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 