Since 1992, Hour Children has aimed to prepare women during their sentence for re-entry into society and then provide support after it ends.

"A society that erases women from public life is a society that becomes impoverished," he said.

Advocates for the protection of women charge that rape is systemic and endemic in South Africa. Police statistics confirm this: There are about 115 rapes per day, a level that is among the highest in the world.

Based on my personal experience, I have spent years trying to help women find healing, acceptance, reconciliation and hope after making one of the most excruciating and difficult decisions of their lives.

Kaya Oakes offers reflections on what it means to live as a woman today. This meaning grappling with growing older in a society and a church that both continue to prize feminine youth, fecundity and docility above all else.

We now live in a “shout your abortion” nation, and a message that crass will never be embraced in more conservative parts of the United States, nor should it be.