You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health. And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.

I've had extraordinary good luck with my health, other than a broken elbow.

Whether a woman's running for office or she's supporting her husband who's running for office and she gets criticised for wearing open-toed shoes or for the colour of her coat, there's just a lot of history that you bear if you are a woman who puts herself out in the political arena.

As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics.

This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath.

I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas.

Now, I know there are many Americans who say, 'Get out of Afghanistan. Bring 'em all home.' And there are others who say, 'Put in hundreds of thousands of more.'

It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy.

The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.

In the aftermath of September 11, and as the 9/11 Commission report so aptly demonstrates, it is clear that our intelligence system is not working the way that it should.