Politics in Brief

by PRESCA AHN

December 2009

The Iranian government has intensified a month-long crackdown on civil rights activists, including many prominent feminists. After the past spring’s remarkable election protests, in which women participated in unprecedented numbers, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s administration is making an example of women’s rights leaders. In November, police arrested and jailed Mehrnoosh Eternadi, an educator who holds workshops about violence against women; authorities also seized her computer and personal papers. In the same month, at least 11 feminist leaders were threatened by phone, brought to court, or forbidden from leaving the country. Iranian state television broadcast a documentary attacking Iranian feminism. The husband of Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi was beaten and interrogated by state police about the couple’s daughters, who are studying in Europe. Authorities also confiscated Ebadi’s Nobel medal and froze her bank account. The government’s reason for this treatment was Ebadi’s alleged failure to pay back taxes; it was no coincidence, however, that Ebadi had recently expressed her support for U.N. criticism of Iran’s human rights record. In early December, female television presenters were forbidden from wearing makeup on their shows and over ten women were arrested at a rally of mothers whose children had died in protests of the spring elections.

Amid the furor over the Stupak-Pitts amendment in recent weeks, it was easy to miss another D.C. disappointment: the Senate’s failure to permanently repeal the global gag rule. Since Reagan authored it in 1984, the global gag rule— which prohibits federally funded NGOs abroad from facilitating or even suggesting abortion as a family planning option— has lived and died by presidential whims. Clinton rescinded it in 1993. The second Bush brought it back in his first executive order (on the 28th anniversary of Roe v. Wade). In January, Obama signed another executive order to reverse Bush’s. This cycle will continue until Congress manages to pass a permanent repeal like the one that senators removed from a recent State Foreign Operations bill. Continuing failure to pass such a provision will make no headlines during this presidency. But it will aggravate the fragility of our country’s commitment to effective family planning among the world’s poor.