Five Worst Moments of the Year 2018 for Life and Family at the UN
NEW YORK, December 28 (C-Fam) You always want to remember more good moments at the end of a year than bad ones. But we can’t afford to gloss over the progress of UN abortion policy. So, here are the worst moments of 2018.
1. Ireland Votes in Favor of Killing Babies in the Womb
Ireland has fallen, and what a fall it had! Perhaps no other nation has been targeted more aggressively by the UN system to change its abortion laws than Ireland, a longtime bastion of Catholicism. Irish elites never cared to defend the unborn in their exchanges with the UN. They just waited for the Irish people to change their mind. And Ireland became one of very few countries to ever have a referendum on abortion. C-Fam reported on the significance and background of the referendum.
2. UN Committee Decides the “Right to Life” implies a “Right to Abortion”
The Human Rights Committee, the oldest and most respected of ten UN human rights committees that monitor human rights treaties, officially adopted a legal commentary that literally says abortion is part of the right to life. During the final adoption of the commentary, known as General Comment 36, in November, UN experts cynically tried to silence dissenting members of the committee. C-Fam reported earlier this year on the callousness of the experts.
3. Europeans Isolate U.S. on Abortion, as Nikki Haley Disappoints
Nikki Haley built a reputation as a principled pro-life leader. But when it came to the pro-life cause internationally, she disappointed. Though abortion is an issue that is ubiquitous at the UN, she never spoke about it. While to her credit she helped the pro-life cause sometimes, she was unwilling to invest her political and diplomatic resources to get abortion out of UN policy. Worse, the U.S. continues to be part of radically pro-LGBT group of countries. U.S. diplomats needlessly antagonized countries that would support the pro-life cause in order to promote the homosexual agenda. This squandered all the pro-life support the U.S. had to start with, leaving the U.S. isolated.
4. GOP Congress Enacts Obama’s Pro-abortion USAID Gender Policies
The Republican held Congress permanently enshrined Obama’s USAID gender policies through the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act (WEEE Act). These policies are still being used by USAID to discriminate against faith-based organizations and to promote abortion and LGBT issues. Abortion groups got Ivanka Trump’s support early on, and she saw the bill all the way through the House and Senate. C-Fam opposed the law in a memo that made it all the way to the White House. But all we could obtain was a promise that they will fix USAID’s gender policies.
5. International “Sexual and Reproductive Health” Trap Snaps Shut
Europeans always say that “sexual and reproductive health” does not mean abortion. But the actions of the UN system show just how disingenuous they are. The UN System adopted a manual that instructs UN personnel to lobby countries to make abortion legal as a component of “sexual and reproductive health.” UN personnel in Mexico did just that only a few months later. The UN Committee on Disabilities told Malta that it cannot exclude abortion from “sexual and reproductive health.” The heads of the World Health Organization and the UN Population Fund gave a full-throated endorsement to a Lancet report that “defines sexual and reproductive health for all” as including abortion. And on “Safe Abortion Day”, UN experts called pro-lifers dangerous because of their opposition to “reproductive health.” If the Pro-life cause were a U.S. foreign policy priority the UN system could never get away with this.
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