Patum Peperium

Roger Ebert was right.

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Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

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Police today praised Amanda Berry, now 26, (pictured left in hospital with her sister and the six-year-old daughter she had while in the home) for escaping the house. Amanda, who went missing when she was 16 in April 2003, ran to a neighbor's home and made a desperate emergency call to police, declaring: 'I'm Amanda Berry. I've been on the news for the last 10 years... I'm free now.'

 

 

"When Mr Ramsey helped Amanda out of the house, she was holding a young child..."

"Amanda, now 26, escaped from the basement of a Cleveland home on Monday night with Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michele Knight, 32, who all disappeared from the same block ten years ago.

"They were found with a six-year-old girl, who relatives confirmed Amanda gave birth to while held against her will at the home for a decade."

The gods have favored Hillary Clinton yet again. Her fatal incompetence in Benghazi with her subsequent coverup was setting to be the news story of this week. But late yesterday all news attention was turned to Cleveland, Ohio. There, 3 young women presumed dead for a decade and more were found alive having been held prisoners (sex slaves?) in the basement of a former school bus driver's home. One of the young women, Amanda Berry, gave birth to a daughter during her imprisonment.

Amanda's child is a product of rape.

As Amanda's actions demonstrate, despite the rape and who knows what else tortue and abuse she has endured, Amanda loves her daughter. The girl was in Amanda's arms when she fled the house. Amanda has her arm around her daughter in the hospital bed. Amanda is a devoted mother.

This past April, the longtime Chicago Sun-Times film critic, Roger Ebert died. About a month before he passed away Roger wrote a column about himself. Many of his fans were surprised, confused and even dismayed when they read this :

"My choice is to not support abortion, except in cases of a clear-cut choice between the lives of the mother and child.

"A child conceived through incest or rape is innocent and deserves the right to be born."


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Are 15 year-olds women, girls or kids?

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Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

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 Our political class say women:

 

THE FDA:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that it has approved an amended application submitted by Teva Women’s Health, Inc. to market Plan B One-Step (active ingredient levonorgestrel) for use without a prescription by women 15 years of age and older. After the FDA did not approve Teva’s application to make Plan B One-Step available over-the-counter for all females of reproductive age in December 2011, the company submitted an amended application to make the product available for women 15 years of age and older without a prescription.

PRESIDENT OBAMA:

The rule that's been put forward by the FDA, Secretary Sebelius has reviewed, she's comfortable with it — I'm comfortable with it. I think it's very important that women have control over their healthcare choices and when they are starting a family.

REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH&TECHNOLOGIES:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration's decision to appeal a court order lifting age limits on purchasers of the morning-after pill set off a storm of criticism from reproductive rights groups, who denounced it as politically motivated and a step backward for women's health.

"We are profoundly disappointed. This appeal takes away the promise of all women having timely access to emergency contraception," Susannah Baruch, Interim President & CEO of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project, said in a statement late Wednesday.  "It is especially troubling in light of the Food and Drug Administration's move yesterday to continue age restrictions and ID requirements, despite a court order to make emergency contraception accessible for women of all ages. Both announcements, particularly in tandem, highlight the administration's corner-cutting on women's health," she said. "It's a sad day for women's health when politics prevails."

 PLANNED PARENTHOOD:

“While there are still practical questions to resolve, this is an important step forward to expand access to emergency contraception and for preventing unintended pregnancy.  Emergency contraception is a safe and effective form of birth control that can prevent pregnancy if taken within five days of unprotected sex. This decision will eliminate some of the biggest barriers and hurdles that women face in getting emergency contraception when they need it, which means many more women will be able to prevent unintended pregnancy.

 

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Our laws say girls:

NY DAILY NEWS AUGUST 2012: 
Florida man accused of leading a gang rape of a 15-year-old girl during a cruise to the Bahamas denied taking part in the alleged attack — but admitted Tuesday to plying the group with alcohol, according to reports.

USA TODAY APRIL 2013 :

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — A grand jury on Tuesday began investigating whether other laws were broken in the case of a 16-year-old girl raped by two high school football players after an alcohol-fueled party last summer.


THE TIMES-PICAYUNE MAY 2103:

A 16-year-old girl was raped in the back of a school bus on Monday, New Orleans police said. According to a preliminary police report released on Thursday morning, the girl, a student, told police officers she was sexually assaulted by a male student on the bus about 1:21 p.m. in the 4300 block of Almonaster Avenue.

ABCNEWS APRIL 2013:

Three boys accused of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old California girl who took her own life after pictures of the attack were posted online are due in court this week, as authorities ramp up their investigation into the latest case involving rape and cyber bullying.

 

DAILY MAIL MAY 2013:

Coronation Street actor Bill Roache was last night charged with raping a schoolgirl more than 45 years ago. Roache, 81, who has played Ken Barlow for five decades, will face court later this month accused of twice raping the 15-year-old in 1967.  He was taken into custody following a breakfast-time raid at his home in Wilmslow, Cheshire, yesterday.

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Nonpoliticized women say kids :

Playoff fever was not particularly gripping on Sunday, unable as it was to deliver -- even with a delivery company footing the bill -- the more compelling golf story.

This is not to suggest that television viewers of the FedEx Cup playoff opener moved en masse from CBS and the Barclays to the Golf Channel and the CN Canadian Women's Open, only that they should have.

A 15-year-old girl, an amateur from New Zealand, was making a historical pass through women's golf with a performance that is best summed up in the texting vernacular of her age group: OMG.

Lydia Ko, 15 years, four months and three days old, to be exact, won the LPGA's Canadian Women's Open by three strokes at the Vancouver Golf Club to become the youngest winner in the history of the tour. Ko also was the first amateur to win on the LPGA since JoAnne Carner in 1969, and Carner was 30 at the time.

"This is making me feel old," Jiyai Shin, one of those in pursuit at the outset of the final round, told the Golf Channel in the midst of Ko's back-nine assault that included four consecutive birdies and five in a six-hole stretch.

Shin, it should be noted, is 24.

Two days earlier, Suzann Pettersen, 31, took note and said, "It feels like you're being beaten by a kid."

She along with the rest of the field indeed were beaten by a kid, who already had conquered the amateur world, winning the U.S. Women's Amateur two weeks earlier.

Kids making headlines is not a novelty on the LPGA. Another precocious teen, Michelle Wie, was doing likewise when she was 15, but as good as she was -- and a case could be made that Wie was better then than she is now -- she was not winning an LPGA event. And in 2000, Aree Wongluekiet (now Aree Song) was 13 when she tied for 10th in the Kraft Nabisco Championship, a reflection of the lack of depth in women's golf at the time.

Ko's victory had nothing to do with a lack of depth. She was playing head to head with Stacy Lewis, the LPGA's leading money winner and the second-ranked player in women's golf, and outplayed her by five shots, closing with a five-under par 67 that was borderline flawless.

"I can't see anything she does not do well," Judy Rankin said on the Golf Channel.

Pettersen made the argument that Ko's age allowed her to play carefree, providing an advantage against those for whom this is a livelihood. "She's too young to understand where she's at," Pettersen had said. Moreover, Ko had nothing to lose, notably money. The $300,000 first-prize money went to runner-up Inbee Park. Ko received only a trophy for her effort.

The counter argument suggests that this was less a fluke than North America's introduction to the future of women's golf. Ko, in fact, has won on the professional level before -- in January, while still 14, she won the Women's NSW Open on the Australian Ladies Professional Golf tour.

Ko, meanwhile, said that she wants to attend college, an admirable goal that is likely to be tested in the heady aftermath of her historical victory on Sunday that earned her the admiration of the women left in her wake.

A few of them ran onto the 18th green and showered her with water, cognizant of the fact that dumping champagne or beer on her would be inappropriate for one who is still six years away from reaching the legal drinking age.

Shin was right, as it were, and could have been speaking on behalf of all of us. Anyone watching Ko on Sunday should be feeling just a little bit older.

 

 

"Child labour refers to the employment of children in any work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful."

Laws regarding 15 year olds as women are nothing new. What's new is that this ruling is considered good. And of course, progressive.

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