Since the United States justified the war in Afghanistan partly by pointing to the Taliban's misogynist abuses, treaty supporters say it's particularly hypocritical that the U.S. now stands with countries like Sudan and Iran in opposing the treaty. "It's awfully cynical to go around saying that these countries are bastions of terrorism and then turn around and agree with them on the oppression of women," says Francoise Girard, senior program officer at the International Women's Health Coalition.

Of course, the Christian right doesn't see it that way. "We are the most powerful nation in the world, we are the most democratic nation in the world," says Janice Crouse, another Bush delegate to the U.N. Children's Summit and a senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a Washington group that works on Christian women's issues. "We are good neighbors. We are a country that is not self-centered in the way we help others, and I don't think we owe an apology to other countries when we say [the treaty] is not in our best interest and we don't believe it's in your best interest."

The answers to the problems faced by women in the developing world are in the Bible, Crouse says. And while the Bible doesn't apply to life in Muslim societies, she says, "it could." She calls the treaty an agent of a "frivolous and morally corrupt agenda," saying it would "legalize prostitution and open the door for the homosexual agenda." She says it even attacks Mother's Day.

Lee Waldorf, the treaty advisor at the United Nations Development Fund for Women, says she "can't imagine where they got these ideas from." She points out that the pact's only reference to prostitution is in Article 6, which states: "Parties shall take all appropriate measures, including legislation, to suppress all forms of traffic in women and exploitation of prostitution of women." The treaty doesn't say a thing about homosexuality. It is silent on the issue of Mother's Day.

Yet Crouse isn't entirely wrong. While the treaty says nothing about Mother's Day, the committee that reviews countries' progress in eliminating discrimination did once condemn the occasion. In a 2000 report on Belarus, the committee said it was "concerned by the continuing prevalence of sex-role stereotypes, as also exemplified by the reintroduction of such symbols as a Mothers' Day and a Mothers' Award, which it sees as encouraging women's traditional roles."

As Waldorf points out, there's no enforcement mechanism in the treaty, so such bureaucratic PC sniping wouldn't have had any effect on the ground in Belarus. But conservatives have repeated the line over and over again, in speeches and forums like the Washington Times and the National Review.

They're not to blame for seizing such an opening. But just as signatory nations like Italy, India and Ireland haven't sacrificed their holidays or stopped venerating their mothers, neither would the U.S. While the zeal of supporters has sometimes run to excess, the treaty's real-world effects have been largely positive.

A report by the United Nations Development Fund for Women says that in Tanzania, a court cited the treaty when overturning a law that prohibited women from inheriting clan land from their fathers. Similarly, in Nepal, advocates used it as a framework giving women inheritance rights equal to those held by men. In an Indian legal case stemming from a woman's gang rape by her colleagues, the court found "that by ratifying CEDAW and by making official commitments at the 1995 Beijing world conference on women, India had endorsed the international standard of women's human rights" and thus had to protect women from sexual harassment. In Colombia, the treaty was used to secure protections against domestic violence in the 1991 constitution.

The important thing, says Waldorf, is that countries are able to decide how they use the treaty. "Women activists are embracing it as useful to them in their own domestic work," she says. "National governments around the world are using it as a standard. There's no coercion."

Meanwhile, signatory countries including South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Mexico and Japan are still celebrating Mother's Day.

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