UN Bureaucrats Lash Out Angrily at U.S. Abortion Ruling

By | June 30, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. July 1 (C-Fam) UN bureaucrats and human rights experts lost no time in denouncing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the almost-fifty-year-old ruling that made abortion on demand the law of the U.S.

UN human rights experts issued a joint statement calling the decision “a profound setback for the rule of law and for gender equality” and described “[l]egal protections for abortion access and abortion rights” as a “binding obligation” under international human rights law.  They pointed to a brief they had filed before the court heard the case, in which they urged the court not to strike down abortion as a constitutional right.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet said, “Access to safe, legal and effective abortion is firmly rooted in international human right[s] law” and called the Roe regime “five decades of protection for sexual and reproductive health and rights.”

The Director-General of the World Health Organization expressed disappointment “because women’s rights must be protected.”  The WHO’s official Twitter account Tweeted that “Abortion is health care.”

UN Women and UNFPA also issued statements criticizing abortion restrictions generally while declining to specifically name the U.S.  However, the timing and topic of the statements left no ambiguity as to their purpose.

In fact, there has never been a binding international human rights treaty that includes a right to abortion, nor has such a right ever been agreed in global negotiations in the UN General Assembly or the UN’s other bodies that operate on the basis of consensus.

Following a series of failures to negotiate a human right to abortion in the mid-1990s, UN human rights experts and agency leaders strategized a plan to insinuate a right to abortion into the interpretations of human rights treaties.  Operating outside their mandates, they attempted to interpret human rights treaties to include abortion and pressured countries to liberalize their laws.

Friday’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization saw the U.S. Supreme Court overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision in which the court had similarly attempted to insinuate a right to abortion into the U.S. Constitution.

While the Dobbs decision does not directly affect U.S. foreign policy, for an influential, sovereign nation to explicitly strike down abortion as a right sends a powerful message to other countries who have been repeatedly told that they are obliged to liberalize their own abortion laws.

While UN human rights experts operate with little direct accountability, a growing coalition of nations have signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration reiterating the fact that abortion is not a human right and reaffirming international agreement that the family is central to society that women’s health, including maternal health, must be prioritized.

Echoing the 2011 San Jose Articles, a negotiated document of legal scholars, the Geneva Consensus Declaration was launched by the U.S. and over thirty partner countries under former President Trump.  Despite the withdrawal of the U.S. from the declaration by pro-abortion President Joe Biden, the coalition of signatories continues to add new members.

News of the Supreme Court decision has reached the people of Uganda, one signatory of the Geneva Consensus Declaration.  One Norwegian resident of Uganda Tweeted that it was “disheartening to see how many Ugandans are celebrating the overturning of Roe.”

As Nigerian pro-life advocate Obianuju Ekeocha responded to the Tweet, most people across the African continent “are celebrating the end of abortion totalitarianism in America.”

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