Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton—Global Reproductive Rights Advocate

I cannot stop raving about how great it is to finally have a Secretary of State who is standing up for women not only within the United States, but for women across the globe.

Michelle Goldberg’s article in the American Prospect delves into Sec. Clinton’s commitment to global reproductive rights as the keystone to advancing women’s rights.

"Too many women are denied even the opportunity to know about how to plan and space their families," Sec. Clinton said last March, while accepting the Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood. "And the derivative inequities that result from all of that are evident in the fact that women and girls are still the majority of the world's poor, unschooled, unhealthy, and underfed. This is and has been for many years a matter of personal and professional importance to me, and I want to assure you that reproductive rights and the umbrella issue of women's rights and empowerment will be a key to the foreign policy of this administration."

And at her confirmation hearing, she firmly stated her commitment to women’s issues. "The United States must be an unequivocal and unwavering voice in support of women's rights in every country on every continent."

But Sec. Clinton has a long road ahead of her. Women in many countries face enormous barriers to being treated equally to men on a basic level. Just last week, a Sudanese journalist Lubna Hussein was fined $200 for wearing pants in public. And in Malaysia, Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno is to be publicly caned at the end of the month for drinking beer in public. Earlier this year, Afghan president Hamid Karzai approved sharia law, which legalizes marital rape and allows men to hold women captive within their homes.

And as far as international law goes, last year the U.N. Security Council adopted Resolution 1820, which reaffirmed that mass rape is a war crime. Yet there has never been a trial at the U.N. Criminal Courts for committing rape or allowing rape as an incident of war.

But, most importantly, there is CEDAW. CEDAW, or the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, is an international treaty that includes the right to education, employment, property ownership, family planning, and freedom from gender-based violence. CEDAW was adopted by the United Nations on December 18, 1979 and has since been ratified by 184 countries-- over ninety percent of the members of the United Nations. With one glaring exception: the United States has not ratified it, and is the only industrialized nation to not have done so.

As we fight for reproductive rights across the world, we finally have an ally in Washington. TAKE ACTION TODAY and contact Sen. Klobuchar (202-224-3244) and Sen. Franken (202-224-5641) and tell them to support CEDAW.