Denmark relaxes its restrictions – Mexico de-criminalizes abortion – Governor Abbott on rape – Example of violence towards women in Pakistan – Robert E. Lee statue comes down in Richmond – Evening statistics
Denmark has removed all of its protective measures against COVID, with the exception of those restricting unvaccinated visitors. About 71% of the Danes are fully vaccinated. Children under 12 have not received the vaccines and cases have increased among them, but relatively few results in hospitalizations or fatalities. Overall, the country has had fewer than 1,000 new cases per day and only a handful of deaths for over a week.
Mexico, the world’s second-largest Catholic country, has de-criminalized abortion. The law in the state of Coahuila up to this point penalized women who undergo abortions with as much as three years of prison and a fine. This law has been overturned, with the common-sense view laid down by Supreme Court Justice Ana Margarita Ríos Farjat, one of the three women among the court’s 11 justices: “I’m against stigmatizing those who make this decision which I believe is difficult to begin with, due to moral and social burdens. It shouldn’t be burdened as well by the law. Nobody gets voluntarily pregnant thinking about getting an abortion later.” At least, this should be the common-sense attitude; but common-sense, apparently, has deserted Mexico’s neighbor to the north. What a source of pride it is to know that some of my compatriots who fall “in trouble,” as the saying goes, can find a solution to their difficulties by taking refuge in Mexico!
Governor Abbott, incidentally, was asked about the likelihood of the new abortion law in Texas forcing numerous rape victims to undergo the additional trauma of carrying any unwanted pregnancies to term and his response was: “Let’s make something very clear: Rape is a crime. And Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.” How reassuring to know that the government of Texas has the power to “eliminate” rape! Can it eliminate arson, assault, and murder as well? At all events, it seems rather a pity that Texas hasn’t focused its attention on the issue before. In 2019, for instance, Texas had over 14,000 reported rapes. The number of reported rapes is generally estimated to be about 9-10% of the total, which means that about 140,000 – 150,000 rapes occurred in the state that year. Of the rapes that were reported, only 23.7% resulted in charges against the perpetrators. This does not suggest that Texas has been particularly successful to date in its stated objective of eradication of rape, but doubtless Governor Abbott now has some miracle cure or other for obtaining the goal – ivermectin, perhaps.
Women’s issues have been very much to the forefront this week. In Pakistan the daughter of a prominent diplomat was killed as a result of what is euphemistically referred to as a “domestic incident.” Pakistan, it should be noted, is not exactly a woman’s haven to begin with. The Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), the constitutional body that advises the legislature on whether or not a certain law is repugnant to Islam, proposed a measure in 2016 that would allow a man to “lightly beat” his wife if she disobeys his commands, refuses to dress as his desires, turns down demand of intercourse without any religious excuse, or does not clean herself after intercourse or menstrual periods. However, I do believe that even the CII must be somewhat taken aback by the chastisement that Zahir Jaffer administered to his girlfriend Noor Mukadam, i.e., torture followed by beheading. Jaffer has been arrested, along with his parents, who aided and abetted him by trying to cover up the evidence. The episode has accelerated public debate in the country about domestic violence, not least because both the perpetrator and the victim were from prominent and wealthy families.
A new measure, the Pakistan Domestic Violence (Prevention and Protection) Bill, has been proposed; it calls for offenders to be fined or imprisoned for abusing women, children, or vulnerable people. This bill, however, is currently in limbo. It passed in the National Assembly, the lower house of the country’s Parliament, on April 19th and by the Senate on June 21st. The next step, presidential assent, for final approval has been delayed by Babar Awan, the adviser to the prime minister on parliamentary affairs, “requesting” in a manner that really is a demand that the bill first be referred to the CII for review. It is unclear when the CII will respond, and it is extremely doubtful that they will allow it to pass.
The statue of Robert E. Lee, which occupied Montgomery Avenue in Richmond since 1890, was taken down today and cut into at least two pieces. These were then hauled to an undisclosed state-owned facility until a decision is made about the statue’s final disposition. “It’s a good day, and it’s a sad day at the same time,” said Sharon Jennings, an African-American who has lived in Richmond all of her life. “It doesn’t matter what color you are, if you really like history, and you understand what this street has been your whole life and you’ve grown up this way, you’re thinking, ‘Oh, my God.’ But when you get older you understand that it does need to come down.”
And so it does. Admittedly it’s a bit unfair to look upon Lee as the iconic figure of the pro-slavery faction. His attitudes towards slavery, like those of many of his contemporaries, were confused. He generally described slavery as an evil; one of his daughters taught slaves on the Lee estate to read and write in defiance of the law. When his father-in-law died and Lee had to take on the task of putting the badly-managed estates in order, he was very unhappy with his direct participation in slavery as an institution and he frequently complained about it. But although he said that slavery had a degrading influence on slave-owners, he thought that the blacks benefitted in some ways from slavery. Like many others, he looked upon blacks as an inferior race and firmly upheld racial stratification. He never spoke out in public against slavery up to the Civil War, and in later life he never condemned the Ku Klux Klan, even when urged to do so. It may not be altogether his fault that the statues erected to him have become rallying points for men and women of the most vicious and violent racial attitudes in the nation; but whether he intended it or not, that is the effect they have. In his life he strove to behave honorably and to carry out his responsibilities to the greatest extent in his power, but he failed to rise above the popular prejudices of his day. The chain of events that led him to head, against his will, the costliest and bloodiest insurrection in American history contains a lesson that all statesmen need to learn: that good intentions are not enough.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 223,372,248; # of deaths worldwide: 4,608,641; # of cases U.S.: 41,393,005; # of deaths; U.S.: 671,148. The number of cases is now well over 40 million, and 4 million of these occurred within the past month.