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Testimony of

Mr. William L. Saunders, Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel


Americans United for Life
Before the United States Senate Judiciary Committee’s
Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law
on the Ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women by the United States

My name is William L. Saunders and I am Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel at
Americans United for Life, the oldest national pro-life public-interest law and policy
organization. I have been a human rights lawyer for over twenty years, and have witnessed first-
hand the threats to women’s well-being internationally.

Americans United for Life is opposed to the ratification by the U.S. Senate of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The CEDAW
committee (established by the CEDAW treaty itself) has made clear, in a number of interpretive
statements directed to nations that have already ratified CEDAW, what CEDAW means by
“discrimination” against women, e.g., CEDAW bans Mother’s Day (as it told Belarus in 20001)
and requires the legalization of prostitution (as it advised China in 19992).

The CEDAW committee has also made clear its intent to pressure nations who ratify CEDAW to
legalize or increase access to abortion and abortifacients. By one count, the CEDAW committee
has pressured 83 nations, including Argentina, Australia, Ireland, Mexico, Italy, Croatia, and
France, to legalize abortion, thereby violating the most fundamental of all human rights—the
right to life.3

In Article 5, CEDAW mandates social engineering—the changing of cultural norms and


patterns—to conform to its terms. If ratified, CEDAW is, per Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution,
“the supreme law of the land.” Thus, CEDAW would override conflicting state and federal law.

Even if the United States were to attach formal “reservations” to its ratification of CEDAW, that
would not protect our domestic laws and institutions. A federal judge could hold that those
reservations were void.

                                                        
1
See CEDAW Committee, 22nd Sess. (2000), "Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women: Belarus," Para. 361.
2
See CEDAW Committee, 20th Sess. (1999), "Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination Against Women: China," Para. 288-289.
3
See http://www.c-fam.org/docLib/20101022_CEDAWAbortionRulings95-2010.pdf.

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Further, as I have detailed in a recent article for The Human Life Review4, the CEDAW
committee’s statements are being used as part of a complex strategy by abortion activists to
prepare for the day Roe v. Wade is finally reversed by the Supreme Court. On that day, the issue
of abortion should be returned where it belongs – to the people and their elected representatives.
However, pro-abortion lawyers are already arguing (for example in ABC v. Ireland pending
before the European Court of Human Rights) that an international “right to abortion” exists. On
the day Roe is reversed, abortion supporters will surely seek, yet again, to remove abortion from
the democratic deliberations of the people by arguing that U.S. courts must recognize abortion as
a “human right.” Who can doubt that agenda-driven U.S. judges, such as those who decided Roe
itself, will do so?

The United States Senate should not make that argument any more plausible by ratifying this
deeply-flawed treaty.

                                                        
4
See http://www.humanlifereview.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113:the-abcs-of-an-
international-right-to-abortion&catid=52:2010-summer.  

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