkami (below right), who was profiled in the N.Y. Times last month. Negar is not only an artist, but also an IntLawGrrl; I met her over ten years ago when she was an associate at Simpson, Thacher, and Bartlett and, luckily for me, my mentor as a summer associate. She soon moved to the legal department of the MOMA, at the same time beginning her "Lipstick Revolution" series of portraits of veiled Iranian women created using only lipstick and paper.
Negar's work seeks not only to express the complexities of Iranian-American identity but also to push back against the male chauvinism inherent in the depictions of women by leading modern artists from Picasso to Gaugin. One of her earliest paintings portrayed several men eating at a steakhouse, smoking cigars, with footballs in place of their heads. Negar's more recent work has made striking use of phallic symbols to express her discomfort with misogyny and sexual violence. Her current art aims to convey a more nuanced image of Iranian women than that presented in the mainstream media, and at the same time to critique the sexism prevalent in popular portrayals of women both Iran and the United States.
As she narrates in more detail in this interactive version of her painting "The Fall" (left), Negar's art grapples with the "way that the culture she love[s is] 'degraded, demonized and reduced to a cartoon' both here and in Iran." Her work incorporates the exquisite, refined detail and elaborate narrative of Persian tradition with the open emotional angst of Western art, and in doing so, packs a powerful punch. It will certainly leave the viewer with plenty of food for thought about gender and ethnic identity in America.

Go On! WILIG Networking Breakfast

(Go On! is an occasional item on events of interest) We are delighted to announce that WILIG, the Women in Law Interest Group of the American Society of International Law, will sponsor a Women in International Law Networking Breakfast on Thursday, July 9, from 8:30-10 a.m. at ASIL's Tillar House headquarters, 2223 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C.

The program features accomplished professionals in law practice and academia, who will discuss their career paths and offer insights to women interested in pursuing careers in international law. The panel presentation will be followed by small-group discussions to foster networking opportunities. The panelists include our own IntLawGrrl Kristine A. Huskey, National Security Clinic, University of Texas School of Law, as well as: Laura Black, Office of the Assistant General Counsel for International Affairs at the Treasury Department; Andrea J. Menaker, White & Case; and Andrea J. Prasow, Office of the Chief Defense Counsel, Office of Military Commissions.

We hope to see many IntLawGrrls at this event! You can find more information about the program and registration here.

And heartfelt congratulations to Kristine and to IntLawGrrl Janie Chuang for organizing this wonderful event!

On July 3

On this day in ...
... 1927, during a local plebiscite, Uruguay became the 1st South American country to permit women to vote. (photo credit) As described and depicted in this essay, suffrage was extended so that Uruguayan women could vote in a referendum on how to organize government in the area known as Cerro Chato. Women would not be permitted to vote in national elections in Uruguay until 1938.
... 1940, Nayla Moawad (below right) was born into a "prominent" family in Bsharri, Lebanon. (photo credit) Following education in Lebanon and at Cambridge University in England, she worked as a journalist, then married René Moawad, who would serve as President of Lebanon for 17 days before being assassinated on November 22, 1989. Thereafter Nayla Moawad herself ran for office. She's served as a member of Lebanon's National Assembly since 1991, and as Minister for Social Affairs since 2005. As stated in this sidebar to her 2008 Spiegel Online interview, "She is known for her outspoken criticism of Hezbollah and Syrian hegemony over Lebanon."

(Prior July 3 posts are here and here.)

Guest Blogger: Carmen Márquez Carrasco

It's IntLawGrrls' great pleasure to welcome Dr. Carmen Márquez Carrasco (left) as today's guest blogger.
The Professor holding the Chair in International Law and International Relations at Spain's University of Seville, Carmen is the Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the European Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratisation at the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights in Venice, Italy. Having directed the program in 2005-2006, in 2007 she became the 1st woman elected as Chairperson, the position that had been held by Dr. Manfred Nowak, currently the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture. Centre projects that Carmen has spearheaded include a photo competition, "visualising democracy," and an international conference on human rights diplomacy.
Carmen earned her Ph.D. in law from the University of Seville, and she also holds diplomas from the Research Centre of the Hague Academy of International Law and the Erik Castrén Institute on Human Rights at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.
She received the Award Rafel Martínez Emperador, Consejo General del Poder Judicial (Madrid), for her contribution to a book entitled La criminalización de la barbarie (2000). Her publications concentrate on human rights, peace and security, and the codification and development of international law and international criminal law. In her guest post below, Carmen analyzes proposed legislation that would cut back on Spain's universal jurisdiction law.
For reasons she explains in a 2d post below, Carmen dedicates her work to the Spanish essayist and philosopher María Zambrano Alarcón. Zambrano joins other IntLawGrrls transnational foremothers in our list just below the "visiting from ..." map at right.
Heartfelt welcome!

In Spain, jurisdiction won't be truly universal

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for giving me this opportunity to contribute this guest post and my transnational foremother dedication.)

The bill that would restrict universal jurisdiction in Spain, about which IntLawGrrls have posted here and here, constitutes an important setback in the Spanish contribution to the fight against impunity.
Why the setback?

A number of factors that have paved the way for the reform of Spanish legislation:

► The concerns of some about the ongoing dozen cases being investigated by Spain's Audiencia Nacional, cases through which it plays a role as, effectively, a universal court;

► Political pressure from states like China and Israel; and

► The path taken by the European Union to come to terms with the African Union, as reflected in the April 2009 AU-EU Expert Report on the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction -- about these regional organizations' respective understandings on the principle of universal jurisdiction.

This bill (text in English here) would move away from the “pure” universal jurisdiction allowed in Spain's current law, codified at Articles 23 and 24 of Ley Orgánica 6/1985, de 1 de julio, del Poder Judicial. As IntLawGrrl guest/alumna Pamela Merchant has noted, the proposed legislation has many flaws. By way of example, it would introduce:

► Extremely demanding conditions -- even a reverse interpretation of the principle of complementarity that is a cornerstone of the Statute of the International Criminal Court.

► Limitations on the exercise of universal jurisdiction that resemble a doctrine repudiated by Spain's highest court. The limitations resemble the doctrine that Spain's Tribunal Supremo advanced in 2003, in an appeal against the Audiencia Nacional decision in the Guatemala Genocide Case mentioned in Merchant's post. By an 8-7 vote Spain's supreme court maintained in 2003 that only cases with a “legitimating connection,” such as the nationality of the victim or the presence of the offender, could proceed; moreover, the connection was said to have to be present in the principal charges, not just in related or ancillary charges against the defendant. But a higher court in Spain, the Tribunal Constitucional, annulled that ruling two years later. The constitutional court (left) held that the physical presence of the suspect is not required to initiate an investigation based on universal jurisdiction. It also held that territorial courts and an international court have priority over Spanish courts exercising universal jurisdiction; however, universal jurisdiction could be exercised by Spanish courts if a party to the case submitted demonstrated that courts in the territorial state were unwilling or unable to investigate and prosecute effectively the crimes alleged in the complaint. Thus it established that the law did not require the showing of a link between the prosecution of a universal jurisdiction crime and Spain's national interest; indeed, the Tribunal Constitucional considered requirement of such a link to be "contrary to the spirit" of the principle of universal jurisdiction. (photo credit)

It is one thing is to limit abuse and subject the exercise of universal jurisdiction to reasonable limits, such as those envisaged in the Princeton Principles on Universal Jurisdiction (2001) or in some of the provisions of the Krakow Resolution on "universal criminal jurisdiction with regard to the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," adopted in 2005 by the Institut de Droit International. But it is very different thing to adopt limitations so far-reaching that the defeat the purpose of the principle of universal jurisdiction.

As Lloyd Axworthy, formerly Canada's Foreign Minister and now President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg, put it in this 2006 essay:

The application of universal jurisdiction does not entail a diminution of state sovereignty but rather the enforcement of a collective and fundamental system of criminal justice.

Dedicated to María Zambrano

I wish to dedicate my guest contribution to IntLawGrrls, posted above, to María Zambrano Alarcón (left), a Spanish essayist and phenomenological philosopher.

Despite the rarity of Spanish women essayists and philosophers, she chose as her vehicle the philosophical essay. She left more than one hundred articles and twenty-eight books, particularly impressive considering the gender and culture barriers that she faced in pre-Civil War Spain and postwar exile in Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Italy, and France. Exile and her affiliation with Spain's anti-Franco Republicans, combined with her essentially esoteric work, long kept Zambrano relatively unknown. When she finally returned to Spain in 1984, she received great honors and recognitions. However, they seemed to be more related to her Republican affiliation than with the originality and quality of her work.

Born on April 22, 1904, in Vélez-Málaga, Zambrano had a long academic career, and was affiliated with major universities in South and Central America and Europe, before her death in Madrid on February 6, 1991. Her work is characterised by the theoretical exploration of poetry's relation with epistemological epiphanies. She rejected philosophical rationalism and scientific reason and upheld the notion of “being-in-the world,” “dwelling,” letting things speak. She called that “the poetic reason.”

On July 2

On this day in ...
... 1839 (170 years ago today), more than 4 dozen persons held in slavery revolted 4 days after the ship transporting them, La Amistad, had set sail from Havana, Cuba. Leading the revolt was Sengbe Pieh, or Cinque, as he was called in the United States. A member of Africa's Mende people, he'd been seized and sold into slavery in West Africa in January of the same year. The ship would drift about the Atlantic until August, when, on arrival in New London, Connecticut, the ship, its remaining crew, and the rebellious slaves became the source of an epic legal dispute. As depicted in the film Amistad (1997), former U.S. President John Quincy Adams would argue on behalf of Cinque and comrades (above right) (image credit), resulting in the Supreme Court's favorable 1841 decision.
... 1976, 3 years after the departure of U.S. troops and 1 year after the fall of Saigon, the National Assembly of Vietnam met for the 1st time and officially reunified the country, naming it the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, establishing the capital at Hanoi, and adopting the flag at left. The aftermath, as described at this Belgian website:

Many people who supported the Saigon regime are sent to 're-education camps'. Over the next years more than one million of Vietnamese and ethnic Chinese ('boat people') flee the country.

(Prior July 2 posts are here and here.)

Welcoming IntLawChildren

Delighted to announce that Daniel Kelly SáCouto Turpen was born at 10:57 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, 2009. His mom, IntLawGrrl Susana SáCouto, tells us that Daniel arrived as an 8-pound, 9-ounce, 20.5-inch, beautiful, barrel-chested boy.

He joins big sister Maia, with whom he's pictured above. Susana says that Maia 1st called him "brother-sister," her birth reference to the unknown entity to come. Then she called him "Lucas" for about the 1st week of his life, because she decided she liked that name better than "Daniel." But, at last, she seems to be adapting to his name!

"We're a bit wiped out and still adjusting to things," Susana writes, "but thoroughly enthralled by the newest addition to our family."

To this newest arrival to the ranks of IntLawChildren, our youngest supporters, a very

Heartfelt welcome!

And then there were 109: State Party Puzzler

Just in time for today's 7th anniversary of the entry into force of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the ICC Treaty has acquired its 109th state party.

The milestone was reached Monday when Chile deposited its instrument of ratification.

No small feat for an institution that many international pundits thought would struggle to get the 60 joinders necessary to begin operations.

The news prompts today's State Party Puzzler:

What countries preceded Chile, and when did they become the ICC's 107th & 108th states parties?

Answer below.

On July 1

On this day in ...
... 1934 (75 years ago today), the United States' Roman Catholic bishops formed the Legion of Decency a lobbying group that issued ratings on movies. Films were categorized as "Class A: unobjectionable," "Class B: objectionable," or "Class C: condemned." An "objectionable" label would result if the film entailed suggestive dialogue, lack of moral compensation, lustful kissing, or acceptance of divorce. The lobby proved powerful, as film studios either pulled or altered projects in order to win the Legion's approval. For example, the plot of Belle of the Nineties (1934) was changed so that the lead actor, Mae West, was married by the end of the film. (image credit) Hollywood soon adjusted, adopting a more subtle but equally suggestive approach to “indecency.”
... 1994 (15 years ago today), Yasser Arafat (below left), Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman, returned to the Gaza Strip after 27 years in exile. Before boarding a helicopter from Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Arafat said: "Now I am returning to the first free Palestinian lands. You have to imagine how it is moving my heart, my feelings." His return followed the 1994 Israel-PLO pact known as the Cairo Agreement, which created self-rule for Palestinians in Gaza and Jericho in the West Bank. Arafat went on to become the elected president of the Palestinian National Authority in 1996. He would remain a symbolic figurehead for many years even after he lost prominence, and huge crowds would turn out for his funeral in November 2004.

(Prior July 1 posts are here and here. And a hat tip today to Rachel Prandini, 3L at the University of California, Davis, School of Law, for drafting these items!)

Answer to State Party Puzzler

Answer to puzzler above:

The 107th state party to the Statute of the International Criminal Court is Surinamand the 108th is Cook Islands. Each took the step by way of treaty accession nearly a year ago, on July 15 and 18, respectively.

As our Opinio Juris colleague Kevin Jon Heller has pointed out, with the addition of Suriname last year and Chile this week, "every country in South America is now a a member of the ICC -- a significant accomplishment." And as our commenter Deborah points out below, the accession of Cook Islands was "a very important step to redress the under-representation of Asia and the Pacific in the ICC system." (Thanks for helping us give a correct answer to this puzzler, Deborah!)

EPA grants California's Clean Air Act waiver

From the press release issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:

EPA is granting California’s waiver request enabling the state to enforce its greenhouse gas emissions standards for new motor vehicles, beginning with the current model year. Using the law and science as its guide, EPA has taken this action to tackle air pollution and protect human health.

“This decision puts the law and science first. After review of the scientific findings, and another comprehensive round of public engagement, I have decided this is the appropriate course under the law,” said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson [left]. “This waiver is consistent with the Clean Air Act as it’s been used for the last 40 years and supports the prerogatives of the 13 states and the District of Columbia who have opted to follow California’s lead. More importantly, this decision reinforces the historic agreement on nationwide emissions standards developed by a broad coalition of industry, government and environmental stakeholders earlier this year.”

Although this resolution of the waiver dispute was expected and has a somewhat limited impact as the Obama administration brings federal standards in line with California ones, the dispute itself highlighted complex federalism issues at the heart of the Clean Air Act and efforts to regulate climate change. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts on California and climate change here, here, here, and here.) I have written about the dynamics of the waiver dispute as an example of what I term diagonal regulation (cross-cutting efforts that are simultaneously horizontal and vertical), and am currently working on an article attempting to operationalize the concept of diagonal regulation and explore its implications for the Obama administration through an in-depth analysis of motor vehicles emissions regulation.

(Cross-posted at Teaching Climate Change Law & Policy blog)

A blow to democracy & human rights

This week the armed forces of Honduras overthrew democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya (left), arresting him at home and bundling him off to Costa Rica in his pyjamas. The army then installed its own president, with the thin legal veneer of the Honduran Supreme Court's blessing. The Organization of American States, the Obama administration, and human rights groups protested and called for Zelaya's reinstatement.
The coup is a direct violation of the OAS's Santiago Commitment to Democracy and the Renewal of the Inter-American System. By adopting that Commitment during a 1991 meeting in Chile's capital, countries of the hemisphere established a mechanism for collective action in the case of a sudden or irregular interruption of the democratic political institutional process or of the legitimate exercise of power by the democratically elected government in any of the Organization's member states.
This commitment was reaffirmed in 2001, in the Inter-American Democratic Charter, which requires the suspension from the OAS of states where elected governments have been found to be illegally overturned.
So why did the Honduran armed forces, backed by the legislature and the supreme court, take what they knew would be a much-criticized action? The U.S. press has stressed the attempt by President Zelaya to change the rules on re-election and the close ties between Venezuela and Honduras.
But that's only a small piece of the story.
The re-election effort was part of a larger package. Its centerpiece was a call for a popular referendum on whether or not to call a Constitutional Convention. Had the referendum, which was supported by labor, peasant, environmental, and human rights groups, passed, Honduras would have joined Latin American countries including Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia, that had rewritten their constitutions after a broad-based (more or less) constitutional rewriting process.
These processes have been tumultuous and highly controversial elsewhere. But on the positive side, they have:
► Broken existing political logjams and dysfunction;
► Established broad rights for indigenous communities; and
► Set the stage for institutional reforms to protect land and the environment and to give the government greater control over resource policies, especially mining and forest projects. These projects, many sponsored by U.S. and Canadian companies, have affected water and other resources and generated widespread local opposition.
Indeed, there are movements afoot in other countries, like Chile, to use upcoming elections to push for a constitutional convention to remake the Pinochet-era constitution there (not to mention efforts in California to call a constitutional convention to remake our own dysfunctional, gridlocked and almost-broke system of government!).
That's what was at stake in Honduras, and why the powers supporting the status quo were willing to brave international criticism to try to derail a new constitution-building initiative.

Feeling Germany's pain

'Every time we fail to preserve a site, we share the pain of the state party.'

So said Dr. María Jesús San Segundo (left), Spain's Ambassador to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (and an economics professor at Madrid's Universidad Carlos III), respecting UNESCO's decision to remove Dresden from its list of World Heritage Sites.
¿Por qué?
Because the city has decided to go ahead with building the Waldschlösschenbrücke, a 4-lane bridge that opponents maintain "would be a blot on the unique Elbe valley and is sited in a particularly sensitive spot, near the old city, from where it could be seen." The decision makes the state party in question -- Germany -- the 1st country in Europe and only the 2d in the world to be removed from the list.

On June 30

On this day in ...
… 1984 (25 years ago today), Lillian Hellman (right) died in Tisbury, Massachusetts. The playwright's best-known works include The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1941), and Toys in the Attic (1959). Throughout her career, Hellman openly held left-wing political views and was active in the campaign against the growth of fascism in Europe. As a result, she was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952. Pressured to reveal the names of associates in the theater who might have Communist associations, she refused:

'To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.'

(credit for photo of paperback reissue of Hellman's 1969 memoir, An Unfinished Woman)
… 1992, Margaret Thatcher (below left) joined the House of Lords following the bestowal upon her of a life peerage. In 1959, Thatcher had been elected a Member of Parliament. She proceeded to become Britain's Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and a member of the House of Commons from 1990 to 1992. (photo credit) Thatcher used her appointment to the House of Lords to continue to make her views heard, particularly on European issues. In 1992, Thatcher called for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to stop the Serbian assault on Goražde and Sarajevo as a means to end ethnic cleansing and to preserve the Bosnian state. She has also made a series of speeches criticizing the Maastricht Treaty.

(Prior June 30 posts are here and here.)

Guest Blogger: Michelle Oberman

It is a distinct pleasure to introduce my friend and Santa Clara Law colleague Michelle Oberman (left) as a guest blogger.
Michelle has a background in public health, and her research focuses on legal and ethical issues relating to adolescence, sexuality, pregnancy, and motherhood. In recent years, she has written about statutory rape, postpartum mental health issues and the law, filicide, substance abuse by pregnant women, and the fiduciary obligations of health care providers to their patients. In addition to teaching in the area of Health Law, Michelle teaches Criminal Law and Contracts.
In 2008 she co-authored When Mothers Kill: Interviews From Prison, depicted below right, with Dr. Cheryl L. Meyer, Professor of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Their work won the Outstanding Book Award that year from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. According to the ACJS,

The book was excellent and captured both the concrete circumstances and the complex morality of the women…

In her guest post below, Michelle recounts some of what she and I learned on our recent research trip to Costa Rica in connection with Santa Clara's summer program at the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Heartfelt welcome!

Rosita's Legacy

(Many thanks to IntLawGrrls for the opportunity to contribute this guest post.)

As my colleague, IntLawGrrl Beth Van Schaack, and I recently made the rounds of various women’s groups during our research trip to Costa Rica, attempting to get a sense of whether and how the world of international human rights might be employed to help to mobilize those working on behalf of women’s status in Central America, everyone spoke of “la Rosita.” They did so as if her case had happened only yesterday. In fact, it had been six years since the then-nine-year-old girl was found to be pregnant and was refused an abortion by the Costa Rican government’s health service on the grounds that the pregnancy did not threaten her life.

Rosita’s story is layered, and has unfolded over the interceding years in ways that are at once horrific and mundane.

In Costa Rica, doctors, lawyers and health advocates invoke it to illustrate any number of problems plaguing women’s autonomy in their region of the world. (One of her drawings, entitled "Rosita sad," is at left.) Rosita’s mother brought her daughter to the doctor when the girl began complaining of stomach pain. It took several days before they realized she was just over three months pregnant. When she was transferred to San José for care, doctors put her in the obstetrical ward of the women’s hospital rather than in the children’s hospital.

Somehow, the media learned of Rosita’s pregnancy, which allegedly resulted from her having been raped by an acquaintance. Costa Rican law permits therapeutic abortions when the pregnancy poses a danger to a woman’s life or physical health. Perhaps the publicity around her case shaped her doctors’ decision that Rosita did not qualify for such an exception to the general ban on abortion.

With the help of local activists, the family returned to their home state, Nicaragua, where three doctors verified, in accordance with the law at that time, that the pregnancy was in fact life-threatening. Rosita obtained an abortion, but by then, her case had become a cause célèbre around the world. Filmmakers made an award-winning documentary (trailer) telling of her plight. Narrated in part by Rosita's mother and stepfather (right), the film expresses the hope that the abortion had been a way to permit her to resume her childhood.
Meanwhile, anti-abortion advocates vowed to tighten the laws that had permitted her to obtain a legal abortion. Daniel Ortega was elected president of Nicaragua on a platform supporting a complete ban on abortion. In 2006, Nicaragua became one of 4 countries in the world to ban abortion under all circumstances, including when pregnancy poses a threat to the life of the mother.

In late 2005, Rosita, still a child, became pregnant again. This time she carried her baby to term, and DNA testing determined that Rosita had been impregnated by her stepfather. It is now widely accepted that he caused her earlier pregnancy as well. In November 2007, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Today, Rosita and her baby live in state custody.

The women with whom Beth and I spoke in Costa Rica were on the front line of the struggle to improve women’s lives in their country and in their region of the world. Each spoke of Rosita’s case, and yet her story only emerged in bits and pieces:

► One group was most interested in the ensuing prosecution of the nine women who had assisted Rosita’s escape and helped her get her legal abortion.

► Others focused on the way the case has been used by anti-abortion activists to slander women’s health advocates in Nicaragua and throughout the region.

► Another recounted the manner in which Rosita’s mother’s initial ambivalence about abortion, coupled with the media attention the case received, left the doctors with no real alternative but to deny the abortion.

No one spoke about the manner in which Rosa initially became pregnant. No one talked about the fact that she became a mother two years later, while still a child. No one mentioned that the law had not managed to protect Rosa from her abuser.
Instead, we spoke of the grey space beneath the law in which girls and women presently struggle to find a safe path to walk through their lives. It became clear that the law is only part of what circumscribes women’s status in their country, as in our own. To speak of rights was to tell only a half-truth. And yet, to ignore rights language altogether was to invite in the resignation that accompanies oppression. It was to feel shamed and humiliated, rather than simply afraid.

On June 29

On this day in ...
… 1974 (35 years ago today), Isabel Martínez de Perón (right) was sworn in as the 1st woman President of Argentina. (photo credit) The previous President, her husband, Juan Perón, had delegated responsibility to her due to weak health; he died 2 days later. At 43 the youngest Latin American head of state at the time, she inherited a political and economic crisis. Her presidency lasted until 1976, when she was overthrown in a bloodless coup by a military junta. In January 2007, she was arrested under suspicion of having links to right-wing death squads that had abducted and murdered political opponents during her rule.
… 1861, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (left), among the most prominent poets of the Victorian era, died in Florence, Italy, 55 years after her birth in England. (image credit) During the 19th century no women poet was held in higher esteem in both the United States and England than she. Her poetry had an immense impact on the work of the American poet Emily Dickinson. American poet Edgar Allan Poe similarly was inspired by the Briton's poem Lady Geraldine's Courtship (1844), borrowing its meter for his own The Raven (1845). Barrett Browning's loathing of social injustices -- such as the slave trade in America, the oppression of the Italians by the Austrians, child labor in the mines and mills of England, and the restrictions placed upon women -- is manifested in many of her poems, including Casa Guidi Windows (1851) and Aurora Leigh (1857).

Prior June 29 posts are here and here.)

Politics of the Veil bis

In his speech before the full French parliament on June 22, President Nicolas Sarkozy said

[the burqa] is not a religious problem, it is a problem of women's freedom and dignity. It is a sign of subjugation. . . . the burqa is not welcome in France.

Neither President Sarkozy nor the French government seem to have read either Beth Van Schaack's great post from last year, or the book that inspired its title, The Politics of the Veil (2007) by Joan Wallach Scott. As Beth mentioned, the French passed a law in 2004 banning the wearing of "ostentatious religious symbols" in public schools. The two arguments supporting the law were the French concept of laïcité, or separation of church & state, and the need to protect young women from being forced to wear fundamentalist religious garb. The law has the disparate effect it was designed to have on Muslim girls, who are forbidden to wear headscarves to school, and also affects Sikh boys. (In fact, many of Muslim parents also request that their daughters be excused from biology classes and mixed-sex swimming classes, for example. So while the law is limited to clothing, the underlying issue of mixing religion and public school is not.) Since most Orthodox Jewish children go to private schools, they are not affected by the 2004 law, which would? should? forbid boys wearing yamalkes, but perhaps not girls wearing tights, long sleeves and long skirts even on the hottest, muggiest days. They and other wearers of ostentious religious garb will also be unaffected by a new law President Sarkozy's government may table to ban the burqa (at least if it is imposed).
As I posted last August, France has denied citizenship to at least one woman on the grounds that she wears a niqab (face veil), which the Conseil d'État (supreme administrative court) considers incompatible with the essential values of the French community, notably with the principle of equality of the sexes. If the government actually does pass a law banning both the burqa (full body garment combined with hijab (head covering) and niqab (face veil)) and the niqab, it too will be upheld on the grounds that here in France, we prize dignity and transparency. It is argued that torturers and executioners cover their faces, that we can't have unidentifiable people picking up children from school, that we can't accept this obvious sign of female enslavement. Will forcing the few women who wear them (5% of France's Muslim population) to stay inside forever or move to a Muslim country save them from enslavement or give them dignity?

On June 28

On this day in ...
… 2004 (5 years ago today), the United States resumed direct diplomatic ties with Libya (flag at left) when it reopened a U.S. Liaison Office in the capital city of Tripoli. In December 1979, staff members had been withdrawn after a mob attacked and set fire to the U.S. embassy; the United States declared Libya a "state sponsor of terrorism." Relations between the 2 countries remained poor for decades. In 2003, Libya "accepted responsibility for the actions of its officials, renounced terrorism and arranged for payment of appropriate compensation for the families of the victims" of the bombings of a Berlin discotheque and two airliners, and also announced its decision to abandon its weapons of mass destruction programs. (image credit)
… 1969 (40 years ago today), a police raid in the early morning hours at the Stonewall Inn (right) in New York's Greenwich Village touched off the Stonewall riots, frequently cited as the first instance in U.S. history when gays and lesbians fought back against the persecution of homosexuals. Stonewall, in turn, sparked the gay rights movement in the United States and around the world. Today, gay pride events are held annually worldwide toward the end of June to mark the Stonewall riots. (photo credit)

(Prior June 28 posts are here and here.)