Most of the Google hits seem to be within the past year, so I guess the term “freemale” is a fairly recent coining, referring to, quoting The Telegraph, “women are chosing to live a single life rather than share their money and time”.

It is out in force today, with British Office of National Statistic figures indicating that the percentage of women aged between 25 and 44 living along has now reached 8 per cent, double the figure of 20 years ago. “the ONS report cited recent research which showed that two-thirds of freemales feel that they can enjoy a happy and fulfilled life without a partner.” (Well yeah, I’ve been doing that for nearly all of the past 20 years, and looks like a good idea to me.)

Taking a more rounded view is Jane Shilling in The Times – who looks back to the post-WWI “spinsters”, and how they pioneered news ways of single female life.

(A largely depressing collection – you have been warned.)

If you’ve ever wondered by women in cultures where “honour killings” occur seem to collude, or at least not resist, their occurrence, here is your answer:

Leila Hussein lived her last few weeks in terror. Moving constantly from safe house to safe house, she dared to stay no longer than four days at each. It was the price she was forced to pay after denouncing and divorcing her husband – the man she witnessed suffocate, stamp on, then stab their young daughter Rand in a brutal ‘honour’ killing for which he has shown no remorse…. Arrangements were well under way to smuggle her to the Jordanian capital, Amman. In fact, she was on her way to meet the person who would help her escape when a car drew up alongside her and two other women who were walking her to a taxi. Five bullets were fired: three of them hit Leila, 41. She died in hospital.

And this situation isn’t just in unstable places like Basra – in Iraqi Kurdistan, the relatively stable, “safe” part, there’s been an explosion of violence against women:

“At least 14 women died in the first 10 days of May alone,” a doctor told AFP in the region’s second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.
“Seven of them took their own lives, the other seven were murdered in still unexplained circumstances” — apparently the victims of “honour” killings.
“Over the same period, we recorded 11 attempted self-immolations. These women were so desperate they set fire to themselves,” the doctor added, asking not to be identified.

But on the positive side, in some parts of the world, we have come a long way – as late as 1978, the British military was debating whether it would be “safe or prudent” for women members to carry guns.

“An army working party was also looking into arming women, and expressed concern that giving guns to women might also be seen as “provocative and indeed offensive”.

I was going to write something for the Liberal Conspiracy group blog about the British abortion debate, which will be resolved for the moment in the next couple of days in debate on the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, but there’s so much excellent stuff already there I decided I had little to add.

In fact the blogosphere in general has done much better than the mainstream media in critically discussing and exploring the issue – digging particularly into the people involved. So it is that the Ministry of Truth has found out how Jim Dobbin, chair of the anti-abortion MPs, is also opposed to contraception.

Only 1.45% of abortions are carried out after 20 weeks and before the 24 week cut-off, yet those campaigning to reduce the limit claim that they want to reduce abortions.

If that genuinely is their aim, why are they not campaigning at every opportunity to improve contraceptive provision, to improve sex education, to improve relationship education that would empower girls and women to negotiate sex that would not only be safer but less likely to result in unwanted pregnancy? That is what would do far more to reduce abortions than reducing the time.

(And it seems to be a little reported fact, but women with the money can go to many parts of Europe and get an abortion at or beyond 24 weeks – Catholic Spain provides this service – so undoubtedly some abortions now carried out in Britain would simply go abroad – although of course only for those women who could find the money.)

Who are these women who have late abortions? The Guardian reports:

Apart from the women whose scans reveal abnormalities missed by previous investigations, they include many other heartbreaking examples, as revealed by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service: the teenager who reacted to pregnancy by going into denial; the woman who discovered, late in pregnancy, that her partner was abusing her other daughters; the drug addict on methadone, which stops periods so prevented her from realising that she was pregnant; and the woman who continued to have period-like bleeds throughout her pregnancy.

And who are the anti campaigners? This Telegraph report offers some fascinating insight – about how American fundamentalist Christianity is infiltrating parliament. (And somehow – apparently with government approval – abusing small children by teaching them creationism.)

But I don’t want to be too negative here. I can’t imagine how the journalist snuck this into the anti-woman Telegraph – but this debate may also be a positive opportunity – to produce an abortion law fit for the 21st century, removing the two doctors rule, allowing nurses to perform abortions, and reducing restrictions on where they can be carried out. All of which would certainly result in earlier abortions, which even the antis claim they want. So how will Nadine Dorries vote?

Under the surface, it is just possible that something positive is going on.

I doesn’t look like it will be Clinton, so who’s next in line? The New York Times has an interesting exploration of the issue, and it is clear that the criteria are far, far narrower than they would be for a male candidates, which of course makes it considerably less likely that a woman will make it.

No, I don’t think that is too strong a term for a new law in Oklahoma, which directs that doctors perform an ultrasound on women requesting an abortion:

The law states that either an abdominal or vaginal ultrasound, whichever gives the best image of the fetus, must be done. Neither the patient nor the doctor can decide which type of ultrasound to use, and the patient cannot opt out of the ultrasound and still have the procedure. In effect, then, the legislature has mandated that a woman have an instrument placed in her vagina for no medical benefit. The law makes no exception for victims of rape and incest.

A great tale in the Telegraph about three “young housewives”, who 50 years ago decided on a jaunt right across Europe, and up the Himalayas.

Five months later the women returned to England and resumed their lives as diligent wives. They packed their adventure away, along with the maps, and these intrepid explorers were largely forgotten. There is no mention of them in the 1979 book Zanskar, the Hidden Kingdom, by the French explorer Michel Peissel, nor in many later books on the area.

(Zanskar is now in Jammu and Kashmir.)

And their adventure was forgotten, and probablyten would have remained so, had not a diligent film maker uncovered their film record “the only visual record of Zanskar before 1975… When Salter tracked down the women he found the film in a box on top of Davies’s wardrobe”.

You can’t but feel that had they been men, they would have made a great fuss and today been something like travel David Attenboroughs….