Pro-Life Poetry Breaks Out at German Anti-Family Event

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | 2014

NEW YORK, February 28 (C-FAM) Quite unexpectedly pro-life poetry broke out in the German Mission to the United Nations.

Twenty-year-old Anthony read a poem about becoming an unmarried father at 18. In the poem he implores his disappointed mother who was also pregnant with him when she was a young girl.

“I could see [my mother] pregnant …

trying to erase me

as evidence from this crime scene,

Seeing my mother, a doctor, a back alley dumpster. . .”

“Please understand…

She’s pregnant.

We’re keeping [our daughter.]”

Anthony spoke on a panel featuring pro-abortion and homosexual advocates. The German government hosted the midday event on “Family: It’s your right to choose” to encourage a change in the UN definition of the family.

Across the street, delegates inside the UN engaged in an intense debate about the concept of family.. Previous UN resolutions have used “various forms of the family exist,” noted moderator Dianne Stewart of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). But, she complained, they did not specify what such families might look like.

In the UN, “language on the family can be invoked to undermine the notion of diversity of families,” said Sarah Gold of International Women’s Health Coalition. She offered the Bali Youth Declaration from last year as a positive example. It refers to the family as “constantly evolving” and listed 14 examples of forms they might take. She added that this definition “doesn’t capture everything.”

The declaration came from a UNFPA-sponsored conference in Bali, attended by youth activists and other pro-abortion and pro-homosexual groups. The UN has so far rejected any mention of the declaration in any resolution agreed to by governments.

The abortion activists complained that family is often a force restricting the autonomy of women’s and adolescents’ choices. This is reflected in policies such as spousal or parental notification and consent laws and other regulations around reproductive services, particularly abortion.

Stewart asked rhetorically, “Can we think about family without thinking about sexual and reproductive health and rights?” In her view, that is not possible.

A UNFPA youth expert questioned his own inclusion on the panel. “I don’t know why I’ve been called to speak about the family,” Prateek Awasthi said. “Family is an institution, and I’m not a fan of institutions in general.”

His parents worried about him living alone. “They don’t realize that I have Facebook and I Skype with my friends around the world all the time,” he said. “A lot of the social support you got from your families you now get from your friends.”

“I hadn’t really thought of Skype as a modern form of birth control,” quipped Stewart. “We should talk about that more.”

This vision of self-sufficiency buoyed by online social networks contrasted starkly with the picture painted by Anthony’s second poem. He described keeping vigil for weeks by his comatose mother’s bedside after both of them were hurt in a car crash, and how she later managed to care for her children despite her injuries.

After the panel, Tahani Salah presented a poem acclaiming women’s resilience, viewed from the perspective of an unborn child. “I know I have left fingerprints inside of your womb,” she recited. “You have shown me strength before my heart could beat.”

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