Iraq to lower the ‘age of consent’ for girls to nine

[Waitingforfriday75]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/women-and-girls/iraq-poised-to-lower-the-age-of-consent-for-girls-to-nine/

Posted here as it gets the most traffic. This is by far the worst news I’ve heard all year. Imagine at the age you were meant to start secondary school instead being forced to marry and have sex with an older man. Completely disgusting!!!

Are abortion pills cheaper and more easily available to them than contraception?

Yes, was just about to say the same.

Bollocks innit ? I’m not condoning what Hamas did, it was unconscionable, but they killed what 1300 people in that attack ? So far Israel have killed indiscriminately and without recourse to international law, and the estimate of the number of dead is in excess of 41000. How on earth that poster can say that this represents one of the lowest combatant to civilian ratios is utterly mind boggling.

Is this real? If so, utterly abhorrent. We should have nothing to do with such a country.

No idea. The studies so far say that these groups have little access to contraception or legal abortion. So they’re stuffed either way aren’t they ? But no matter, because if things continue the way they are, all women in these states will be reduced to walking incubators with no autonomy over their own bodies. Unless of course, as always, they’re rich enough to buy their way out of trouble. This isn’t a debate as to whether abortion is right or wrong. It’s not about the unborn child. It’s about the control of women. By men.

Possibly because rape is common in their environment? Or pregnancy will kill them? Or a child born to them will not be viable or live a limited and pain filled life?

I would support asylum in the UK for any woman or girl from a country with laws like this.

It’s called gaslighting! And a depraved indifference to Palestinian lives.

Free speech is fine, but if it's racist then expect to be told that! Free speech doesn't mean no one can call you out for what you say!!

Absolutely fucking disgraceful.

Mothers need to take their children out of Iraq en masse, somehow.

Me too.

I'd be happy to house mothers and daughters in my home.

This

Possibly because they don’t want to be treated as a second class citizen in terms of medical treatment during pregnancy and have their own health and wellbeing treated as secondary to that of their unborn child.

They don’t want to be left to die if they have the misfortune to miscarry and need medical treatment, which won’t be forthcoming because these laws criminalise some obstetric procedures and the medics would likely lose their licence and/or be imprisoned.

They don’t want to be accused of illegally aborting their babies after miscarriage and thrown into prison until they can prove otherwise. They don’t want to be forced to carry the child of their rapist or systematic abuser. They don’t want to be forced to give birth to a profoundly disabled child. They don’t want to be forced to give birth regardless of the damage to their own health.

This is not about protecting the unborn child. It’s an attack on womens’ rights. Why are you apologising for it ?

Absolutely deplorable, and the 'what about the US' does my head in when we have had decades of very visible fighting on the grounds of bringing in anti-child marriage laws and winning, something that is being done, but not making any ground in the countries discussed partially because of the different ways religious institutions impact other institutions.

A megalomaniac is in charge in the US
Nice to see it recognised that Biden is a megalomaniac on here... cause he's still the leader of the US until January.

An example of this is that nobody as yet has managed to show me the place in the Bible that says women can never be priests, yet many Christian sects still ban women from this.

No one has ever managed to find 1 Corinthians 14 and the various translations and interpretations around women should be silent in churches and not permitted to speak and the centuries long arguments around it with Paul technique of quoting a source and then arguing it being butchered by later choices of how to divide up the texts (chapters and verses came significantly later, and how they're placed does change interpretations). It's the same part that has been used by some to encourage the practices of speaking in tongues and is part of discussions by other sects on how there should be no priests.

All of the females having sex/babies in the bible are under 12.
No they aren't. The vast majority have no age listed (same with the men) or implied. Sarah is one of the few and she was in her 90s. There has been debates on some, but sources claiming young ages tend to be in the minority opinion & widely dismissed.

And no one uses Lot and his daughters as an example of what people should do, it's the cautionary tale part of the story, there are a lot of those - Solomon having hundreds of wives and concubines is explicitly discussed as a fuck up on his part that caused major problems. There is a lot of messed up stuff in the Biblical texts, the taking of girl prisoners of war because Moses gets pissed off and no one dares challenge him is in there, but fathers raping daughters and all girls having kids under 12 isn't.

Yes, people using religious texts to do fucked up things has been happening since there have been texts, the use of cultural texts is more important many times than the context, but it helps nothing to make up shit that isn't there. It doesn't defend Muslims to add random shite to Christian and Jewish texts that isn't there.

Reiterating as my last post was a few pages back - as a person currently living in Iraq. This was NEVER passed, and NEVER voted on due to huge public backlash, protests and pressure from locally run civil society organisations and international organisations like UNICEF.

*A megalomaniac is in charge in the US

Nice to see it recognised that Biden is a megalomaniac on here... cause he's still the leader of the US until January.

I think it’s adorable that you thought Biden was in charge.

Shall we fix the headline?

Iraq gives impunity to child rapists

Good to hear. Thank you.

@fizzle1 Thank you for the reassurance

It makes me sick to think that it was even considered

That's good news - Alhamdulillah.

Yes the article addresses the previous failings in 2014 and 2017 to get this made law.

But the article says there is this new push:

" . . . the coalition now has a large parliamentary majority and is on the brink of pushing the amendment over the line, said Dr Renad Mansour, a senior research fellow at Chatham House.
“It’s the closest it’s ever been,” he told The Telegraph. “It has more momentum than it’s ever had, primarily because of the Shia parties,” he said. "

That wouldn't be accurate though; it's a proposed bill which is/was opposed by many. And a poster who has said they live in Iraq says it was prevented from becoming law.

Yes there was a new push, and it will probably be tried to be introduced again in the future, however as I mentioned we had protests in the street, both in Baghdad and other areas - largely organised by women led organisations. There was a huge backlash in the public eye for local Iraqis, then also pressure at political levels from international organisations still present in Iraq like Save the Children, UNICEF etc. So much so that it kind of just “disappeared” and it wasn’t brought up after the protests.

Child marriage is also prevalent in India across all communities including Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains...

The difference is that the law prohibits marriage below 18, and parents doing this are prosecuted and discouraged. And thus declining.

Yes the dog whistle has been sounded by the OP, by a proposed law. Now open the floodgates for all this talk in how backwards and terrible Muslims are whilst conveniently ignoring the legacies of colonialism and western intervention