General Assembly will Test Biden’s Commitment to Abortion and LGBT Rights

By | October 14, 2021

NEW YORK, October 15 (C-Fam) Despite making progress for abortion and LGBT rights in the UN bureaucracy, the Biden administration faces an uphill battle to get the General Assembly to explicitly endorse abortion and LGBT issues in UN resolutions.

U.S. diplomats are deep in negotiations of over a dozen UN resolutions touching on human rights and women’s issues, but the negotiations promise to remain deadlocked when it comes to abortion and LGBT rights as in past years.

During negotiations over UN strategic plans last summer, where western donor countries influence is at its height, UN member states accepted language on “sexual orientation and gender identity” as well as “sexual and reproductive health and rights” for the first time, albeit with disclaimers and asserting national prerogatives. The U.S. supported the language and opposed any disclaimers. It remains to be seen if the Biden administration and its allies can carry either of those terms into UN resolutions, where they have been repeatedly rejected in the past, and traditional countries feel more able to influence the outcome.

Neither abortion nor LGBT rights are popular subjects in UN negotiations. Explicit language on these issues usually fails to make it into UN agreements. Traditional countries in Africa and Asia are not comfortable in debates about these issues, and do not think it is appropriate for western countries to impose their views.

Since taking over the White House from Donald Trump, the Biden administration has ramped up LGBT advocacy in UN negotiations but has been less aggressive on abortion.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield was open about the commitment of the Biden administration to the LGBT cause in a video message ahead of the General Assembly’s general debate with world leaders last month.

“The United States is using our diplomacy, our foreign assistance, and every tool we have to protect human rights, empower civil society, and support local LGBTQI+ movements,” she said.

When it comes to abortion the United States is relying on its partners to do the heavy lifting and it is relying on euphemisms like “sexual and reproductive health and rights” rather than openly asserting that abortion is an international right.

U.S. diplomats merely aligned with the European Union and Canada when language on “sexual and reproductive health and rights” was debated during negotiations on women’s issues and the work of UN agencies in the spring and summer.

According to UN insiders who spoke with the Friday Fax U.S. diplomats did not appear to have their own priorities and targets when it comes to promoting abortion as they did with LGBT issues. They never openly promoted abortion as an international right, as some other nations have in the past, including Nordic countries, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

The relative silence of U.S. diplomats on abortion may change once the Biden administration’s Gender Policy Council begins to churn out directives for the U.S. State Department. The Gender Council has broad authority to direct efforts to promote women’s rights throughout all federal agencies. Biden designated the Gender Council as the point of contact for the abortion industry last month.

Biden promised to protect and promote “sexual and reproductive health and rights” in the United States and globally through a Presidential Memorandum on January 2021, a term Both commonly used by the abortion industry in UN policies and programming to promote abortion.

The White House “strongly” endorsed the Women’s Health Protection Act last month, which declares abortion an international human right based on the views of UN experts regarding the application of UN terms like “sexual and reproductive health.”

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