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CEDAW Update
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by Mary Jo Anderson

Additional information can be found in the article Earth Charter: Protection or Peril?

The pernicious United Nations treaty, Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has never been ratified by the United States—no US Senate was willing to ratify such an assault on American sovereignty.

This treaty is one of a parade of anti-family, anti-sovereignty treaties that have ushered forth from the United Nations over the last thirty years. CEDAW seeks to impose on all nations a particular—that is feminist—view of women’s lives, their “rights” and the cultural environment in which girl children are raised. While Catholic Americans are certainly in favor of just treatment for the women of all nations, they’ll want to look closely at those provisions of CEDAW that are socialist, punitive toward men, and anti-life.

CEDAW has been described as the ultimate feminist wish list written as an international treaty. Pro-family organizations consistently oppose CEDAW as destructive to families and children. See the Catholic organization Women for Faith and Family’s statement on CEDAW.

For more than twenty years Americans have fought CEDAW. Now it must be fought again: July 30, 2002, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee under the chairmanship of Senator Joe Biden voted twelve-to –seven to send CEDAW to the full Senate for a vote. Republicans Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Gordon Smith of Oregon sided with the ten Democratic members of Foreign Relations Committee to send the treaty forward. Experts agree that with the Democratic majority in the Senate, CEDAW is just a few votes short of 67 votes required for ratification. Feminists have mounted a flash campaign to secure the remaining votes.

Abortion rights advocates and feminists have flooded Senate offices with their demands that CEDAW become the law of the land. Even avowedly pro-life senators, including Sen.Rick Santorum (R-PA), report that they have received an avalanche of pro-CEDAW faxes and emails.

While CEDAW proponents have struggled to keep abortion out of all discussion forums on CEDAW, claiming that the treaty is “abortion neutral,” the reality is that CEDAW has already cited Ireland for dragging its feet over legalization of abortion. Furthermore, the United Nations’ CEDAW committee (unelected “experts” who monitor a nation’s compliance with the treaty provisions) criticized Ireland for the permitting the Catholic Church to influence public debate.

The Holy See, a Permanent Observer at the United Nations has not signed CEDAW. The Holy See Mission to the United Nations has answered questions on CEDAW:

“As you are aware, the Holy See is very much in favor of the elimination of all forms of discrimination. However, there are portions of this Convention that made it impossible for the Holy See to take part. One of those difficulties can be found in Articles 12, 14 and 16. These make mention of the rights of women to access to family planning services… Since then, family planning services have been defined to include reproductive health services which might include abortion...a definition that the Holy See has never accepted and something to which the Holy See can never agree.”

Concerned Women for America, a conservative policy organization, notes that “CEDAW effectively hands over social, domestic, and political issues to an unaccountable body and could yield considerable influence in our courts.” CWA agues that “Introducing CEDAW to our court system is the greatest danger to our laws and the right of the United States to govern itself. If ratified, CEDAW could supersede national law. This is exactly the covert enforcement mechanism supporters of CEDAW deny exists.” Yet columnist Ellen Goodman assures America that “this international agreement can't trump national law.”

There is strong evidence to support the claims of those who fear CEDAW will dominate US domestic law. The American Bar Association has issued The CEDAW Assessment Tool, a 175 page document outlining training and education on the provisions of CEDAW for judges.

The CEDAW Assessment Tool asks, “Is CEDAW directly applied and given effect in courts as part of national law? What training programs exist to educate judges and other legal professionals about CEDAW’s precedence over national law?” Americans could not ask of a clearer indicator of how the CEDAW treaty erodes sovereignty, religious and cultural freedoms as well as religious freedom.

CEDAW has been used to chastise nations for failure to provide abortions when doctors are allowed to decline the procedure as a matter of conscience (Croatia), for failure to legalize prostitution (China) and for instituting Mother’s Day because it is a “stereotype” of women’s roles (Belarus).

Senator Biden defends the treaty: “It sets out basic standards for women's rights, from the right to education to the right to equal employment opportunity to the right to equality under the law in marriage…Nearly 170 nations have joined the treaty.”

Conversely Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee clarified the issue: “Unfortunately, some are confusing the very clear moral imperative to secure basic freedoms and liberties for women with pretense that a need exists to ratify the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).” Helms had requested that Sen. Biden delay the Committee vote until he recovered from surgery, but Biden declined the request.

The timetable for the full Senate vote on CEDAW is not clear. Capitol watchers suggest the Senator Biden is anxious to bring it to the floor as soon as possible. Republicans believe CEDAW will be advanced for a vote before the November elections.

Christians are called to convert the culture. The Vatican II document, Apostolicam actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) declares that the laity are to “establish the right relationship of the entire world to Christ.” CEDAW represents a clear danger to Catholic practice. Each of us is responsible our own corner of the world. Please contact your representatives and senators today. Flood their local and federal offices with calls, emails and faxes. Ask them to defend freedom, sovereignty and motherhood by defeating CEDAW.

Capitol Switchboard (202) 224-3121.
© MJ Anderson

Mary Jo Anderson is a contributing reporter to WorldNetDaily and a contributing editor to many Catholic publications, including Crisis magazine. She is a regular guest and contributing writer to Living His Life Abundantly® International, Inc.