March has begun, and the march has begun, so ladies beware.

March is Women’s History Month, and this year it also marks the 10 year anniversary of the last meeting of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women at the World Conference on Equality, where this year the United States proposed that an amendment be added to a 150 page declaration signed by 189 countries in Beijing a decade ago.

The original declaration called for governments to end gender discrimination in areas including education, health care, politics and employment.The document said women would have the right to “decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality…free of coercion, discrimination and violence.”

This year delegates were to sign a statement reaffirming the declaration, but the United States’ delegates proposed an amendment, saying they would only agree to the declaration if it specified that the right to abortion was not included. However, the U.S. delegates backed down when the only two countries that supported the amendment were Egypt and Qatar.

Has the irony of this situation been lost on anyone?

If so, let me spell it out for you. The United States attended a conference about women’s rights and equality and proceeded to demand that women’s rights be limited.

The wording of the declaration does not make abortion legal in countries that have outlawed it, but the amendment proposed by the U.S. would have made abortion bans much easier in countries where abortion is legal.

It should be disturbing to women in the United States that delegates have been sent to this conference to represent the United States and its people, but instead they are representing George W. Bush and his agenda, and in the process are making the United States look like a country determined to turn back the clock.Women in the United States have had the right to abortion since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. Not all Americans agree with the right to abortion, but they do believe in freedom, which is something that comes along with abortion rights.

The Bush administration is trying to push its agenda through any way that it can, but how could they have expected the other nations involved to support anti-abortion laws when the United States itself does not enforce such laws?

Women were given the freedom to choose what they do with their bodies, the freedom to make their own decisions, the freedom to think for themselves.

With the introduction of this amendment at an international conference, one can presume the direction of abortion rights in the United States.

Under the current administration, the direction is not forward.

As Nicole Ameline, France’s Minister for Parity and Equality in the Workplace, said in a Reuters report, changing the declaration could be seen as a step backward for women’s rights.

Taking away the right to abortion would be a symbolic way for men, and it would be men as men make up 86 percent of Congress and 78 percent of the Supreme Court, to show that they think women are incapable of making decisions for themselves.

One would hope that eight short years could not undo a century’s worth of work.

Women make up the majority of eligible voters in the United States.

The march has begun heading in the other direction and women need to unite as they have in the past to ensure their rights are as secure as everyone else’s living in the land of the free.

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Rebecca Adler can be reached at

[email protected]