U.S. does right by women at the UN
■"Panel Backs Women's Rights After U.S. Drops Abortion Issue," by Warren Hoge, New York Times, 5 March 2005, p. A5.
UN conference on women wraps up with a unanimous report on furthering women's rights across the Gap and New Core, thanks to the U.S. dropping its insistence on an amendment explicitly condemning abortion. The U.S. rep claims we won a victory by stopping language that promoted abortion.
This is sheer face-saving on our part. Abortion is pursued all over the Gap and New Core, and our choice is to turn a blind eye to it (which we did here) or try to stop it, which is what we spent the majority of the conference doing, apparently. But when push came to shove, and the U.S. found itself a majority of one on the subject, we finally backed off, declaring false victory.
We backed off on another goal that most experts said would similarly backfire: criminalizing prostitution. The problem: when you drive it underground, you ratchet up the spread of AIDS and other diseases, because people forced to work in informal economies resist the sort of networks designed to control the spread of diseases.
So give us credit for being sensible on both issues, or simply acknowledge that our influence on both subjects is approaching absolute zero.