Subject: Women's day: Larry, as the world prepares today to celebrate International Women's Day and decades of progress in advancing women's empowerment, the Bush administration continues to undermine this progress here and around the world. By refusing to reaffirm the Platform for Action of the 1995 Fourth World Conference of Women this week during the 10th anniversary review, the Bush administration is refusing to reaffirm the platform's goals of universal education, access to reproductive health care and services and an end to violence and discrimination against women. Instead, the United States is demanding that the United Nations publicly renounce abortion rights. Since the first International Women's Day in 1911, activists around the world have used the occasion to celebrate progress in achieving women's equality and remind the public of the need for on going action in the struggle to achieve social, political and economic equality and empowerment for women. Today, that need is more pressing than ever. Conservative lawmakers are pouring HIV/AIDS funds into ineffective abstinence-only education programs while with-holding funds from the United Nations Population Fund that could prevent 2 million unintended pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths and 77,000 infant and child deaths each year. Women and girls around the world need us to make a difference. Join the Global Partners Working Group of Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey and learn about our recent experience learning about women's status and U.S. funding cuts in Mali. G. Lynn Brown