Abortion Organizations Co-Opt Disability Rights to Promote Their Agenda

By | June 21, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 23 (C-Fam) Progressive governments and their allies pushed for legal and accessible abortion for persons with disabilities in the name of human rights last week.

States parties to the UN treaty on disabilities met at their annual conference to discuss the implementation of the treaty. This year the first item on the agenda was the provision of “sexual and reproductive health services.” Progressive countries want to use the phrase in the treaty to impose a right to abortion on all countries who have ratified the convention, though they are reluctant to mention the term “abortion” because of how controversial it remains.

The International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which entered into force in 2008, is the only UN human rights treaty to contain language about “reproductive health.”

The controversial phrase, commonly understood as a euphemism for abortion, was only included in the treaty after a long and controversial negotiation. Countries agreed that the treaty did not establish a new right to abortion. Now that understanding is being attacked by pro-abortion countries and UN officials.

UN human rights experts who make recommendations on how to implement the treaty consistently refuse to call for safeguards against the selective abortion of children with disabilities, including by continuing to urge countries to include fetal impairment as a ground for legal abortion.

During the conference last week, Iceland delivered a statement on behalf of a group of progressive countries calling this year’s conference of state parties a historic occasion. They claimed this was “the first time sexual and reproductive health and rights are discussed” at one of the conference’s roundtable discussions. The use of this term was deliberate and implied abortion as a human right.

The term “sexual and reproductive health and rights,” or SRHR, is not in the treaty, and it would add the element of “sexual rights,” something the treaty does not contemplate. The controversial new phrase has not been adopted by international consensus and is not found in CRPD or any other UN human rights treaty.  To the extent that SRHR has ever been defined, such as in a 2018 Lancet-Guttmacher Commission, it includes abortion as a human right, which contradicts global consensus.

Within the area of disability, there is broad consensus against subjecting women with disabilities to forced abortions and sterilizations.  Even the European Union, which frequently leads the push for pro-abortion language in UN negotiations, specifically denounced these practices in its statement. But progressive countries nonetheless were fairly blatant about their intention to use the disabilities framework to impose a right to abortion on the world.

The United Kingdom co-hosted a side event alongside international abortion giants MSI Reproductive Choices and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, highlighting their partnerships in Africa and Asia.  One panelist works for the Nigerian branch of Ipas, an organization that focuses almost exclusively on promoting abortion globally.

The event focused on the UK’s “Women’s Integrated Sexual Health” (WISH) program, and how its partner organizations work to make their services accessible to people with disabilities.  Abortion was barely mentioned during the event, including by the representative of Ipas, showing just how controversial abortion remains internationally.  Nevertheless, Ipas recently produced a “values clarification” toolkit on the topic of making abortion accessible to women with disabilities, with funding from the UK.

This and other “values clarification” materials produced by Ipas are designed to destigmatize abortion and indoctrinate health care workers to overcome their objections to participating in providing abortions.

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