SUPPORTING THE GOALS OF INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY
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Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from California for yielding to me and my good friend as well from Illinois for coming forward with this bill.
To tell you the truth, I had often looked at bills which celebrate groups in two ways, because I noticed that only insurgent groups have such days named for them or groups most in need, and so they become days of celebration. I have warmed to them only because I have recognized why such groups have their own day, International Women's Day for example.
It is because having such a day provides an opportunity for a call to action. I wish I could come to the floor to celebrate women internationally. It is hard for me to do that when I see the progress in the global economy and look at what has happened and is happening internationally to women who are still chattel in most places in the world, who essentially would qualify as an oppressed group, not as a group seeking equality. So I think we ought to use International Women's Day to speak out for women who cannot speak for themselves.
What is to me perhaps most tragic is that the experience that most women in this country welcome is one that women across the world, particularly in developing countries, may dread, and that is the experience of pregnancy. Where pregnancy cannot be controlled by a woman, it is not the extraordinarily wonderful and welcome state that it is in our country. There will never be equality for women until women can control their own fertility.
As long as women are subject to men, as long as they have no control over their own fertility, then you will see women with as much HIV and AIDS as men. Where saying ``no' to a man isn't something you do as a woman, but something you can't do as a woman, you are not equal.
So today I call attention to the world that our country has done very little to help women across the world control their fertility and understand what equality means. We would not have women marching for equality and toward equality today if each and every woman who chose was not able to control her fertility. May we help obtain the same for our good sisters around the world.
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