What’s Current: 19 pregnant women freed from Nigerian ‘baby factory’

  • Police in Nigeria rescued 19 pregnant women from “baby factories,” where women and girls between the ages of 15 and 28 were held captive and raped for the purpose of selling their children.
  • The Mexican state of Oaxaca decriminalized abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. According to Magaly López, a local representative of the Morena party, illegal abortions are the third-largest cause of maternal death in the state.
  • A former Yahoo engineer pled guilty to illegally downloading private information from thousands of accounts, including personal photos of women. In a statement to the court, Reyes Daniel Ruiz admitted to targeting accounts of young women.
  • A woman in Utah is facing criminal charges for not wearing a shirt in her own home. Charges against her include three counts of lewdness involving a child, a class A misdemeanor which could result in jail and placement on a sex offender registry for 10 years.
  • The Vancouver Public Library announces a new booking policy after being pressured to cancel an event about gender identity and women’s rights in January. There will now be a “pre-screening process” wherein the library will conduct a “risk assessment,” looking at the speakers involved in the event and “what kinds of affiliations they have.” Speakers are now required to be booked at least six weeks in advance.
Genevieve Gluck

Genevieve Gluck is a writer and advocate for women's sex-based rights and creator of Women's Voices, an audio library dedicated to bringing awareness to feminist texts and speeches.