Attempts Underway to Redefine “Forced Pregnancy” in International Law

By | April 27, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., April 28 (C-Fam) The term “forced pregnancy” is back on the UN agenda as nations begin to negotiate a treaty on crimes against humanity. This is an old debate and one that pro-life nations have so far won.

When governments negotiated the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court in the late 90’s, abortion-supporting nations pushed hard to define “forced pregnancy” as the legal inability to get an abortion. This coalition of largely Western nations were defeated by the persistent lobbying of pro-life groups.

The agreed definition now in international law became quite narrow: impregnating a woman and holding her captive until birth for the purposes of changing the ethnic composition of a country.

The effort to change this definition to include abortion is occurring across the UN system.

In its just-released “State of World Population Report,” the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) asserted that the ICC definition of “forced pregnancy” has “been more widely interpreted by advocates to include, for instance, situations in which a pregnant person is denied an abortion.”

UNFPA cites an advocacy organization called Equality Now, which provides its own definition: “Forced pregnancy is defined as when a woman or girl becomes pregnant without having sought or desired it, and abortion is denied, hindered, delayed or made difficult.”  This definition is not taken from any negotiated resolution, much less a binding treaty.

The Equality Now definition also omits crucial parts of the Rome Statute definition, such as the phrase “the unlawful confinement of a woman forcibly made pregnant.”

Earlier this month, delegates debating language in a draft convention on crimes against humanity also raised this issue.

The representative of the United Kingdom cited “the repugnance of forcible interference with reproductive rights” and called for the definition of “forced pregnancy” to be “strengthened” accordingly.  The delegates of Cuba and Canada also expressed interest in redefining the term, and the Canadian delegate implied that the phrase had already “evolved over time.”

Among those pushing for this “evolution” is Human Rights Watch, which offered recommendations including the removal of language from the definition of “forced pregnancy” referencing national laws.  They also recommended the removal of the “limiting definition of ‘gender’ that was inserted into the Rome Statute.”

The word “gender” has become ubiquitous in UN documents, often being used as a way to advance issues of sexual orientation and gender identity that would not be acceptable if stated explicitly.  Nevertheless, “gender” was defined in the Rome Statute, after extensive negotiation, as referring to “the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society,” adding that “the term ‘gender’ does not indicate any meaning different from the above.”

In the negotiations on the draft “crimes against humanity” treaty, several mainly Western countries expressed their desire to reject the Rome Statute definition of gender, which had appeared in an earlier draft of the treaty but had since been deleted.  The United Kingdom delegate referred to that definition as “no longer appropriate.”

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