Posted on 09/16/2005 8:02:50 AM PDT by Nevadan
Feminists of a certain political stripe are accusing the Bush administration of "flip-flopping on its commitment to women."
"In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 14 leaders from women's health, human rights and development organizations questioned the U.S. commitment to halving world poverty by 2015," asserts a Sept. 13 press release from the International Conference on Population and Development. "With less than 24 hours until the start of the World Summit at the United Nations, the U.S. refuses to endorse policies that would significantly advance poverty goals by advancing women's rights."
Wow. We knew the Bush administration was made up of people with bad comb-overs who wear white socks with black loafers. But have they really just come out against allowing women in other countries to vote, to work as doctors or architects, or to attend school, drive cars, or appear in public with their wrists or ankles bared?
Um ... no.
What's going on here is that these activists believe the cure for poverty overseas is for well-meaning Americans and Europeans to go into Third World countries and reduce their birth rates.
Birth control pills? Feminists warn tyrannical Third World husbands may throw them away. Condoms? The news release specifically ridicules an "ideological-based position that focuses on abstinence, being faithful and use of condoms for 'high-risk' groups."
What that leaves is U.S. taxpayer financing for abortions and human sterilization overseas.
The group Concerned Women for America has made a detailed study of such related U.N. initiatives as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), finding that "CEDAW undermines the traditional family structure in the United States and other nations that respect the family. The preamble states, 'A change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women.' "
Regarding children, CEDAW assumes that government, not parents, knows best. The Committee derided Slovenia because only 30 percent of children younger than 3 were in day care centers. The remaining 70 percent, the committee claimed, would miss out on education and social opportunities offered in state-run day care institutions. Its review of Germany urged "the Government to improve the availability of care places for school-age children to facilitate women's re-entry into the labor market."
Gender re-education? "Comparable worth" wage laws? What do you think?
What CWA analysts Laurel MacLeod and Catherine Hurlburt found was that when such U.N. documents use the euphemism "family planning, they really mean access to abortion services."
"That construction is consistent with feminist thought, which views pregnancy as the only major difference between men and women," Ms. MacLeod and Ms. Hurlburt report. "In the feminist view, pregnancy hampers women and lessens their ability to compete equally with men, so abortion must be available to all women as an equality measure."
Do those now challenging the administration's position on these far-out U.N. mandates have the right to take such a position? Of course they do.
The question is, why not admit there's a debate about whether the American feminist vision of the 1970s -- the presumption that traditional families, children, marriage and motherhood form the chains that hold women in bondage -- is "best" for women all around the world, and argue their case in a forthright manner, instead of implying Condoleezza Rice favors wife-beating and illiteracy?
Where in the Constitution is the Federal government given a mandate to promote "female advancement worldwide"?
Yeah, were against it so much that we wanted Uday and Qusay to keep the rape rooms open in Iraq. (sarcasm)
U.S. refuses to endorse policies that would significantly advance poverty goals by advancing women's rights."
So. Are they saying that the more women are encouraged to be doctors,lawyers and indian chiefs, the more poverty there will be? And they want the US to endorse this kind of thinking?
Sorry, but I don't think Dr Rice is going to take that seriously.
I keep telling my son, who is 12, he can bring Dr Rice home to meet his momma any time.
The one TRUE power that women have, that men do not, is the power to propagate the species! Men have been terrified of this power for centuries. Their ultimate triumph has been achieved by creating universal abortion on demand and universal daycare. Instead of forcing men to acknowledge the true power of women, by transforming institutions to accommodate women and value children and child-rearing, feminists have thrown that away, instead pursuing the chimera of "equality" for women in a world constructed by and for men that excludes children and devalues parenthood. Why do feminists believe the answer for women is just to be more like men? That universal daycare is better than forcing corporations and other institutions to restructure work to allow women AND men to spend more time caring for their own children? Why do they believe that matriarchal societies in the Third World, where women are exalted as mothers, are a bad thing? It blows my mind.
Very interesting points.
Just a note, I read a FRONT page story in the HOUSTON KRON about how Jimmah and Rossss, were working to end scourge in Ethiopia. (when hasn't there been a scourge in Ethiopia. Wasn't he President once.(sarc) But what got me, is here these two mindless lefties are supposedly the great philanthropist going to cure Trachoma, and apparently didn't bother to read the Cliff's notes on the disease. But the line that got me is "Rossalynn Carter stared at one child.....then whispered to her husband..."She's covered in flies"
The idiot Kron writer didn't even figure out how dumb that sounded SINCE THE DISEASE IS CASUED BY AND SPRAD BY FLIES.
Unrealistic people, unrealistic goals.
I have an image of Homer Simpson wispering that to Marge!
I imagine the disgust in her voice would have been informative. I mean come on, Ross, at least attempt to do your homework before going on these photo ops. The Carter Center must be in need of Funds,,
Oh, for Pete's sake!! Where's that poster with the neat pic and the "Not this sh** again!"
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