Jewish Standard: Agunot Outraged

The Jewish Standard carries Jacob Berkman's JTA story:

NEW YORK – Jewish women’s rights leaders are reeling after Israel’s Sephardi chief Rabbi canceled a conference of prominent rabbis that was to deal with the issue of women whose husbands refuse to give them divorce papers.

An agunah, literally a "chained" woman, is one whose husband refuses to give her a get, a document she needs under Jewish religious law for a divorce to be final. If she does not obtain a get but later remarries, any subsequent children she has are mamzers — or bastards. This label carries a harsh stigma in religious circles and limits whom the children can marry under Jewish law.