In The Faith - A Chronicle of the Christian Faith

The United States said it could not accept the declaration because of its concerns that the Beijing platform legalized the right to abortion as a human right.

UNITED NATIONS (AP)—Ten years after a landmark U.N. conference adopted a platform aimed at global equality for women, the United States is demanding that a declaration issued by a follow-up meeting make clear that women are not guaranteed a right to abortion.

Starting Monday, a high-level U.N. meeting attended by over 100 countries and 6,000 advocates for women’s causes will be taking stock of what countries have done to implement the 150-page landmark platform of action adopted at the 1995 U.N. women’s conference in Beijing to achieve equality of the sexes.

But even before the two-week meeting began, delegates were wrangling behind closed doors Friday on a draft declaration that the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women put forward – and had hoped to have adopted by consensus before Monday’s opening session.

The short declaration would have nations reaffirm the Beijing platform and a declaration adopted with it, welcome progress toward achieving gender equality, stress that challenges remain, and “pledge to undertake further action to ensure their full and accelerated implementation.”

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Filed under: Marriage and Family