(CNSNews.com) - Actress Ashley Judd said Thursday she wants to see African children survive beyond their fifth birthday, women treated as “a lot more than the sum of our reproductive organs,” text messages sent to the cell phones of men in the Congo to improve their “attitude toward women,” and that--given Sen. John McCain’s poor rating by Planned Parenthood--an American woman who votes for McCain-Palin is “like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."
Judd spoke with CNSNews.com at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City.
“I was on the panel for discussing healthy transitions for adolescent girls and it was really incredible,” said Judd.
“We acknowledged that first of all children have to survive past their fifth birthday in order to become adolescents, that we need to modify our attitudes toward adult women—de-objectifying them and understanding that we are a lot more than the sum of our reproductive organs and that once we’ve done that as a balanced approach, we can talk about how to make adolescent girls less invisible: Empower their reproductive health. Give them economic choices and really set into motion the girl effect,” she said.
Judd added that one idea that emerged from the “really cool panel” she participated in was to send text messages to the cell phones of men in Africa to improve their view of women.
“Then we got feedback and ideas from them [the attendees]," she said. "I think my favorite one--I’ve just been in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, an incredible poor place; so filled with strife, and there are a lot of secondary deaths. It is just one of the really tough, hopeless places of the world. But there are so many cell phones. There are so many cell phones there. So, we were actually talking about text messaging and other technologies for introducing positive behavior-change messages, especially with regard to men’s attitude toward women. So, it was a really cool panel. I loved being a part of it.”
Judd had a caustic view of Sen. John McCain’s attitude toward women, based on his rating by Planned Parenthood and his voting record on “reproductive health.”
“McCain has a zero record on voting against women’s privacy and reproductive health. Senator Obama has a 100 percent voting record for women’s privacy and reproductive health,” she said. “And the only reason that McCain has a zero is organizations like Planned Parenthood couldn’t find a lower number. And a woman voting for McCain and Palin is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.”
Judd has appeared in numerous Hollywood movies, including “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” and “De-Lovely.”
She attended the Clinton Global Initiative as a Global Ambassador for Youth AIDS. The session in which she participated, “Healthy Transitions for Adolescent Girls,” was closed to press.