This month marks the centenary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir, the French writer and philosopher. She is best known for her feminist classic The Second Sex and her famous declaration, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."
Tory MP Ann Widdecombe is set to take part in an anti-abortion speaking tour across Britain in an effort to marshal opponents of a woman’s right to choose. She will face strong opposition everywhere she goes.
Abortion rights campaigners are preparing to resist any attempts to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Amendments to the government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill threaten to restrict abortion rights for women in Britain.
When even David Steel, the man most closely associated with the 1967 Abortion Act, has been quoted as saying there are "too many abortions" it is clear that abortion rights cannot be taken for granted.
Resistance to the neoliberal policies of the Egyptian government has led to a strike wave involving thousands of workers. Anne Alexander describes how women have played a key role in the struggle and Farah Koubaissy visits a tobacco factory where one woman, Hagga Aisha, has led the strikes.
Single mothers are for many one of the last acceptable scapegoats for society’s ills. They are blamed for everything from hogging council flats to creating "yob culture", and frequently portrayed as a morally degenerate and selfish group that we would all be better off without.
This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the private member's bill which led to the Abortion Act of 1967, allowing abortion up to 28 weeks of pregnancy, that was lowered to 24 weeks in 1990 by the Human Fertilisation Act.
Tory leader David Cameron last week used the low conviction rate for rape as an excuse to condemn the "moral collapse" of British society. This is the latest way that Cameron has tried to tap into a feeling of social crisis.
The Human Tissue and Embryology Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords on Monday of this week. The bill has opened up the possibility of the law on abortion being amend.
