The New York Times, March 5, 2005

Editorial

At a moment when the United States should be leading the world on advancing women's equality, the Bush administration chose instead to alienate government ministers and 6,000 other delegates at an important United Nations conference on that issue with a burst of anti-abortion zealotry this week.

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Summary: By Adrienne Germain (Our Planet Magazine, October 2004). Explains why empowering women is the key to solving a range of global health, development, and environmental challenges, reviews commitments made on improving women's health and advancing women's rights at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD, Cairo, 1994) and summarizes achievements made in the last decade.

Science, Vol 305, Issue 5680, 17, 2 July 2004

By Adrienne Germain

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decision in May 2004 not to allow over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill, Plan B, is but one troubling example of the increasing impact of politics and ideology on science and health policy. The agency's ruling, contrary to recommendations from an external advisory panel and its own scientific staff, is indicative of the growing gap between common sense and U.S. policies affecting the well-being of women and girls worldwide.

By Cynthia Rothschild
American Sexuality Magazine, Volume 1, No. 6

New York Newsday, December 1, 2002

By Mabel Bianco

A United Nations report released last week announced that women have caught up with men as far as AIDS is concerned. Half the adults affected with HIV worldwide are now women. This shouldn't come as much of a surprise. It was just a matter of time before the disease shifted from one originally affecting gay white men to one transmitted heterosexually all over the world.

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Summary: By Françoise Girard andWilhelmina Waldman (International Family Planning Perspectives, Vol.26, No. 4, December, 2000, New York: Alan Guttmacher Institute).Examines the international legal framework for the reproductive rightsof refugees and internationally displaced persons, as well as someaspects of UN and NGO policies relevant to refugee reproductive health(7 pages).

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Summary: By Françoise Girard (Journal of Women's Health and Law, Vol. I, No. 1, November, 1999, Toronto and Vancouver: Butterworths). Analyzes the significance for women's health of the UN's five-year review of implementation of the Programme of Action agreed in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The author outlines and discusses the significance and impact of the original ICPD agreements and of the new commitments made by governments in 1999 to hasten implementation of the Programme of Action (14 pages).