Recently, a U.N. conference convened for a progress check on a 10 year-old conference on human rights. The Bush administration demanded that they adopt language explicitly preventing a woman's right to her own body being declared a basic human right. The Bushies also stated they would not support the conference if their language was not added.

Of course this caused a shitstorm and the U.S. backed off.

"The United States recognizes the ... principle that abortion policies are a matter of national sovereignty."

Translation: We didn't succeed in telling the rest of the world (through the U.N.) to deny women their right to their own body and choice to reproduce, so we'll back off and paint this as a sovereignty issue so when you do declare this is a human right, we can claim the U.N. has no right to tell us what to do.

If the U.N. had agreed to the new wording, then the Bush camp would have pointed to the document and demand that every country -- er, I mean countries they don't like -- pay heed.

And when did national sovereignty ever give Bush pause? Hello? Cuba?

What a transparent fucking joke of an administration.