U.S. to Drop Insistence on Anti-Abortion Plank at UN

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The United States plans to drop its insistence that a U.N. document on
women's equality make clear that abortion is not a fundamental right,
U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

The Bush administration had demanded that a final draft document
include an anti-abortion statement, a proposal that plunged into
controversy a two-week review session of the landmark 1995 women's
conference in Beijing.

"Our original goal was to make sure that everyone involved knew what
the original intent of the Beijing document was," said Richard Grenell,
a spokesman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

"We are hearing from many delegations that they agree with us and they
advise us that the amendment is therefore not needed," Grenell said.

Negotiators to the conference said the White House, which opposes
abortion at home and abroad, would drop the demand.

A clue was given in a speech by the chief U.S. delegate to the
conference, Ellen Sauerbrey, that the Beijing conference did not intend
to make abortion a right and left such policies to individual
countries.

"While we are pleased that so many other countries have indicated their
agreement with this position, we anticipate that we can now focus
clearly on addressing the many urgent needs of women around the world."
she said.

In Beijing, abortion was treated as a health issue, with the 150-page
platform saying it should be safe where it was legal and criminal
action should not be taken against women who had abortions.

Numerous delegates, especially from Europe, questioned why the United
States was bringing up the issue. But Sauerbrey said earlier that the
U.S. position needed to be clarified because women's advocate groups
were trying to "hijack" the abortion plank. She did not name the
groups.