NEW YORK, March 22 (C-FAM) Pro-life and pro-abortion representatives, pressed against the glass outside a room where UN member states were negotiating a set of policies to end violence against women last week at UN headquarters. After months of lobbying, they anxiously awaited a result.
Failure to deliver agreed conclusions was never an option at this year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). But the two week session was fraught with worries about negotiations collapsing, as happened in 2003 when violence against women was last taken up by the UN commission, or last year, when bullying by the US delegation derailed consensus. But the fears never materialized. By Friday afternoon only seven paragraphs remained to be decided, and agreed conclusions were adopted Friday evening.
Abortion advocates, in and outside governments, wanted to move the ball forward for abortion rights. The United States and Nordic countries pressed pro-life nations to scrap previous agreements that place abortion in a bad light. To argue their case activists and the media reported falsely that pro-life countries wanted to use religion to excuse violence.
The United States brought in veteran activist Adrienne Germain to direct their negotiators. She was instrumental for the Clinton administration at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) where “safe abortion” first became a rallying cry for the global abortion lobby. At this year’s CSW abortion groups found themselves stymied by that very landmark conference. ICPD does not recognize abortion as a right and says it should never be used as a backup to contraception.
Ambiguous terms sometimes used to disguise abortion, like reproductive rights or sexual and reproductive health, were included in the policies adopted by CSW. But they were included “in accordance with ICPD.” The 1994 agreement also respects the sovereignty of UN member states to legislate according to custom, religion and tradition. Abortion groups are claiming this last point was conceded, even though the agreed conclusions include a paragraph that recognizes the “significance of national and regional particularities” as well as “historical, cultural and religious backgrounds” in legislation that implements UN policies.
The global abortion lobby has waited for years for the right moment to go beyond ICPD. Some Latin American states have signaled they are willing, but UN member states overall are not comfortable moving away from ICPD, at least on abortion, population control and other controversial policies like special new rights for homosexuals.
Last week’s agreement not only reaffirms the ICPD standard for abortion, but extends it to the morning-after pill. Deceptively called “emergency contraception,” the controversial pill can destroy nascent human life. It was not addressed in ICPD. While this falls short of recognizing the right to life, access to abortion-inducing drugs cannot be claimed as a human right – something the Friday Fax has learned abortion advocates are reportedly furious about.
The agreement also reaffirms ICPD on the role of parents to protect children from sexual education programs, early sexualization, and risky sexual behavior. It does not single out homosexuals for special protections. Homosexual rights are understood to be the final frontier for sexual rights advocates.
The myopic focus of some delegations on abortion and homosexual rights tragically prevented the commission from addressing other widespread forms of violence against women. The commission failed to denounce sex-selective abortion, as well as the thousands of women that die each year because of religious persecution.
Helen Alvaré, a professor at George Mason School of Law, delivered an official statement on behalf of the Holy See. “Respect for human life is the starting point to confront a culture of violence,” she stated. Abortion is a form of violence and the “only proper response (to a woman in need) is radical solidarity.” The Holy See also decried the commodification of women that has resulted from the spread of a “sexual ideology” that sees women as objects.
“The cause of women’s freedom is unfinished,” she concluded, quoting John Paul II.