Web Letters: Listen to the Women

UN Summit Must Address Population Issues

By Barbara Crossette

September 14, 2008

Write a Web letter about this article.

What's a Web Letter?

Web Letters are continuously published e-mails from real people, signed with their real names. No registration is required. Each article page on The Nation includes a Web Letters link.

Read the best Web Letters on this page.

We're committed to publishing your comments as they are received. We place a red star () on the best submissions and may edit your e-mail for length or content. Your e-mail address will not be published or shared with any third party without your consent.

We look forward to hearing from you.

  • Barbara Crossette aptly notes that "UN member nations have a poor record on keeping promises to women." Investments in family planning and sexual and reproductive health services are a powerful catalyst for breaking cycles of poverty. Yet, while some "rich-world feminists" are still focused on the dangers of coercion from population programs, most have correctly identified the detrimental threat to women's rights posed by the lack of access to contraceptives. I agree that the decrease in funding for family planning has had a devastating impact on women's lives around the world and on our ability to make headway in reaching the Millennium Development Goals. However, advocating for access to family planning and reproductive health services is very much a key component of the feminist agenda.

    Carmen Barroso

    New York, NY

    09/22/2008 @ 3:18pm


  • There is an ongoing effort to achieve equal representative rights for women at the national and international levels of government, in a form of democratically induced and controlled world federation. Such a political entity would simply state that upon election victory, one man and one woman would occupy what is now one seat in any national or international world federal legislature.

    Carl Joudrie

    Charlottetown, PEI, Canada

    09/16/2008 @ 6:53pm


  • Unfortunately, the rights of women will depend, in much of the Islamic world, on how well we do in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps in Pakistan.

    John D. Froelich

    Upper Darby, PA

    09/16/2008 @ 01:16am


Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» Editor's Cut

Around the Nation | The week we went Rouge. Plus, Moyers on Afghanistan.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
46 Comments

» The Beat

Health Care Bill Advances, as Harry Reid Trumps Sarah Palin | The death panelist-in-chief rallied her followers to "KILL THE BILL." But 60 senators decided to follow the real leader.
John Nichols
55 Comments

» The Notion

Palin as the Church Lady | Going Rogue book tour brings passive-aggressive rightwing Christianity to the fore.
Leslie Savan
143 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Friday | The "Second Amendment" sale; the raving paranoids of the right.
Eric Alterman

» The Dreyfuss Report

Chongqing: Socialism in One City | China is managing the most important event in the world: the urbanization of half a billion people. Fast.
Robert Dreyfuss
214 Comments

» Act Now!

Toward Copenhagen | A guide to joining the movement against climate change.
Peter Rothberg
75 Comments