From DEBRA@OLN.comlink.apc.orgWed Sep 27 09:28:55 1995 Date: Tue, 26 Sep 1995 08:26:00 +0100 From: Debra Guzman Reply to: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org To: beijing-conf@tristram.edc.org Subject: WCW: Vatican Raps Women's Meeting [The following text is in the "ISO-8859-1" character set] [Your display is set for the "US-ASCII" character set] [Some characters may be displayed incorrectly] ## author : chai@UIUC.EDU ## date : 20.09.95 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- [This article has been excerpted.] BEIJING (AP) -- For 12 days, many delegates at the U.N. women's conference waited for the Vatican to drop a bombshell. It never did. But it did set off a few firecrackers. The Vatican's final shot came Friday when it condemned the conference's preoccupation with sex and reproduction, which it claimed was at the expense of sending impoverished girls to school. After 189 countries adopted the conference's Platform for Action by consensus, the Vatican endorsed sections on alleviating the increasing poverty of women, improving education and employment opportunities, promoting peace and ending violence against women. ...it objected to the entire chapter on health, just as it did at last year's U.N. population conference in Cairo, Egypt. ``Surely we can do better than to address the health needs of girls and women by paying disproportionate attention to sexual and reproductive health,'' said American professor Mary Ann Glendon, head of the Holy See's delegation. ... In Cairo, more than 20 Muslim and Catholic countries...joined the Vatican in objecting to phrases on reproductive rights. But the Vatican suffered several important losses at the population conference. It failed to block worldwide recognition...abortion is a fact that governments must deal with as a public health issue. It infuriated delegates and U.N. officials with its relentless fight to keep...liberal abortion language out of the 20-year plan to curb population. It also was put on the defensive for allying itself with extremist Muslim governments like those of Libya and Iran. At the women's conference, the Vatican lost another fight on abortion: The platform asks governments to review laws that punish women for having abortions. Again, the Vatican's closest allies were Islamic countries. But the anger generated in Cairo was missing. Abzug said the Vatican was forced to adopt a lower profile in Beijing because ``they didn't win in Cairo so they couldn't afford to have a second major loss.''