US avoids anti-abortion debate at UN meeting

Source: Associated Press

US avoids anti-abortion debate at UN meeting
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer – 42 mins ago

UNITED NATIONS – A U.N. meeting to assess progress in advancing the fight for women's equality that ended Friday had a dramatically different slant than a similar session held five years ago: This time, the United States was not trying to make an anti-abortion declaration a crucial theme.

Much of the 2005 meeting to take stock of what countries had done to implement the landmark platform of action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women's conference in Beijing was consumed by the Bush administration's demand that the final declaration make clear that women are not guaranteed a right to abortion.

By contrast, abortion was a non-issue during the two-week session that concluded Friday with a rousing speech by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had electrified the 1995 Beijing conference when she was first lady.

Her focus was on galvanizing fresh momentum to promote equal opportunities for women in business and education, to end discrimination under law and in practical reality, and to stop the "global pandemic" of violent attacks on women. She made a single reference to the U.S. increasing support for family planning as part of its Global Health Initiative, which also aims to reduce maternal and child deaths and HIV infections.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100313/ap_on_re_us/un_un_women_s_equality

And many thanks also to your "boss" for recommitting to international family planning as one of his first acts in office.
One of Bush II's first acts in office was to reinstate Raygun's global gag rule, which had as a totally foreseeable but unintended (?) consequence an increase in the need for abortions to be performed worldwide and thus to an increase in abortions.
I added the question mark only because it seems that the rabid anti-choicers still do not seem to "get" the connection between comprehensive family planning and and the statistically proven reduction in abortions. In this, as in so many areas, the RW takes leave of any common sense whatsoever. So I am giving them a very slight benefit of a doubt in not intending that consequence.
The bottom line is that the rabid RW wants NO family planning techniques to be legal or available. Ever.
In their eyes, women's sole purpose on earth is to bear children. Even if they die in the process.

Low expectations reign?

"While reproduction health wasn't an issue at this conference, Patricia Licuanan, a former head of the Commission on the Status of Women who chaired the committee responsible for drafting the Beijing platform, said "I don't think it's less of an issue ... because ... the church, religious fundamentalism, is on the upsurge."

"I think it's still very much around," said Licuanan, who is president of Miriam College in Manila, in the Philippines. "That's part of the fear of any type of movement to open up discussions on Beijing. I really would fear that possibly (the platform) might (go) backward."