Biden Administration Issues Gender Strategy Promoting Abortion and LGBT Rights

By | October 28, 2021

WASHINGTON DC, October 29 (C-Fam) The White House has released a long-promised “National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality.” While low on policy details, the strategy has far-reaching implications for the entire federal government. Among other things, it requires all federal agencies to reorganize their bureaucratic apparatuses and design all programs to achieve the goals of the national gender strategy, including the promotion of abortion and LGBT rights.

Biden’s gender policy promises to “protect the constitutional right to safe and legal abortion established in Roe v. Wade. . .” and to “restore U.S. global leadership on sexual and reproductive rights and comprehensive sex education. . .”

The British-based medical journal Lancet defines “sexual and reproductive health and rights” as covering a wide range of policies having to do with sexual autonomy, including abortion, LGBT issues, comprehensive sexuality education, transgender hormone therapy and reassignment surgery, and sexual autonomy for children.

The Biden gender policy threatens to upend longstanding restrictions on abortion funding in U.S. law. The national gender policy commits to integrate “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services” in U.S. and multilateral humanitarian relief programs that cater to populations affected by war, natural disasters, and other emergencies.

If abortion, or abortion referrals, become a requirement of international humanitarian relief programs, as UN agencies want, it would have a detrimental effect on the ability of faith-based organizations to partner with such programs. Until now, the Helms Amendment has prohibited U.S. taxpayer funds from being used to perform or promote abortion. A move to undermine this longstanding restriction is widely anticipated, as reported by the Friday Fax.

Like several gender strategies issued under the Obama administration, Biden’s gender strategy aligns federal policies with international gender policies developed without the input and consent of U.S. voters and their representatives. But Biden’s gender strategy expands the reach of “gender” policies far beyond what even the Obama administration had previously adopted. It affects both domestic and international policy. Obama’s gender policies only affected U.S. foreign policy and U.S. foreign assistance.

Gender policies are a set of international norms developed through the United Nations and other international mechanisms. While the term “gender” was defined in internationally binding treaties and other agreements as only referring to women and men, it is widely used by powerful development agencies to promote LGBT rights in tandem with women’s rights.  In fact, the UN’s special reporter on LGBT just told the UN General Assembly that gender is a social construct, a notion, he said was required under international law.

The Biden gender strategy reclassifies existing federal programs to help “women and girls” as “gender policies” and adds the moniker “LGBTQI+” as part of their description to ensure that policies designed to protect and assist women and girls don’t focus on women and girls only but also on women and girls who identify as transgender as well as men and boys who identify as homosexual.

The strategy further orders all federal agencies to “mainstream gender equity and equality” in their work even on issues unrelated to gender.

The national gender strategy gives all federal agencies nine months to come up with “implementation plans” that include “strategic planning and budgeting, policy and program development, measurement and data, and management and training” to align their work with the national gender strategy.

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