UN Committee May Say It’s Racist Not to Allow Abortion

By | June 1, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 2 (C-Fam) Not long after going after the U.S. for overturning the right to abortion, the UN’s human rights committee on the elimination of racial discrimination is preparing to unleash pro-abortion pressure on the rest of the world.

In May, the treaty monitoring body associated with the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) released the first draft of what’s known as a general comment on the subject of racial discrimination and the right to health.

The draft comment expresses concern that people belonging to specific racial groups lack access to stable and affordable health care due to a number of “causes, acts and omissions,” including “criminalization of services related to sexual and reproductive health, especially abortions.”  The comment asserts that “[s]afe, legal and effective access to abortion is part of the right to control one’s health and body and the right to life of persons protected under the Convention.”

It cites the World Health Organization’s recent guideline on “safe” abortion, which in turn cites other treaty monitoring bodies that have interpreted a “right” to abortion in their respective treaties, none of which mention abortion or could be reasonably understood to include it as a right.

The European Centre for Law and Justice has published reports detailing the close relationships between international abortion groups and the members of the UN’s treaty monitoring bodies.

ICERD is the oldest of the UN’s core human rights treaties, and came into effect in 1969.  182 countries are party to the treaty and, until recently, it has been relatively quiet on the subject of abortion and other controversial social issues.  Meanwhile, the treaty bodies on the subjects of women’s rights, children’s rights, civil and political rights, and economic, social, and cultural rights have all pressured countries to liberalize their abortion laws.  This occurs both through direct, periodic communications with countries that have ratified the relevant treaty and through general recommendations, which explain how the treaty body interprets specific clauses and aspects of the treaty and inform future country reviews.

None of these recommendations, whether general or specific, are binding on countries.  Nevertheless, they are influential both within the UN system and in national courts, academic institutions, and the work of civil society organizations.

In the U.S., which is party to ICERD, unborn black babies are aborted disproportionately more often than any other racial group, with an estimated 17 million aborted since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion a national right.  Black women are also at higher risk of death from abortion complications than white women in the U.S.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-based “reproductive justice” movement, led by black feminists who insist that abortion should not only be broadly legal, but also subsidized by taxpayer funds, has been taken up by abortion activists within the UN system.  In recent years, the international abortion lobby has increasingly worked to frame their advocacy in terms of racial justice.

Many of these organizations were present at meetings last year when the general recommendation on racial discrimination and health was discussed.  One outspoken international abortion group, Ipas, recently rebranded itself as “Partners for Reproductive Justice.”

Civil society organizations and experts can still offer their contributions to the process of drafting the recommendation.  The committee is currently calling for stakeholder comments on the draft until August 4.

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