Posted on 10/09/2002 4:00:07 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Supporters of a controversial United Nations treaty purporting to uphold women's "rights" gathered on Capitol Hill Tuesday to press for Senate ratification of the document. But opponents note a number of contradictions in statements made in defense of the treaty.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told more than a hundred supporters of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), "The Senate chamber is now pretty crowded, not only with substantive disagreements, but [also with] petty politics."
"[The treaty] is caught in the middle of a much larger and more irrational debate, although those who oppose us have some fairly irrational arguments," he said.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the only woman on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged CEDAW supporters to actively oppose the reelection of any senator who is not both pro-abortion and a supporter of the treaty.
"You will make sure, if they are not with us, do your best so they are not back in this room and casting votes on the floor," she urged the audience, "because that's what it really is about in the end when it's all stripped down."
Supporters blame conservative Republicans for blocking the treaty.
Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif) authored a resolution in support of CEDAW in the House. She castigated North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for blocking passage of CEDAW when he was chairman of the committee.
"He held CEDAW hostage so that women across the globe continued to be victimized and brutalized," she alleged.
In a letter to his colleagues prior to the committee's vote, Helms explained his opposition.
"The documented radical agenda of the committee established by CEDAW is undisputed. (Among other things, that committee has directed China to legalize prostitution and has criticized Belarus for establishing Mother's Day.)," he explained.
"Moreover, there can be no doubt that CEDAW supporters are attempting to use this treaty to advance a radical abortion agenda. This is evident in [CEDAW] committee reports directing Ireland to legalize abortion, and criticizing Ireland for the Church's influence in public policy," Helms added.
The CEDAW Committee has, in fact, taken a number of positions considered offensive by the conservative members of the committee. For instance, the CEDAW Committee has directed eight nations to repeal laws prohibiting prostitution or denying "employment benefits" to so-called "sex workers."
Sixteen countries have been instructed to remove language promoting motherhood from their constitutions or laws. The CEDAW Committee also ordered 19 countries to "reexamine" their laws forbidding or limiting access to abortion on demand, including laws prohibiting minors from obtaining abortions without parental consent.
The treaty's supporters insist, however, that the U.S. has nothing to fear in ratifying the treaty, because it "contains no enforcement authority other than the force of international opinion."
But some of Biden's comments bring that contention into question.
"For women around the world, the treaty is also a means to an end. It's a means to pressure their own governments to live up to their treaty obligations," he said.
"I can give you examples where it already has had an impact; where, when a country signs on to the treaty, the women in that country have been able to use the very fact that their government is a signatory to the treaty to get the government to do things the government was unwilling to do," Biden said.
Wendy Wright, senior policy director for Concerned Women for America, told CNSNews.com that Biden is finally admitting what opponents of CEDAW have been saying all along.
"The way it will be enforced is through litigation," she explained. "We will have attorneys in the United States going into court, citing CEDAW as an authority in order to promote a radical idea that overturns our social order."
Wright warned that liberal legislators and regulatory bodies could also be expected to cite U.S. ratification of CEDAW as a precedent for their enacting their agenda.
"Article VI of the U.S. Constitution says that treaties are the supreme law of the land, and have the same authority as our Constitution and federal statutes do," she explained. "All it would take is one sympathetic federal judge to decide [in their favor] ... I don't want to put the fate of our national sovereignty in the hands of a federal judge."
Even the provisions of CEDAW that allow signatory countries to express "reservations, understandings, or declarations" are weak, according to Wright.
"The treaty explicitly states that any reservation that is contrary to the objects, goals, or principles of the treaty is not valid," she explained. "Who gets to decide if a reservation is contrary to the goals of the treaty? It's this committee at the U.N."
A two-thirds majority, or 67 votes, would be required to ratify the treaty. Biden said CEDAW will probably not be considered by the full Senate this year.
Republicans hope to retake the Senate in the November elections, which would allow them to block the treaty and to rehear the nominations of several of President Bush's judicial nominees who have been blocked by Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee at the urging of liberal special interest groups in Washington.
Precisely.
And to advocate such laws (or treaties) is TREASON.
It is important to remember that we are under no moral or true legal obligation to obey treasonous or seditious edicts.
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