Depressing news, if given Musharraf’s weakness unsurprising …

PLANS to reform controversial Islamic laws dealing with rape and adultery, which have attracted condemnation in the West, have been watered down by Pakistan’s Government in a compromise with fundamentalist mullahs.

Hundreds of women have been jailed under the laws which made a rape victim liable to prosecution for adultery if she failed to produce four male witnesses. Known as the Hudood Ordinance, the laws were introduced in 1979 by the then military ruler, General Zia ul-Haq as part of his programme to Islamise the country. They made it almost impossible to prosecute rapists.

Pakistani and international rights groups had long demanded repeal of the laws which criminalised all extra-marital sex. A woman who fails to prove that she was raped could then be charged with adultery under the same legislation.

I would pray, God, let me wake up as a boy. That was salvation for me. That was where the power lay, and that’s what I became.

That’s from an interview with Laura Albert, the woman who was JT LeRoy, who was an abused young teenager … a reflection of the reality for so many girls and women.

… over on Alternet. Of course it can’t resist asking if blogging can “save” feminism, but otherwise is quite interesting.

A small step forward – Colombia’s first legal abortion (now allowed in cases of rape, incest, the mother’s life being in danger or severe malformation) has been performed. And you couldn’t think of a stronger case for the procedure – an 11-year-old incest victim.

The Catholic Church, however, has of course gone ballistic, threatening to excommunicate the doctors who performed the procedure. Because being humane, showing humanity, is of course well beyond its ken, and it no doubt fears the same sort of loss of control it has experienced in modern-day Ireland.