How the Push for Sexual and Reproductive Rights Harms Women’s Human Rights

By C-Fam Staff | March 24, 2017

NEW YORK, March 24 (C-Fam) At UN headquarters this week, experts detailed several ways sexual and reproductive rights activists are contributing to the continued violation of women’s human rights.  Two standing room-only events were part of the two-week Commission on the Status of Women, which concludes Friday.

Reggie Littlejohn of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers recounted the horrors of forced abortions in China when women became pregnant in violation of the 30 year-old one-child policy, revised last year to allow two children. She discussed how combinations of son preference, poverty, and coercive policies resulted in skewed sex ratios in China and India.  Efforts to address this problem at the UN have repeatedly avoided calling for any restrictions on abortion, even when it is widely used solely to prevent the birth of daughters.

The issues of pornography and prostitution have recently sparked divisions between feminist groups at the Commission on the Status of Women, as groups like Amnesty International have called for decriminalization of “sex work.”  Arina Grossu of the Family Research Council presented data showing the links between pornography, prostitution, and human trafficking. She emphasized the need to tackle the problem at its root.  “In the United States, we do have obscenity laws against pornography,” she said, “but they aren’t being enforced.”

Rebecca Oas discussed the ways household survey data from developing countries is misused to imply a vast demand for contraceptives that simply doesn’t exist.  Meanwhile, family planning groups argue that more funding for contraception means there is less to spend on maternal and child health services.  “If we’re going to spend the time and money to visit women’s homes and ask them what they want, we should at least avoid twisting their words,” Oas said. Oas is associate research director at C-Fam, publisher of the Friday Fax.

C-Fam’s Marianna Orlandi chaired a panel on how women’s health in Asia is threatened by increased risk of cancer, which is in turn linked to the surging levels of abortion and the use of contraceptive pills. The panel was sponsored by the Endeavour Forum.

Biologist and endocrinology professor Joel Brind, who has spent decades in the field, exposed the evidence from population-level studies in Asia that strongly support a link between abortion and breast cancer.

Breast surgeon Dr. Angela Lanfranchi, illustrated the four ways in which “the pill . . . kills.”  The audience, made up largely of young people, listened in complete silence. Lanfranchi is president of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, which she co-founded with Dr. Brind.

Both Lanfranchi and Brind appear in the recent documentary film “Hush” which reveals how the abortion lobby has effectively silenced discussion around the abortion-breast cancer link by pointing to a “consensus” based more on politics than science.

Denise Mountenay, founder of Canada Silent No More, and Abigail Meadows, gave moving testimonies of their past abortions. “Where are my children?” asked Meadows, who became infertile due to undergoing repeated abortions.

Mountenay, who was a victim of sexual assault, spoke about how the trauma of her abortion is the thing that still haunts her. “I overcame rape, but not my abortion.”

Orlandi closed by reminding the audience of how much ignorance surrounds the abortion and contraception precisely because of misconceptions promoted by abortion advocates.

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