EU and Abortion Groups Attack Pro-Life Policies Adopted by the General Assembly

By | February 6, 2020

NEW YORK, February 7 (C-Fam) The European Union and a handful of Latin American countries began their push to have abortion and LGBT rights inserted into a UN political declaration to be adopted by the Commission on the Status of Women in March. Negotiations on the declaration began this week.

Two seminal agreements adopted by the General Assembly, on population in 1994 and women in 1995, excluded abortion and LGBT rights. The agreements affirmed the preeminent role of parents in their childrens’ lives, and protected sovereignty, and respect for culture and religion. Now, abortion and LGBT groups and their government supporters have devised a plan to undermine and supplant what the General Assembly agreed in the 1990s.

Abortion and LGBT groups want new UN agreements to endorse international conferences and bureaucratic reports that were never negotiated by the General Assembly. These “reviews” and “outcomes” include abortion and LGBT issues and promote sexual autonomy for children.

If new UN agreements endorse such reviews and outcomes pro-life critics argue they will essentially modify the normative guidance of the General Assembly in a piecemeal fashion without ever having to revisit the agreements in open and transparent negotiations. Ultimately, it gives cover for national aid agencies and UN agencies to promote and fund the abortion and LGBT agenda globally, under the pretense of carrying out a mandate given to them by UN member states.

Abortion groups and their government supporters tried and failed to have the UN General Assembly declare an international right to abortion and open the door to LGBT rights at the Cairo population conference in 1994 and the women’s conference at Beijing in 1995. A coalition of governments from across the globe emerged in opposition to such notions.

The conferences produced lengthy declarations and agreements that included abortion as part of UN health policy for the first time. But they also included a series of caveats that exclude the possibility that abortion be considered a human right.

The conferences also prohibited international agencies from interfering in national debates about abortion. And they cast abortion in a negative light, stating that abortion should never be promoted as family planning, and urged governments to help women avoid abortion.

Above all else, it was the leadership of Saint John Paul II that thwarted the abortion groups. He personally confronted world leaders and urged Catholics and people of good will across the globe to attend the conferences and lobby their governments.

The open political scrutiny that the pontiff forced on the UN debate was enough to scare political leaders into accepting the caveats against abortion. Only a handful of countries at the time had laws that protected children in the womb from abortion in all circumstances. This makes what was achieved by pro-life advocates at the conferences in 1994 and 1995 all the more remarkable.

Now, as countries review the agreements they adopted a quarter-century ago the pro-life legacy of John Paul II is on the line.

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