WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government, under intense pressure from other nations and women's advocates at home and abroad, dropped its demand that a U.N. declaration on women's equality state that there is no international right to abortion.

Women's groups welcomed the move with caution late Thursday, describing it as a first step toward resolving controversy over abortion, an issue that overshadowed the first week of talks in New York to review and advance work to implement a 1995 international agreement to strive for equality between the sexes.

However, Washington stuck to its guns in insisting that the declaration adopted at the end of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women's Feb. 28-Mar.11 sessions not ''create any new international human rights.''

Although U.S. diplomats withdrew an earlier clause specifying there was no international right to abortion, opponents noted that a watered-down U.S. amendment remained open to interpretation and could be read as applying to abortion.

U.S. Ambassador Ellen Sauerbrey announced the changes at a closed-door meeting on Thursday and then told reporters that abortion policy should be determined at the national, not global, level.

The U.S. government's major concern, Sauerbrey said, was to establish that the Beijing platform ''is not a legally binding document, that issues such as abortion are issues of national consensus, national policy.''

''If we can establish that clearly, we will feel that we have established something constructive,'' she added.

There appeared to be no support even for the watered-down amendment. In one speech after another, delegates from the European Union, the African Union, and South America's Mercosur bloc insisted on leaving the declaration untouched.

As it now stands, the text simply reaffirms the 1995 U.N. blueprint adopted in Beijing, China.

June Zeitlin, executive director of the New York-based Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), said dropping the reference to abortion was ''a good first step'' and Washington now should withdraw the entire amendment ''and join the women of the world and the global consensus to unequivocally reaffirm the Beijing platform.''

Thursday's U.S. announcement came after more than 170 women's groups denounced the proposed amendment.

''The United States tried with its amendment to inject their domestic agenda into an international agreement--playing politics with women's lives,'' the U.S. and international groups said in a joint statement.

''It distracted government and world attention from the urgent need to reinvigorate the implementation of the Beijing consensus that is lagging in too many countries. Other governments came here in unity to discuss that challenge and to agree on concrete steps to take,'' they added.

In addition to WEDO, the statement's U.S.-based signatories included the Association for Women's Rights in Development, Feminist Majority, United Methodist Women, Women's Action for New Directions, and Women's Edge.

The abortion issue has dogged numerous U.N. conferences on women, health, and population. Since 1984, the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George W. Bush have declined to fund organizations and programs believed to provide, promote, enable access to, or advocate for abortion information or services. Along with a handful of other countries and the Vatican , they also have sought to block language that could be interpreted as endorsing abortion.

Most governments have expressed frustration at this, saying that Washington essentially has used the abortion issue to play to domestic political and religious audiences, and that the international community never has sought to impose a uniform global standard for abortion policy.

At the current U.N. talks, which enter their second week Monday, diplomats and advocacy groups said they still hope to be able to steer the focus back to women's health and education, economic empowerment, and other priorities.

Such issues are just as pressing at home as abroad, according to U.S. groups.

Take poverty. The Beijing pact urges countries to address the needs of poor women and ensure equal access to economic resources. In 2004, some 20.1 million women in the United States lived below the poverty level, according to studies by groups including the Economic Policy Institute, Institute for Women's Policy Research, Legal Momentum, and National Organization for Women.

Women comprise 90 percent of the adult beneficiaries of the U.S. welfare program but in 1996 Congress passed a welfare reform law that tore down the safety net for poor mothers and slapped those receiving funds with a hefty work requirement that ignores their need for childcare, researchers said. In order to meet the requirement, these women often must take non-paying jobs or ones that do not have to comply with federal work safety and civil rights laws.

Making matters worse, according to the studies, the U.S. minimum wage is not a living wage. The inflation-adjusted value of the minimum wage is 24 percent lower today than it was in 1979, leaving 6.8 million people in the workforce who remain poor. Women would account for 61 percent of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage increase.

And this year, say welfare advocates, Medicaid and other crucial programs for the poor are on the chopping block.

© 2005 OneWorld US

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