Lead UN Candidate Doubles Down on Abortion

By | 2026

Michelle Bachelet, candidate au poste de secrétaire générale des Nations unies

UNITED NATIONS, April 24 (C-Fam) For at least two decades, pro-abortion Chilean politician Michelle Bachelet has been angling to be the UN Secretary General. She is one step closer and could very well be elected this summer. She was before the General Assembly this week, answering questions.

At a follow-up press conference, if she is selected for the job, she promised to promote abortion-on-demand until the moment of birth.

“We need to continue advancing women’s rights,” she told journalists after a three-hour interview with the General Assembly for the UN’s top job.

Bachelet said that the issue was “controversial” and recognized that countries had differing views, but she emphasized that as Secretary General, she would ensure that “CEDAW committee decisions are implemented.”

The committee of UN experts based in Geneva says that abortion must be decriminalized in all circumstances and that governments must pay for abortions. The committee also promotes the notion that transgender identifying individuals must have access to sex-rejecting procedures, including for children, and that they must have access to facilities and government benefits of their preferred sex.

Bachelet’s choice of words was deliberate. She mentioned following CEDAW twice.

Even though UN human rights treaties do not mention abortion at all, the CEDAW committee argues that UN treaties are “living instruments” and that abortion can be read into UN treaties through legal interpretation. The recommendations of the CEDAW committee are non-binding, but they are used by the abortion industry and UN agencies to promote abortion and gender ideology as human rights.

Bachelet was responding to a Congressional letter calling her a “pro-abortion zealot” and asking U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio to veto her nomination. A question from the Associated Press forced her to take a position even though she had avoided addressing controversial issues in her interview with member states earlier in the day.

The next UN Secretary General is expected to be from Latin America, and there is a strong preference from progressive countries that a woman be selected. Bachelet is the preferred candidate of the European Union and other progressive governments, but she faces a high likelihood of a veto by Russia and possibly the United States.

She was highly critical of Trump as a UN human rights official. She took sides with “the Squad” in U.S. congressional debates. She called the four progressive Democratic legislators “fantastic” and “bright women who dare to say what they think.” She called Trump’s immigration policies “unconscionable” and said Trump’s actions on January 6, 2021, amounted to “incitement to violence and hatred.” She also attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for allowing U.S. states to decide their own abortion laws democratically, saying that abortion is a human right.

Bachelet tried to downplay her past criticism of Donald J. Trump. When asked about the possibility of a U.S. veto, she said Chile and the U.S. government had good relations when she was in office as President of Chile during Trump’s first term.

The alternate candidate that Europeans have put forward through their close ally, Costa Rica, is Rebecca Grynspan, another UN official who has used her previous role as a UN official to lobby against pro-life legislation in Nicaragua. As the backup candidate, Grynspan was not asked any difficult questions in her interview and press conferences this week. Her body of work has not been subjected to the same scrutiny as Bachelet’s.

The other two candidates interviewed this week were Rafael Mariano Grossi of Argentina, the current Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Macky Sall, the former president of Senegal. All four candidates were interviewed by the UN General Assembly. Discussions between UN member states are ongoing. A selection is expected this Summer for confirmation by the start of the next General Assembly in September.

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter