Diminishing freedom for greater "rights"

On its way to the USA

[Reprinted from Issues & Views July 29, 2002]

Phyllis Schlafley, of the Eagle Forum, tells us of yet another mischief-making, intrusive United Nations treaty. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which was signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980, but not yet ratified by the U.S., pushes the feminist agenda to new extremes.

Among the many provisions that the treaty's advocates would like to see established in countries throughout the world are: a gender neutral military, textbooks revised to reflect feminist and other politically correct propaganda, the forcing of sovereign nations to change existing abortion laws, and a vast network of childcare facilities. A committee of feminist "experts" would be formed to monitor the progress of these projected U.N. mandates in each country.

Schlafley reports:

CEDAW's international "experts" have already issued negative reports about the practices of countries that were rash enough to ratify the treaty. They criticized Ireland for "promoting a stereotypical view of the role of women in the home and as mothers," Belarus (former Soviet republic) for "such symbols as a Mother's Day," Slovenia because "less than 30 percent of children under three years of age were in formal day care," and recommended "the decrimininalization of prostitution in China."

Ratification of CEDAW would be craven kowtowing to the radical feminists, exceeded only by the treaty's unlimited capacity for legal mischief. It would be a massive interference with U.S. laws and with our federal-state balance of powers. CEDAW would clearly diminish the rights and benefits American women now enjoy, as well as give extraordinary powers over U.S. laws to busybody global bureaucrats.

This year, CEDAW criticized Belgium for failing to achieve quotas for women in the election system. CEDAW's goal is for Belgium to create laws that will reserve 50% of the candidate slots for women.

Meanwhile, in England, according to the Telegraph (7/23/02), there are strange happenings going on in some Operating Rooms:

A surgeon who complained that patients' lives could be put at risk by foreign nurses with a poor command of English is facing formal disciplinary action. David Nunn, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Guy's and St. Thomas's Hospital NHS Trust, London, said he was forced to stop halfway through an operation because nurses could not follow his instructions.

Initially, Mr. Nunn said his superiors had accused him of racism and threatened him with disciplinary action. Yesterday he told The Telegraph he had become the subject of formal proceedings. Mr. Nunn said that when he asked the nurses, all of whom were foreign, to find the surgical instruments he needed to complete an operation last week, he was met "with a selection of bemused reactions."

He claimed the instruments were produced only when the scrub nurse de-scrubbed and went to find them herself. The operation was then successfully completed.

Acute staff shortages in the NHS have led to an influx of nurses from abroad. Earlier this month the Royal College of Nursing said half of the nurses newly registered in Britain in the year to March--15,000--were from overseas.

And homosexuals are celebrating in Germany, as we learn from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (7/19/02, where the Constitutional Court ruled in favor of a "gay" partnership law:

Bavaria, Saxony and Thuringia had argued that the law violated the German constitution, which protects marriage and the family. They wanted the new legislation banned from the constitution, claiming it is an attack on heterosexual couples and traditional family values. Now that the law is officially carved into the constitution, gay couples may continue to get married and be eligible for many, but not all spousal benefits and obligations. The judges postponed ruling on a related law giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual spouses in the areas of taxation, pensions and social-welfare benefits. . . .

Other countries that grant many or nearly all marriage rights to same-sex couples include Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Greenland, France, Hungary, Iceland and the U.S. state of Vermont. The Netherlands is the only country that allows full-fledged gay marriages.

England's infatuation with privacy-invading technology seems to be on the increase. The BBC (7/22/02) reports that tens of thousands of children are being fingerprinted in school, under the ruse of making library cards more "efficient." Columnist Richard Allen writes:

A fingerprint recognition system for under 12-year-olds has been condemned by civil liberties groups after parents complained they had not been told that schools were storing records of their children's most personal distinguishing marks. The system, which has been sold to 1,000 British primary schools, allows children to take out books by passing their thumbs over a scanner which is so sensitive it can recognise a pattern through layers of mud and chocolate. . . .

Simon Davies, of Privacy International, called for the banning of the system, and said, "Such a process has the effect of softening children up for such initiatives as ID cards and DNA testing. It's clearly a case of 'get them while they're young'. They are seen as a soft target for this technology".

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