
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 5, 1994                   TAG: 9409080014
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

MAN-MADE MORALITY

SURPRISING, NO, but it is disappointing that some Muslim countries have decided to pull out of the U.N. population conference this week in Cairo. The agenda, top Islamic scholars said, goes against Islam "and all heavenly teachings, ... is against the nature of man, is immoral and is heretic."

What is on this diabolical agenda? Raising the status of women. That means opening up educational and occupational opportunities to women. But for those opportunities to have practical meaning, women must have the freedom to control the number of children they bear. Rather than encouraging abortion, as American Catholic and Muslim leaders contend, the draft document to be considered by conference participants seeks to decrease the number of unsafe, illegal abortions by making contraceptives more available.

"World Resources 1994-95," a report submitted in advance of the population conference, concludes that improving the education and health care of women, including access to family planning services, is critical to slowing population growth, which is, in turn, critical to sustainable economic development and to sustainable management of the Earth's resources.

Looming large among barriers cited in the report is the fact that, in most societies, women are considered inferior. They have fewer educational opportunities than men, and less chance to become economically self-sufficient. It follows, then, that women make up the majority of the poor, particularly in Third World countries, and two-thirds of the world's illiterates.

The report to the U.N. conference cites studies in India, Pakistan, Nepal, the Middle East, north Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa that show "girls are given less and poorer quality food, stay home from school at an earlier age, engage in hard labor earlier, and receive less medical care than boys."

Do "heavenly teachings" and "the nature of man" justify such disadvantages?

Not only does the cultural attitude that women shouldn't determine their own destiny add to the population explosion, and to all the suffering this entails. At its most egregious, the devaluing of women also fosters societal tolerance for violence against women, female infanticide and mutilation, and the international sex trade.

Of course, these are not the "morals" these conservative religious men are seeking to uphold. These injustices are merely the results of a morality that holds men in greater esteem than women and gives men control of women's lives. The cultural traditions they seek to protect cast women as second-class human beings.

So let the multiculturalists whine all they want about respecting other people's heritages. Some of these traditions are, in a word, backward. They would deny half of the world's population those "inalienable rights" that Western nations have embraced, in principle if not always in practice, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

by CNB