Well, I think I can do you one better. All abuzz over last week’s high convocation and most confabulated panjandrumonium at the United Nations (In order to prove they’d take his calls, chief embezzler Kofi Annan asked a lot of heads of state to go sign some fortunately watered-down document that says they’re in favor of all kinds of good things, so long as U.S. taxpayers continue to fund them), feminists of a certain political stripe took the occasion to shriek that the Bush administration was “flip-flopping on its commitment to women.”

“In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, 14 leaders from women’s health, human rights and development organizations questioned the U.S. commitment to halving world poverty by 2015,” asserts a Sept. 13 press release from the International Conference on Population and Development -- an outfit which in company with Lewis Carroll’s Queen of Hearts seems willing to ignore 5,000 years of history and presume the key to improved development is LESS human population, perhaps modeling their plans on the success of the Vikings in 14th century Greenland.

“With less than 24 hours until the start of the World Summit at the United Nations, the U.S. refuses to endorse policies that would significantly advance poverty goals by advancing women’s rights,” this hysterical missive continues.

Wow. I knew the Bush administration was made up of people with bad comb-overs who wear white socks with black loafers. But did they really just come out against allowing women in other countries to vote, to work as doctors or architects, to attend school or drive cars?

Of course not.

Digging a little deeper, we find “As of this morning,” (Sept. 13) “the U.S. has refused to endorse the Beijing Platform for Action, an abrupt reversal from its position just six months ago when it reaffirmed its commitment ... (to) this historic agreement, where 189 countries committed to advancing universal education for girls, ending violence against women, and ensuring access to lifesaving reproductive health care, among other critical issues.”

Did you spot it? No, the United States has not come out against pap smears in Peru, or in favor of wife-beating in Mauritania.

What’s going on here is that these activists believe the cure for poverty overseas is for well-meaning Americans and Europeans to go into Third World countries and reduce their birth rates. “Lifesaving reproductive health care” is a carefully worded euphemism for this descendant of the policies of Margaret Sanger.

Birth control pills? The feminists warn tyrannical Third World husbands only throw them away. Condoms? The press release specifically ridicules an “ideological-based position that focuses on abstinence, being faithful and use of condoms for ‘high-risk’ groups.”

What that leaves -- what’s being discussed here -- is U.S. taxpayer financing for abortions and human sterilization overseas.

Leaving aside the warnings of the founding fathers that few things are as unjust as making people fund things they philosophically oppose -- leaving aside the hubris of idle do-gooders who never stop to think how they’d feel if the tables were turned, with do-gooders from Bangladesh and Somalia arriving on these shores to instruct us on the proper role of women and how to better handle OUR reproductive affairs -- let us turn to the group Concerned Women for America, which has made a detailed study of such related U.N. initiatives as the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW.) The CWA folks report (at www.cwfa.org/articledisplay.asp?id=1971&department=CWA&categoryid=nation) that “CEDAW undermines the traditional family structure in the United States and other nations that respect the family. The preamble states, ‘A change in the traditional role of men as well as the role of women in society and in the family is needed to achieve full equality between men and women.’ ...”

For example, in its analysis of Denmark, the CEDAW committee “noted with concern that stereotypical perceptions of gender role continued to exist in society -- [that] kept men from assuming an equal share of family responsibilities.” In its 2000 review of Belarus, the committee complained that ‘Mothers’ Day’ and the ‘Mothers’ Award’ encourage women’s traditional roles. Also, the CEDAW committee ... complained to Luxembourg about its ‘stereotypical attitudes that tend to portray men as heads of households and breadwinners, and women primarily as mothers and homemakers.’ ”

Regarding children, CEDAW holds that government, not parents, knows best. The Committee derided Slovenia because only 30 percent of children under age three were in day-care centers. The remaining 70 percent, the committee claimed, would miss out on education and social opportunities offered in day-care institutions. Its review of Germany urged “the Government to improve the availability of care places for school-age children to facilitate women’s re-entry into the labor market.”

Gender re-education? “Comparable worth” wage laws? What do you think?

What CWA analysts Laurel MacLeod and Catherine Hurlburt found was that when such U.N. documents use the euphemism “family planning, they really mean access to abortion services.

“That construction is consistent with feminist thought, which views pregnancy as the only major difference between men and women,” Mmes MacLeod and Hurlburt report. “In the feminist view, pregnancy hampers women and lessens their ability to compete equally with men, so abortion must be available to all women as an equality measure.”

Do those now challenging the administration’s position on these far-out U.N. mandates have the right to take such a position? Of course they do.

I myself believe all people have a right to make their own individual decisions about birth control and even abortion -- to have as few children as they wish, or as many as they can afford to raise. But leaving them “at liberty to make their own choices” is one thing -- using U.S. tax moneys to promote and subsidize only selected choices is something else again (something on which, coincidentally, our Constitution does not authorize Washington to spend a penny.)

The question is, why all the euphemisms? Why not admit there’s a debate about whether the American feminist vision of the 1970s -- the presumption that traditional families, children, marriage and motherhood form the chains that hold women in bondage -- is “best” and most fulfilling for all women, everywhere, and argue their case in a forthright manner ... instead of implying poor Condoleezza Rice, whatever her faults, favors wife-beating and female illiteracy?