United Nations

The theme of the 46th Session of the Commission on Population and Development was supposed to be migration. Nevertheless, abortion proponents once again hijacked the discussion to push their agenda. Thankfully, the outcome document leaves very little room for abortion advocates to build upon.

During the week, International Planned Parenthood Federation (PP) launched its “Vision 2020” campaign, which includes applauds illegal abortion providers in Latin American countries, even though these medical abortions are hazardous to the woman and fatal to the baby. They call on all governments to “support a woman’s right to abortion by removing legal and policy barriers to abortion services” in the name of reducing maternal mortality. Evidence shows, however, that countries prohibiting abortion can actually provide higher maternal healthcare standards than countries where abortion is legal.

As always happens at the major UN conferences, PP and its allies divert attention from real, pressing issues to push their agenda of so-called "sexual and reproductive health and rights" which include "youth-friendly" abortion services. The outcome document addressing migrants never once mentions food and only twice mentions employment, but mentions “sexual and reproductive health” five times and ensures “emergency contraception and safe abortion.” Guess where their priorities are?

When the African group opposed the PP agenda, Planned Parenthood sent a private letter to the Nigerian ambassador, rebuking her delegation’s stance as the voice for the African group. In the letter, PP issued a veiled threat that if the Nigerian ambassador did not tone done her opposition to abortion, PP would use its influence to cause the ambassador to lose her position as First Chair at UN Women. The PP took to bullying again when the Filipino vice-chairman of the Commission denied numerous requests to include abortion language in the text. On the final day of negotiations, they pushed to have him replaced as moderator of the negotiations.

Because of the US and EU’s neurotic focus on abortion, the commission could not agree on a negotiated document. The document reverted to a chairman’s text, delivered by the moderator from Moldova. The outcome was not the result of a consultative process of negotiation; it was forced in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion upon the member states.

Nevertheless, the chairman’s text did not allow abortion advocates to make any headway. All references to Comprehensive Sexuality Education (which promotes abortion and early sexual activity to children) from the original draft were deleted in the final outcome document. All six references to “sexual orientation and gender identity” were likewise deleted.

Thankfully, a strong paragraph reaffirmed the national sovereignty of each member state “with full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of its people, and in conformity with universally recognized international human rights.” Remember, despite decades of agitation from the abortion advocates, there is no internationally recognized right to abortion. Universally recognized international human rights do include the right to life (though sadly, this right is ignored by the UN when it comes to unborn children).

There is very little in this document to build toward a so-called “right to abortion.” Two major country groups (the African group and the Arab group) and nine specific countries voices specific reservations against abortion in their final statements. Honduras issued a strong pro-life statement, reaffirming their position that “The unborn child has the same right as a child that is born.” Chile emphasized its belief that “Life is protected from conception” and that “no part of this resolution can be interpreted an acceptance of abortion in any of its forms.”

After years of trying, abortion advocates left the 46th Commission on Population and Development with little “progress” to celebrate.

After two weeks of late night negotiations at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), abortion and abortifacient “emergency contraception” were adopted (as expected) by the United Nations as means of combating violence against women.

The New York Times published a letter to the editor Thursday morning from the Director of the UN Population Fund (known for their population control agenda), piling onto the previous editorial by continuing to malign and misrepresent life-affirming nations opposing the inclusion of abortion in the negotiated document. In another letter to the editor, the chairwoman of the N.G.O. Committee on the Status of Women continued the false narrative blaming Russia, the Holy See, and others for “assaulting” the human rights of women.

One United Nations Secretariat representative told the commission that “men’s sexual behavior can be a form of violence, since pregnancy is an outcome of it.” Pregnancy is an act of violence according to some full-time UN bureaucrats.

Nevertheless, it appeared late Thursday night that life-affirming nations had successfully kept language promoting abortion out of the negotiated document. Pro-abortion delegations, led by the United States and European Union, initially caved on including access to “sexual and reproductive health care services” (code for abortion) into the document.

The tension was palpable among the abortion lobby. They took to Twitter, admitting that they’d rather see no commitments on ending violence against women than see one that did not include abortion. You see, the abortion lobby doesn’t care about women or women’s health. They care about abortion.

Heeding the call, Ms. Michele Bachelet, the former President of Chile and current head of UN Women, intervened. At the final, high-level negotiations among ambassadors, Bachelet put all of her leverage into ensuring that abortion was included in the “agreed conclusions” outcome document.

The head of the Commission issued a hostile chairman’s text, heavily influenced by UN Women, which referenced “sexual and reproductive health” nine times, four times in association with the abortion euphemism “services,” and twice in association with human rights. “Reproductive rights” was also forced into the short, nineteen page document.

The chairman’s text called upon member states to provide “accessible health-care services that are responsive to trauma and include . . . emergency contraception, [and] safe abortion where such services are permitted by national law.” This is the first time that the CSW has called for emergency contraception in its outcome document.

An El Salvadoran proposal to provide “comprehensive sexuality education” for 8-10 year old girls through language that acknowledges their “evolving capacity” was kept in the chairman’s text. No longer did the text reaffirm the “right to life, liberty, and security of person” that earlier drafts included.

The ambassadors and delegates were given fifteen minutes to review the chairman’s text and either give an approval or achieve no agreed conclusions for the conference. Given the intense pressure from member states on delegations to the UN to achieve agreed conclusions, the hold-outs caved. Egypt affirmed the document. Then Indonesia, Philippines, Pakistan, India, and Jordan.

Several nations expressed their reservations to the document, including the Holy See, which repudiated all mentions of abortion and “sexual and reproductive health care services.” But the agreed conclusions were approved by general consensus and there was no going back. The noble effort to eliminate violence against women was permanently stained by the blood of abortion.

However, they didn’t get everything they wanted. All references to “sexual orientation and gender identity” were successfully removed from the text. The agreed conclusions condemned and encouraged member states to take action against “forced sterilization, forced abortion, and forced use of contraceptives.”

With the acclamation of the agreed conclusions, Ms. Michele Bachelet announced that she is retiring from UN Women and plans to return to Chile. Everyone knows she will run for President once more and understands that leaving abortion in the agreed conclusions was her final legacy at the United Nations.

Thankfully, we know that the battle is not over. The agreed conclusions, while carrying the weight of internationally agreed language, are not binding on member states and cannot be used to legally justify domestic changes on laws related to abortion in any nation.

We enter this contest knowing that the United Nations is stacked against us. It has become a vehicle to push an agenda, so it should come as no surprise that the house often wins. We expected that the agreed conclusions would push abortion, as always. Nevertheless, the courage of nations who have withstood their agenda should be applauded. Those nations aren’t ready to back down yet and neither are we.

The parallel-event co-hosted by Personhood USA educated hundreds of delegates that abortion is never medically necessary and equipped them with scientific data supporting the 100% pro-life position. C-FAM’s event featuring Personhood USA spokesperson Rebecca Kiessling showed that life is the correct answer even in cases of rape. Many delegates who attended these events changed their minds and took that information with them to the negotiations, even when their capitals or ambassadors sold them out to get an outcome document.

The abortion lobby may have won this short-term skirmish, but we know that we will win the war. When it comes to defending human rights, we’re on the side of truth, right, and justice. We’re on the side of life.

Josh Craddock, 21, is Personhood USA’s United Nations liaison. He currently studies Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at The King’s College in New York City.

See also Policy Making to Reduce Maternal Mortality,
Day 1 of the UN Commission on the Status of Women,
Day 3 of the UN CSW: Report on major Personhood-sponsored event,
Day 7 of the UN CSW: US & EU ask to delete “right to life, liberty”

Joshua Craddock, Personhood USA’s representative at the United Nations, has posted at Personhood Education a pamphlet entitled Policy Making to Reduce Maternal Mortality. The articles contained in the pamphlet are:

• Education, Not Abortion
• Ireland, without abortion, leads the world in maternal health
• The Importance Of Addressing Predictable Causes Of High Risk Pregnancies

In Education, Not Abortion, Dr. Koch explains that “Definitively, the legal status of abortion is unrelated to overall maternal health.” The education level of women has the greatest effect on maternal health.

In Ireland without abortion, Dr. De Faoite explains that life-saving “interventions are permissible in Ireland today under current Irish law, which bans abortion”. Ireland has “one of the lowest rates of maternal mortality in the entire world”.

In Addressing Predictable Causes, Dr. Chireau says that “managing high-risk pregnancy does not involve a conflict between the needs of the mother and the child, but rather comes down to understanding the particular circumstances of that pregnancy and dealing with it in a scientific and rational way.”

Please read the pamphlet.

See also Day 1 of the UN Commission on the Status of Women and Day 3 of the UN CSW: Report on major Personhood-sponsored event