Christine Quinn’s silence was notable because she is widely perceived to be the only obstacle standing between the bill and its passage.
Dear Representative Trent Franks and other anti-choice politicians: Stop claiming you care about women and babies. You didn’t care about me when I was raped, and you don’t care about the suffering of American people. How dare you suggest otherwise.
You may ask: what exactly is “women’s empowerment” and how can we support this effort to promote sustainable development in a comprehensive and long-term way, while at the same time respecting human rights?
Not only is the Rio +20 outcome document, “The Future We Want,” silent on sexual and reproductive rights, but during the negotiations many of the EU and G77 countries who have been progressive on these issues in the past were completely silent.
While the last hours of negotiations unfold, we begin to look forward to future demographic trends and how to turn them into dividends rather losses.
Today I participated in an extraordinary side-event on “Rio+20 and Women’s lives: A Cross-General Dialogue” at the Ford Foundation Pavilion. This event was very intimate, it drew you in, with women’s personal stories for Rio+20 and beyond.
Today, here at the BEMFAM clinic in Cachoeirinha Favela in Rio de Janeiro, youth were having a very animated discussion about how they viewed sexuality, reproductive health, being young, and their feelings and emotions about this period in their life.
During meetings to finalize the Rio+20 document, Heads of State will adopt in the next few days at Rio+20, delegates agreed on a plan short on vision and big on compromises, including trading away women’s rights to placate the Vatican, Egypt, and Syria.
Horrifying reports of a woman forced to have an abortion draw attention yet again to the dangers of China’s one-child policy. All champions of human rights must openly condemn China’s one-child policy and the illegal practices of forced abortion and coerced birth control reported in some localities. The continued oppression of Chinese families through coercive reproductive policies must end.
If ICPD and CPD showed a commitment by world leadership to achieve a better quality of life for all, what will Rio+20 show?
