Barbara Starr and Adam Levine
CNN

A new order from the general in charge of northern Iraq makes getting pregnant or impregnating a fellow soldier an offense punishable by court-martial.

The directive, part of a larger order restricting the behavior of the 22,000 soldiers under Gen. Anthony Cucolo's command, is meant to prevent losing soldiers at a time when troop strength is stretched thin, Cucolo explained in a statement sent to the troops under his command and provided to CNN.

"I need every soldier I've got, especially since we are facing a drawdown of forces during our mission," Cucolo wrote. "Anyone who leaves this fight earlier than the expected 12-month deployment creates a burden on their teammates. Anyone who leaves this fight early because they made a personal choice that changed their medical status - or contributes to doing that to another - is not in keeping with a key element of our ethos."

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Cynthia Nixon is speaking out against provisions in the House and Senate health care bills that limit coverage for abortions.

Breeanna Hare
CNN

It's been a little more than a week since Cynthia Nixon flew back from filming "Sex and the City 2" in Morocco, and she's already diving headfirst into the debate surrounding abortion and health care reform.

Nixon, a longtime abortion rights activist, says she can't keep quiet about the recent health care bill amendments that would limit insurance coverage for abortions.

"It's a very basic female right that we need to protect," Nixon said. "What's so frightening about this Stupak ban is that he's found a backdoor way to basically not cover abortion for the vast majority of American women."

The Stupak-Pitts amendment, written by Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan and Republican Rep. Joseph R. Pitts of Pennsylvania, is a point of contention in the House health care bill. The amendment would limit funds in the health care bill, preventing subsidies from directly paying for abortions and also from paying for any insurance plan that covers abortions.

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An abortion demonstrator protests a clinic in Nebraska.

Orrin Hatch
Special to CNN

The Democratic health care proposal being debated in the Senate not only contains large new taxes, enormous government expansion and huge spending, but I'm convinced it also seeks to allow federal funding for abortion - something 61 percent of Americans do not support, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey.

Recently, the House of Representatives passed a health care reform bill containing language that would safeguard the rights of the unborn, and also prevent medical providers from being coerced into performing procedures that violate their conscience.

However, the health care reform bill introduced by Harry Reid, D-Nevada, in the Senate does not contain similar protections. To be clear, the language in the Reid bill on abortion is significantly weaker than that of the bill that passed in the House last month.

I have major concerns about how effective the weak language in the Reid bill will be. The one thing we know is that coverage of elective abortions in the government-operated health plan (or the public option) would be decided by the secretary of Health and Human Services. I am certain that federal subsidies would ultimately pay for insurance coverage used to cover elective abortions.

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Jenny Sanford did not stand beside her husband when he publicly admitted to having an affair.

Belinda Luscombe
Time

The cheated-upon spouses of the world have a new hero and her name is Jenny Sanford. The wife of the governor of South Carolina, who announced on Dec. 11 that she is filing for divorce, has handled the denouement of her marriage in a way that makes losing a husband to an affair almost look like a shrewd career move.

Perhaps Elin Nordegren Woods, the newest member of the Spurned Sisterhood, could take a few pages from the soon-to-be-ex Mrs. Sanford's playbook. Nordic silence has its place, but there's a lot to admire in how Sanford deftly and subtly grasped her part of the narrative and spun it. Hers is not the story of a dull wife who was passed over for an exotic soul mate in Argentina, but rather the tale of the true captain of a family ship, unbowed by the squalls.

For starters, this summer when her husband held the customary I-have-disappointed-my-family press conference, she did not appear alongside him. This was a doubly wise move, since the governor apparently chose to make the most emotional and difficult announcement of his life without a script. Not only did Mrs. Sanford avoid looking like a fool for literally standing by her man, she didn't have to be associated with what quickly devolved into a p.r. trainwreck. (His rambling 18-minute press conference included weeping, mention of his life-long love of camping and a "surreal" conversation he'd had recently with his father-in-law.)

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Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Silvia Henriquez
Special to CNN

When Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered her oath last summer, many women - and especially Latinas - felt renewed hope as a champion of women's rights took her place on the U.S. Supreme Court.

With Democrats in the White House and both houses of Congress, we believed that we could stop playing defense and actually advance women's rights, including access to abortion.

However, the health care debate quickly convinced us that we had to mobilize.

First, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, crafted the Stupak-Pitts amendment, designed to restrict women's access to abortion coverage in the proposed public health insurance marketplace. Millions of women who have access to abortion coverage through their insurance plans would lose this coverage if the insurance plans were offered in the exchange.

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Rape victims wait for treatment at hospital.

Sasha Lezhnev and John Prendergast
Special to CNN

Last year, the bus in which a young Congolese woman we met named Mary was riding was stopped by a militia. "They wanted to all have me, to rape me," she related haltingly to us. "I told them no, and then they took off my shirt and beat me. I have terrible marks now."

Mary's story is similar to hundreds of thousands of women's experiences in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where rape is routinely "deployed" as a weapon of war by the armed groups fighting over a nation that has some of the richest nonpetroleum natural resource deposits in the world.

Congo holds the numbing distinction of being home to the deadliest war in the world since World War II - with more than 5.4 million people killed during the past 15 years.

"This war is caused by the minerals," Mary told us. "Those [armed groups] control the minerals. I hear that they are used in mobile phones. ... If you talk to Obama or the phone companies, tell them what happens here."

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Charity Tooze
AC360° Contributor

While the U.S. and Afghanistan government continue to work to defeat the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, the eight-year-old promise to help relieve the oppression of women and girls has largely not been kept.

During his prime time address last week at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., President Obama laid out several military goals and a commitment to law and order. But he did not mention women and girls. Yesterday, Human Rights Watch released the report “We have the Promises of the World,” chronicling the oppressive conditions women and girls continue to face in Afghanistan.

The Karzai government will now work with Taliban fighters who are willing to give up violence and support the efforts of the Afghan government. “Women are living in Taliban controlled areas, so peace deals and payments to insurgents isn’t really going to help women. Because it won’t change the fundamental mentality of the Taliban,” said Rachel Reid, Human Rights Watch researcher and the author of this week’s report.

Similarly, both the U.S. and Afghan administrations have committed to support local tribal leaders in establishing militias in rural areas to police the Taliban. “In the past local militias given guns and money have disappeared or committed human rights abuses themselves or they start polarizing with another group,” Reid said.

But Reid, who has lived and worked in Afghanistan for more than two years, said there is little difference in the mindset of the Taliban, tribal leaders or the parliament when it comes to the rights of women and girls.

“In the Jirgas or traditional councils where Afghans go if there is a crime or they have a complaint, a girl can be given as compensation for the crime, it’s called baad. Girls are traded like property,” Reid said.

Sivanka Dhanapala, a senior regional coordinator for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), said, “some women find the situation intolerable because of forced marriage at a young age. Some set themselves on fire as an attempt to escape.” Because of that, he added, there is a special burn unit in a hospital in the province of Hera.

While on paper President Hamid Karzai’s government promises the equality of women and men in Article 22 of the Constitution, many argue the situation on the ground does not reflect that commitment. According to the United Nations Development Fund for Women’s (UNIFEM) gender development index, Afghan women are second to last in the entire world.

Many young women are forced into marriages some before the legal age of 16. The controversial Shia Personal Status Law that received international attention in April of 2009 was often referred to in the international media as the rape law. It mandated women have sex with their husbands every fourth night.

The law was amended and signed by president Karzai in July of this year. It now states that women cannot leave their homes without the permission of their husbands or fathers, that custody of children will be given to fathers and grandfathers, and their husbands can refuse food to women if they refuse to oblige their husbands sexually.

“The Shia Personal Status Law sets a terrible precedent. The law reflects the realities of many women’s lives but it doesn’t mean you take customary law and enshrine as state law. It just makes it harder for women.” Reid said.

Currently, there is one female minister in the government – the minister of women’s affairs. Over the past few years, women in public life have come under severe threat. Lt. Col. Malalai Kakar was the highest-ranking female police officer. She was shot on her way to work in 2008. Similarly, Sitara Achakzai a member of a provincial council and respected local leader was shot in 2009.

In both incidents the Taliban claimed responsibility but there has not been an arrest in either case. The murders and threats often have a ripple affect for women in Afghanistan, which contributes to a culture of fear and intimidation. This extends into the Afghan refugee population in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. “Afghan women living in Iran would rather stay in Iran than return to Afghanistan because they have access to education and can work in Iran,” Dhanapal said.

“Not all the news is bad. One of the more heartening aspects is the opening of many girls schools,” said Dhanapala. He went on to say, “when you drive through the countryside and see girls going to school in their bright uniforms it gives you hope to persevere.” Senzil Nawid, author and scholar on Afghan women, said the women of Afghanistan are incredibly resilient. “If security is improved the women will bounce right back,” Nawid said.

Nawid points out that the cultural oppression of women began when the Afghan communist parties overthrew the first Afghan president in 1978. At that point a bloody civil war ensued. “Women were the victims, they were treated horribly under the radical Marxists regimes and the Mujahadeen forces,” Nawid Said.

“The Obama administration has to address the corruption within the Afghan government. The culture of impunity needs to be tackled. It’s a huge factor in the rise of the insurgencies,” Reid said. Over the next few weeks President Karzai will be appointing ministers and cabinet people. “The government has lost credibility. We have to be very watchful in terms of the appointments,” Dhanapal said. McChrystal and President Obama have stressed the training of Afghan security forces and the rule of law. Yet, according to Reid the police force is poorly trained. “They do not have enough civilian law enforcement training they are trained as paramilitary troops really. They have to know the law to enforce it,” she said.

Nawid said President Karzai is in a difficult position. “He started the country from scratch. There was nothing, no army, no educational institutions, no economy or civil servants,” she said. While assuring the international community that he wants equality for women through commitments like the millennium development goals that state “achievement of primary education for everyone and the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women.” But President Karzai’s actions and desire to retain Shia support appear to contradict these goals.

The Human Rights Watch report highlights in May of 2008 President Karzai pardoned two gang rapists who had served only two years of their 11-year sentence. The middle-aged woman who was raped told Reid she was targeted out of retaliation by a powerful local leader. Spokespeople for President Karzai claimed the decree that resulted in the release of the men was forged.

While the situation that women face is profoundly challenging, they continue to speak out in spite of threats. Reid shared a story about a 13-year-old girl who ran away from the man she was forced to marry. Through a series of unbelievable and courageous steps, the young woman ended up at a safe house in the capital Kabul. While the parliament, local leaders and her husband’s family demanded she go back, the girl refused. Reid said her actions are threatening because it’s a young woman standing up for herself. “She told me she met with the president who told her it was safe to go back to her husband’s family. She said she told him ‘if you think it’s safe why don’t you send your wife or one of your children.” Reid finds great hope in the courage of this young woman whose attempt to demand her rights have not come from outside Western influence. “She knows her rights and is fighting for them,” Reid said.

It is hard to know how the Obama administration will support women’s rights in Afghanistan, as there has been little public attention to the matter. Reid said that sustained work by local Afghan NGO’s is essential. Given the entrenched cultural norms in many sectors of Afghan society it will take more than 18 months to change women’s roles in Afghanistan. “The biggest question in Afghanistan, is if you have a willing partner in the Afghan government,” Reid said.

Editor’s Note: Charity Tooze is a freelance journalist currently working in Jordan. She was the executive producer of Rites of Passage, www.ritesofpassage.tv, a weekly television program by and for young women in the Bay Area. She is currently in the Middle East developing a body of work on Iraqi Refugees as part of her master’s thesis.

Number, rate, and ratio of abortions performed, by year - selected states, United States, 1996–2006

Centers for Disease Control

Each year, CDC requests abortion data from the central health agencies of 52 reporting areas (the 50 states, New York City, and the District of Columbia); these data are provided to CDC voluntarily. In 2006, data were received from 49 reporting areas. For the purpose of trend analysis, data were evaluated from the 46 areas that reported data every year during 1996–2006.

For 2006, a total of 846,181 abortions were reported to CDC. Among the 46 areas that provided data consistently during 1996–2006, a total of 835,134 abortions (98.7% of the total) were reported; the abortion rate was 16.1 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years, and the abortion ratio was 236 abortions per 1,000 live births. During the previous decade (1997–2006), reported abortion numbers, rates, and ratios decreased 5.7%, 8.8%, and 14.8%, respectively; most of these declines occurred before 2001. During the previous year (2005–2006), the total number of abortions increased 3.1%, and the abortion rate increased 3.2%; the abortion ratio was stable.

In 2006, as during the previous decade (1997–2006), women aged 20–29 years accounted for the majority (56.8%) of abortions and had the highest abortion rates (29.9 abortions per 1,000 women aged 20–24 years and 22.2 abortions per 1,000 women aged 25–29 years); by contrast, abortion ratios were highest at the extremes of reproductive age. Adolescents aged 15–19 years accounted for 16.5% of all abortions in 2006

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John W. Rowe M.D.
Special to CNN

The new recommendations for breast cancer screening - and the public debate surrounding them - underscore the need to distinguish between rationing and establishing science-based standards of health care. That distinction will be crucial as we strive for better and more affordable care in the United States.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made the recommendations, reviewed new scientific studies and concluded that for women in their 40s, when the likelihood of breast cancer is very low, routine screening is not necessary and that, thereafter, mammography at two-year intervals provides essentially the same benefit as annual tests.

These recommendations have been greeted with understandable skepticism and claims of "rationing."

After all, in the midst of the current health care reform debate it is easy to question the motives of a group seen by some as "government-sponsored," and new science-based recommendations for less, rather than more, care often meet populist resistance.

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40,460 American women, according to the American Cancer Society, are expected to lose their breast cancer battle this year.

Susan Scanlan
Special to CNN

I've been digesting the recommendations of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force for two weeks now. And I'm still swallowing hard.

How else to react to the cockamamie recommendations to discontinue routine breast self-exams, along with mammograms, for 40-something women?

Let's take one giant leap backward for women's health! These task forcers have devalued the only tool available to women for fighting what is practically a health scourge in our country.

I know from scourges. The granddaughter and daughter of breast cancer victims, my time in the barrel came in 2005. Four years and a double mastectomy later, I'm still kicking.

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AC360°

Recent reports indicate that women serving in the U.S. military face unique personal and professional challenges that their male counterparts don't.

During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, American women in the military have quietly been proving themselves as never before. These are the first wars in which women in the American military have lived and fought alongside men for long periods of time – and some say they could not fight these wars without them. Recently, it was announced that the nation’s top drill sergeant is now a woman.

Even in the field many women have taken on roles that were often seen as taboo in the past, as the necessity of manpower means they are called upon for duties previously set aside for male colleagues. But has their pioneering work come at a price? Do they receive the same support as their male counterparts? We'll talk to women in the military about how they are breaking barriers tonight.

Go here to find a link to resources for women in the military.

U.S. Military

Women have served in the United States Military since 1775. They are an invaluable and essential part of the Army. Currently, women serve in 91 percent of all Army occupations and make up about 14 percent of the active Army, where they continue to play a crucial role. Go here to find an historical timeline of women in the U.S. Military.

At least 100,000 and perhaps as many as 300,000 children in America are victims of sex trafficking each year.

Bridgette Carr
Special to CNN

"We did not have a right to choose where we lived ... freedom of speech, or freedom of actions. The traffickers had keys to our apartment. They controlled all of our movement and travel. They watched us and listened when we called our parents. They didn't let us make friends or tell anyone anything about ourselves. We couldn't keep any of the money we earned. We couldn't ask anyone for help." - Lena

Lena was an athletic student from Eastern Europe yearning to visit the United States through a study-abroad program at her college. She had visions of learning English and returning home to share her experiences with her family.

But the human traffickers who ensnared her had a different vision for Lena, shipping her to America and exploiting her in the sex industry for profit. They met her at the airport with news that her study abroad placement had been changed. She was given new bus tickets and sent off to Detroit, Michigan. Once there they took her passport and her freedom.

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Two guidelines have been issued to reduce screening for breast and cervical cancer this week.

Madison Park
CNN

It's been a confusing week for women.

On Monday, it started with breast cancer.

A federal advisory board made a controversial recommendation that women begin routine mammograms at age 50, rather than at 40. The United States Preventive Services Task Force came under heavy criticism for its position and triggered confusion and political accusations of health care rationing.

Then, the week ended with cervical cancer.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued guidelines advising that women should receive their first cervical cancer screening, or Pap test, at the age of 21.

The group, a nonprofit organization of women's health care physicians, also recommended that patients younger than 30 be screened every two years, instead of annually, and that healthy women 30 or older be given a Pap test once every three years.

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American Cancer Society

Cancer is a group of diseases that cause cells in the body to change and grow out of control. Most types of cancer cells eventually form a lump or mass called a tumor, and are named after the part of the body where the tumor originates.

Breast cancer begins in breast tissue, which is made up of glands for milk production, called lobules, and the ducts that connect lobules to the nipple. The remainder of the breast is made up of fatty, connective, and lymphatic tissue.

• Most masses are benign; that is, they are not cancerous, do not grow uncontrollably or spread, and are not life-threatening.

• Some breast cancers are called in situ because they are confined within the ducts (ductal carcinoma in situ) or lobules (lobular carcinoma in situ) of the breast. Nearly all cancers at this stage can be cured. Many oncologists believe that lobular carcinoma in situ (also known as lobular neoplasia) is not a true cancer, but an indicator of increased risk for developing invasive cancer in either breast.

Find more facts and figures about breast cancer...

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force's new mammography recommendations have raised controversy.

Elizabeth Landau
CNN

A vacation to Washington nearly a decade ago led to a life-changing revelation for Kathi Cordsen. Passing by a breast cancer awareness event, her mother blurted it out: Her doctor had just confirmed that she had breast cancer.

She'd found the lump during a self-examination.

Fortunately, Cordsen's mom had found the cancer so early that she was able to have a lumpectomy and didn't need chemotherapy or radiation. That's why, today, Cordsen checks her own breasts every day in the shower.

"It was such an inspirational thing to find out that it saved her life, that's for sure," said Cordsen, 57, who submitted her story to CNN's iReport. "It's just important, to want to live and take care of yourself."
New guidelines from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force say that women age 40 to 49 don't need to have routine mammograms anymore and that breast self-exams aren't recommended in general. The group found no evidence that self-exams reduce breast cancer death rates, and it discourages teaching women how to examine themselves.

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Aid agencies say young women are being forced into prostitution around the world – including Russia's capital.

Tanya M. Acker
AC360° Contributor
Attorney

At the Women’s Conference hosted by Governor Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver last week, I listened to Somaly Mam, a human rights activist who has made the liberation of girls from sex slavery her life’s work, describe her experience of being sold into sex slavery in Cambodia at 10 or 12-years-old. (Ms. Mam did not know exactly how old she was when she was first imprisoned in the brothel, as she lost all conception of time during her confinement.)

She talked about the fact that child sex slaves are raped sometimes 20 to 30 times a day and also described the horror of watching her best friend murdered, an event which ultimately prompted her to attempt a successful escape.

I then heard Ms. Mam and Nicholas Kristof describe the widespread tragedy that is the global sex trade in girls and how in many cases, as these girls are valued by their brothel masters at only a few hundred dollars a person, those brothel owners often think it efficient to execute the “recalcitrants” publicly in order to send a lesson to the others.

And then, as I listened to Lisa Ling correctly point out that much of what passes for “news” these days consists of talking heads yelling at one another, I thought about how, as one of those talking heads, I have spent more time arguing with right wing anchors about such inanities as whether the President is simultaneously a socialist and fascist who wants to impose his own version of martial law, than I have discussing the plight of these girls.

Our broad and vital civil liberties – liberties that are among the best aspects of our social and political culture – may allow us the corollary indulgence of treating any grievance and/or mood swing as a compelling news item. Ms. Mam’s story, however, suggests it might be appropriate to take a broader approach toward determining “newsworthiness.”

Stories about the global sex trade in women and girls may not be as sexy as protests featuring complaints about the President’s allegedly absent birth certificate, but I cannot believe that when offered an appropriate diet of digestible news and information choices that Americans will continue to prefer to graze on the junk.

It may be that the perceived immediacy of certain of our countrymen’s “grievances” is what gives rise to the perception that those grievances are the benchmark for determining what is relevant or newsworthy. For many, the 10-year old sex slave in Cambodia is too far removed to inspire much passion or outrage; indeed, the myopia to which all political partisans are susceptible may give rise to a belief that her plight is simply not as important as the “news” item which will better lend itself to the politically useful sound byte.

But when those partisans lament the fact that nothing changes, they should perhaps be reminded that they have, in many cases, often demanded little change. It is one thing to cast a vote on November 3. It is quite another to reiterate that demand by insisting on a regular diet of accurate, relevant information – and also by reminding policymakers that their substantive decisions are being monitored at every turn.

When all we do is “tweet” about the latest instance of manufactured outrage instead of taking a stance against the truly outrageous, however, we may fairly deserve the indifference toward real harms that we often get from political decision makers.

The passion and power of American voices has changed lives and liberated people around the world. We saw the end of apartheid not because politicians in the first instance thought it necessary to end our nation’s support of an oppressive regime, but instead because of the grassroots mobilization of millions of committed Americans who decided that the power and prestige of this democracy would no longer be used to underwrite such gross oppression.

Not then being so easily distracted by ginned up “scandals” that became their own “news” because of their easy dissemination via social networking portals (or by ideologically driven “news anchors” who used their platforms to impose a worldview rather than report on the world), we did, for a moment, focus on a real scandal and we made a real difference.

I hope, for the sake of victimized girls around the world, that we can muster the energy and focus to do it again.

Follow Tanya Acker on Twitter @tanyaacker.