Twenty-five years ago this December, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), a global “bill of rights” that is both visionary and comprehensive. In the waning days of his presidency, Jimmy Carter hurriedly signed the convention and sent it to the […]
Ellen Chesler
Ellen Chesler, a senior fellow at the Open Society Institute, is the co-author of Where Human Rights Begin: Health, Sexuality, And Women in the New Millennium and the author of Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.
Posted inFeatures
New Options, New Politics
In recent years, medical science has devised new options for very early termination of unwanted pregnancy, measures that did not exist when Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973. In addition to widening the range of choices for women, these advances–most notably the “morning after” contraceptive and the abortion pill mifepristone (RU-486)–are likely to alter […]