U.S. Pushes U.N. on Abortion Declaration

[Rose Siding]

UNITED NATIONS -- Ten years after a landmark U.N. conference adopted a platform aimed at global equality for women, the United States is demanding that a declaration issued by a follow-up meeting make clear that women are not guaranteed a right to abortion.

Starting Monday, a high-level U.N. meeting attended by over 100 countries and 6,000 advocates for women's causes will be taking stock of what countries have done to implement the 150-page landmark platform of action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing to achieve equality of the sexes.

But even before the two-week meeting began, delegates were wrangling behind closed doors Friday on a draft declaration that the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women put forward -- and had hoped to have adopted by consensus before Monday's opening session.

The short declaration would have nations reaffirm the Beijing platform and a declaration adopted with it, welcome progress toward achieving gender equality, stress that challenges remain, and "pledge to undertake further action to ensure their full and accelerated implementation."

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-un-womens-equality,0,7441764.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[Zuni]

1. We'll be siding with such lovely nations as Saudi Arabia, Sudan

and other Islamic Fundamentalists on this.

[Erika]

14. Bush Administration = American Taliban

The poster who said the world recognizes that Bush does not represent the beliefs and wishes of most U.S. citizens is 100% correct.

Yes, women are losing their rights here.

[truthpusher]

2. The UN will tell them to kiss off! nt

[Delphinus]

7. Hey, Truthpusher

I hope you're right - that the UN tells them (us) to kiss off.

[truthpusher]

8. The dynamic has changed...

...every world leader by now has clued in to the fact that the Bush admin does not represent our country as a whole. The 'us' that you mention are the people that Bush is fighting for, and frankly that has nothing to do with me.

[Rex]

3. How much longer before we make women property again?

Deny them domain over their own bodies? Bush has no problem with it. I think this is about more than just pleasing the RW religious freaks.

[renaissanceguy]

22. Bush wants to take over EVERYONE's body

well, unless if you are a white, protestant, repug male who does it in one position with your stepford wife.

http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues/466053

[sarcasmo]

4. The U.S. demanding that Women not be guaranteed rights. How nice to

live in the land of the free. What a Fucking Joke this Country has become under King Chimp. Women I feel your pain, you have been pushed back into the early 60's under this administration.

[bearfan454]

5. It is the woman's body.

No one should be able to tell her she cannot have an abortion if she wants to get one.

[journalist3072]

6. So let me see if I've got this straight.....

Let's say you have a pregnant married woman, and during her first trimester, she finds out she has cancer. The doctors tell her and her husband they have a decision to make: 1) carry the baby to full term and delay the mother's cancer treatment, thus endangering her life or 2) have an abortion and immediately begin chemotherapy.

The government wants to tell such a woman that she doesn't have a right to put HER health first? She's not entitled to an abortion? They assume they know what's best for her?

That's just absurd, insulting, and downright wrong! And if we stand for this crap, it will be our own faults.

[Mz Pip]

9. The Church

has some woman up for Sainthood who died because she refused to have an abortion so she could undergo cancer treatment. She ended up dying shortly after the baby was born.

Her family is motherless but she'll get to be a Saint. She made her choice but I don't see why all women should be forced to follow her example.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[journalist3072]

10. You're exactly right....

That's interesting. I hadn't even heard about that particular case.

I don't want to criticize the woman for putting her baby's life before her own. That's a personal decision she made, so God Bless her. But you hit the nail right on the head. They should not be criticizing women who make the exact opposite decision: to put THEIR health ahead of their unborn child's.

[Rex]

11. The Church has defiled itself by refusing to stop priests

that molest children. It should NOT take wrist turning to get the Pope to hammer down on these miscreants. The biggest hypocrisy for them all is the fact that divorce is unbelievable and a huge sin yet NO ONE ever talks about it. All they care about is who might be gay, terminating pregnancies, and that rapture stuff.

My bet is on the rapture - delivered in mushroom clouds. Would the religious freaks know the difference?

[Spazito]

12. The bush cabal can push whatever they like, they have NO

credibility with anyone outside 25.5% of the US public (25.5% being the % of citizens that MAY have voted for him if the vote was not tainted).

When they demand, urge, push about anything the world responds with a shrug and a 'whatever'. They have no credibility left regarding democracy, human rights, women's rights, etc, imo.

[renaissanceguy]

13. U.S. Pushed U.N. on Abortion Declaration

UNITED NATIONS - Ten years after a landmark U.N. conference adopted a platform aimed at global equality for women, the United States is demanding that a declaration issued by a follow-up meeting make clear that women are not guaranteed a right to abortion.


<snip>


But at an informal closed-door meeting on Thursday, the United States said it could not accept the declaration because of its concerns that the Beijing platform legalized the right to abortion as a human right, according to several participants.

<snip>

[rodeodance]

16. I hate it when the WH pretends it is speaking for the majority of

americans. Abortion is still accepted and legel in the US (even if dwindled)--and here they go again!!



.....But at an informal closed-door meeting on Thursday, the United States said it could not accept the declaration because of its concerns that the Beijing platform legalized the right to abortion as a human right, according to several participants.

On Friday, the United States proposed an amendment to the draft declaration that would reaffirm the Beijing platform and declaration -- but only "while reaffirming that they do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion," according to the text obtained by The Associated Press.

The Beijing platform calls for governments to end discrimination against women and close the gender gap in 12 critical areas including health, education, employment, political participation and human rights.

At the 1994 U.N. population conference in Cairo, delegates approved a platform recognizing that abortion is a fact that governments must deal with as a public health issue. At Beijing the following year, delegates reaffirmed this and went further, asking governments to review laws that punish women for having abortions.

[fortyfeetunder]

15. First our bodies, then our votes, then our rights period.

Pass me a burqa. Feels like a constant degeneration of women's rights. What's next, voting rights? ( I think they were already violated in 2000 and 2004)....

[rodeodance]

17. recall the Hiliary was the US spokeswomen at that conference

[renaissanceguy]

23. It was laughable when I saw signs that said

"W stands for women." And those women either believed it, or they were self-loathing idiots. Well, they're getting what they voted for. It's a shame that the decent half of this country has to be dragged through the mud along with them.



http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues.14741193

[Nimrod]

24. I feel sorry as hell for the women of this nation

I'm not going to bullshit anybody by pretending that I've agreed with every single voice or action in the various women's movements, but these last few years have seen a horrifying number of steps back toward the enslavement of earlier eras.

[0007]

26. junior is gonna have the gay men wear burqa's and the

women will wear the "Scarlet letter "A" on their chest.

[NightOwwl]

18. Have I mentioned today...

how much I despise that turd that goes by the name George W. Bush? Freedom and liberty, my ass.

[manic expression]

19. That just makes me sick...

It's just so utterly disgusting.

[VegasWolf]

20. Fuck boosh, watch his daughters get one. n/t

[Willy Lee]

21. If men got pregnant...

they'd be pushing for abortions up there with ED drugs.

Mind boggling.

[renaissanceguy]

25. which is why I feel men have no right being

anti-choice. It's not their bodies, so they shouldn't be able to deny a woman's right to her own body.


http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues.16778992

[0007]

27. Man's freedom ends where woman's nose begins.



End of story

[distantearlywarning]

28. AP: U.S. Pushes U.N. on Abortion Declaration

AP: U.S. Pushes U.N. on Abortion Declaration (Yahoo News)

"UNITED NATIONS - Ten years after the world's nations pledged to achieve equality for women, a follow-up meeting has become embroiled in controversy over a U.S. demand that its final declaration state that women are not guaranteed the right to abortion.

In informal consultations ahead of Monday's meeting to take stock of progress in implementing the landmark platform adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing, the United States raised the abortion issue as a first order of business.

The U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, which organized the high-level meeting, had hoped the two-week session would focus on overcoming the roadblocks to women's equality in 12 critical areas from health, education and employment to political participation and human rights.

But the dispute over abortion is likely to dominate the headlines and the closed-door debate on the final declaration."

More...

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=534&e=1&u=/ap/20050228/ap_on_re_us/un_women_s_equality

[Megahurtz]

29. Slick and moving fast

the Bushitler administration is.

I sincerely hope that it's true that the world believes that there is a great majority of us here who are opposed to Bush and his nazi- fundamentalist:freak:policies.

And I hope the U.N. tells the U.S. to stick it!:thumbsdown: