I sure wish we in the USA would resolve our political battle over abortion rights, so we don’t have to monkey around with international treaties and try to deny the UN funding for reproductive health services, and any number of other ways in which our Republican administrations have to show the world that we are anti-abortion rights whenever Republicans are in power.

That’s why I call for a national referendum on abortion rights. All political parties can take cover in that, and they can openly support moderate abortion rights positions, because the American public finally voted on the rights it wants. Such a referendum would not change the law — It would simply tell politicians the will of the people.

Republicans would not want such a referendum, because they know the public would vote for a moderate abortion rights position.

Guardian Unlimited | Guardian daily comment | Mary-Ann Stephenson: Bush against women’s right: “It will take all our energy to stand still

Bush’s America is waging a global battle against women’s rights

Mary-Ann Stephenson
Tuesday March 8, 2005
The Guardian

For all George Bush’s courting of Europe, when it comes to women’s reproductive rights he is closer to Iran and Syria than the EU. In 1995, representatives from 189 countries met in Beijing and agreed a major programme on women’s equality and human rights - the Beijing platform for action. This statement was ambitious, and the UN commission on the status of women is currently meeting in New York to review its progress over the past decade.

The meeting was to publish a statement reaffirming international support for the platform for action. But the US has refused to support it unless it is amended to say that the platform does not create any new human rights or the right to abortion.

But it doesn’t actually give the right to abortion. States are called on to ‘consider reviewing laws containing punitive measures against women who have undergone illegal abortions’, but the platform is clear that ‘any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process’.

But that’s not how the US is presenting it. Countries are being warned that failure to support the US amendment could allow the platform to be used to push through a ‘right to abortion’ and take away the right of countries to determine their own laws. Activists are furious. Annette Lawson, of the European Women’s Lobby, said the US is ’simply trying to mislead the rest of the world’.

This is not the first attack “