NEW YORK (CWNews.com) - The Clinton administration may be pushing the United Nations to change the definition of prostitution, legalizing some type of the practice, according to a report by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam) on Friday.

    The group said that the US Interagency Council on Women, headed by First Lady and US Senate candidate Hillary Clinton, proposed to a meeting in Vienna working on the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crime that they make a distinction between "forced" and "voluntary" prostitution. The meetings were called to hammer out a protocol to address the burgeoning sexual trafficking of women and children.

    In local jurisdictions where the distinction has been made, such as Holland and parts of Bangladesh and Indonesia, the result has been legalized prostitution. C-Fam said the Clinton prostitution push has resulted in an unusual coalition of Christian conservatives, led by Bill Bennett and Charles Colson, and radical feminists, including Gloria Steinem, Planned Parenthood head Gloria Feldt, NOW president Patricia Ireland.

    "There is universal agreement that the trafficking of women and children for prostitution is a growing menace, for the people involved and for governments," said C-Fam. "Though most prevalent in the developing world, even in the United States women are lured into positions of sexual slavery from which they can rarely escape."

    C-Fam noted that most of those opposed to the current proposal are surprised to learn that parts of the UN have already approved "voluntary" prostitution. "Although the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) explicitly condemned prostitution, last year the CEDAW committee ordered China to legalize prostitution," the group said.