Hillary's Human Rights Speech

Hillary Clinton Human Rights Speech

I chose to analyze a speech Hillary Clinton made on human rights, or more specifically, women’s rights. Although I would want Bernie Sanders for a president, I definitely agree with what Hillary Clinton is saying about human rights. She explains the ways in which women’s rights should be equivalent to human rights, but are currently not. The issues she was addressing are not issues that we never talked about. One thing she emphasizes is when she says, “It is a violation of human rights when…,” by repeating it at the beginning of each statement to help get the point across. Clinton says, “It is a violation of human rights when babies are denied food, or drowned, or suffocated, or their spines broken, simply because they are born girls.” She repeats the phrase, over and over.

The women have no personal rights; they aren’t allowed to make their own decisions regarding their own bodies, such as the choice to have an abortion. They are often forced to have an abortion. Clinton establishes warrant by expressing her beliefs about the way women should be treated, assuming they do not appreciate or agree with the way they are currently being treated. Therefore, it is safe to say she shares a common belief with her audience. Logos comes into play because it’s only logical that women's rights should be equal to all human rights because, after all, women are humans as well as men. Mostly everything she said in this speech was just common sense. She gives examples of some of the important roles women play, or have the potential to play, in society.

Pathos, is what this speech revolves around. Clinton gives quite a few horrifying examples of the way women are abused and treated unjustly. She paints a picture for the audience that is intended to make them feel bad toward the victims of this violence. One really upsetting example was when she stated, “It is a violation of human rights when a leading cause of death worldwide among women ages 14 to 44 is the violence they are subjected to in their own homes by their own relatives.” This statistic probably surprised many people in the audience and maybe even hit close to home for many others.

Clinton does a very good job of establishing pathos and logos in her speech on women’s rights. One thing she said to summarize the message of the speech was, “If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all.” All in all, the speech comes together very well and practices a number of methods to persuade the reader to agree with what she was telling them.