| Words and Deeds on Women's Issues |
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The Boston Globe, March 16, 2004
Letter to the Editor To the Editor: At last Friday's White House event on Global Women's Human Rights, President Bush trumpeted his compassionate policies toward women around the world ("Bush touts support for women's rights," Page A3, March 13). But behind the scenes, the administration is pursuing a policy of callous conservatism. Only a day earlier in two international forums, the administration was the lone voice seeking to undermine landmark agreements to improve the health, rights, and status of girls and women around the world. At the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, the United States broke ranks with 41 other countries to reject a resolution condemning torture, murder, rape, slavery, and trafficking in women and children that result from hostage-taking in armed conflict. At a regional meeting of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Santiago, Chile, the United States—alone of 38 countries—opposed a declaration of support for the international consensus adopted in Cairo in 1994 that recognized women's right to reproductive health care and services. The gap between rhetoric and reality is too stark to ignore.
SUE HORNIK © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company. |
