I was actually feeling rather festive this morning with it being Cinco de Mayo in Mexico still … Feliz de Cinco de Mayo! … starting off the day in a chipper enough mood, until I started trolling for blog fodder. (Yeah, I should know better.)
I had even managed to divert a bit of my horror and amuse myself in the reading of this report about child rape and murder in the UK.
Okay … it’s a terrible story of abuse of the worst kind involving a mother and her boyfriend and rape of a two-year-old and death and unimaginable savagery , but provided some some relief by pointing out that the “government’s expert on children’s services” is a guy named … get this … Lord Laming.
So, yes, already heading downhill mood-wise, I then come across this shit:
A court in Dubai has found a woman who lost her unborn child in a traffic accident guilty of manslaughter in what is said to be an unprecedented ruling.
The Lebanese woman, who was nine months pregnant at the time, was also ordered to pay blood money. She said she had not caused the accident.
Now, that just pisses me off.
This is, of course, a ruling based on Islamic law, or someone’s interpretation of that sees women as a vessel, a baby-growing container with no more right to a life of her own than a thermos jug.
Bottom-lining the thought process is this from the head of traffic prosecution:
… women in the third trimester of pregnancy should avoid driving altogether to protect their own and their foetuses’ lives.
Since … what? … men don’t get in accidents when pregnant wives are in the car? Or is the point really, with the prosecutors arguing that the sentence should “act as a deterrent,” that women should blady well just stay put until they pop?
Women in Saudi aren’t allowed to drive at all … I’m sure this case will be trotted out as justification for keeping chicks wheel-less … and in some Muslim nations anyone female out and about without a male relative of responsible years can be tossed in the clink, so a pregnant woman driving alone has trouble written all over her.
Of course, the “blood money” version of punitive damages really grates my cheese. As if this woman hasn’t paid in blood already! And I can’t help but wonder if the fetus had been a boy if the father wouldn’t be suing her, as well.
We really need to stop putting up with this crap, girls.
A collection of my short stories:
I'm in this one, too ...
And I'm in here, as well ...
Paradise Preoccupied 
Thank you for writing this article Sandra, and shading light on what in my opinion is cruelty to women. I have a friend who was driving into a school car park in Dubai to pick her kids up when she was hit from behind by another vehicle driven by a man. When the police arrived, she was informed that she was at fault, and when she inquired as to why and how, the police said that due to the fact she was a woman, she is wrong and should not be driving. I was simply shocked. Nontheless, she had to get her insurance to cover the damages to the other car.
It’s so difficult for me as an American to even believe this goes on..but then again…a man was mad at his ex-girlfriend, kidnapped the baby and thew her child out of the car window………..I think testosterone is one of the problems not to mention that men are hazardous to our health….
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Police says a man who kidnapped his ex-girlfriend’s baby son threw the 3-month-old boy out of his car as he sped along a Tampa interstate, Florida news organizations report. The infant did not survive.
The Tampa Tribune says the incident occurred after Richard McTear, 21, argued with his 17-year-old girlfriend and, at one point, threw her son to the concrete. He then fled with the infant in his car.
Deputies say McTear tossed the boy from the vehicle as he drove along I-275, WTSP-TV reports.
USA Today May 5,2009