Hoopes kids on the March.

Register Executive Editor Tom Hoopes is blogging live from today’s March for Life in Washington, D.C.

Joe Biden can win a lot of money if Austin Ruse is wrong.

We just got back from a breakfast with the pro-life ministry of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Conn.

It featured Austin Ruse, the president of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), speaking about the outlook for United Nations activities now that the Obama Administration has assumed power.

The outlook is dark. Longtime foes of the Church’s stands regarding many important issues will soon have positions of strong influence at the U.N., because of Obama.

Ruse warned about several specific international issues, including the threat of U.S. ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, better known as CEDAW.

He gave three examples of CEDAW’s potentially damaging effect should the United States ratify it, by citing the pressure that has been brought to bear on countries that have ratified by the U.N. committee that monitors compliance with CEDAW:

— The CEDAW committee tells countries that they need to liberalize their abortion policies.

— The CEDAW committee criticized Ireland for allowing Catholics to have too much influence on the Irish government (the Catholic Church, according to the CEDAW committee, discriminates against women through the all-male priesthood).

— CEDAW criticized Slovakians for not having enough children in government-run daycare centers.

Ruse said Vice President Joe Biden, while serving as chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, was a top U.S. cheerleader for CEDAW. And Ruse made this bet:

“I would give Joe Biden $1,000 for every member of CEDAW he can name, and I wouldn’t lose a penny,” Ruse predicted. “Yet he wants this kangaroo committee to tell us how to run our country.”

— Tom Hoopes