UN Conference Lays Out Strategy for International Abortion Rights

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.

ITALIAN version
     
     
     (NEW YORK — C-FAM) A United Nations sponsored meeting on maternal mortality ended last Saturday with a pledge by the organizers to promote “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services” as the primary way to reduce maternal mortality.  To achieve their goal, organizers and select participants of the “Women Deliver” conference in London laid out several initiatives for the coming years in order to overcome political and religious resistance to abortion rights including the use of UN human rights treaties and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

     Frances Kissling, former president of “Catholics” for a Free Choice, was responsible for the conference agenda and summarized the three day event saying, “Sex, money, power, and religion are the driving forces in reproductive health.” Pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, absent from Kissling’s list, were likewise overshadowed in most of the discussions as panelists focused on themes of securing funds and “political will” for reproductive rights, which is used by UN committees to include abortion on demand. In fact, one of the main organizers of the event said privately, “This is a pro-choice conference.”

     The next step, according to conference organizer Family Care International, will be creating “synergies between health and other sectors” including human rights law. A new “International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights” was launched to “look beyond the delivery of quality health services, and embrace the language and norms of human rights” in order to “hold governments accountable.”

     The group that launched the initiative included Thoraya Obaid, Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Paul Hunt, UN Special Rapporteur for Health, who was given credit for masterminding the initiative, Nancy Northrop, President of the pro-abortion law firm Center for Reproductive Rights, which will serve as secretariat.  According to Mary Robinson, they will attempt to hold governments accountable for including reproductive rights in programs to reduce maternal mortality by re-interpreting existing human rights in binding and non-binding UN documents such as the rights to life and the right to the highest attainable standard of health, among others.

     One purpose for the conference was to get African and South Asian officials and health workers to accept the reproductive rights agenda. Some 1500 of the 1700 conferees, largely from these regions, reportedly attended the very expensive event courtesy of corporate sponsors such as Brazil’s Tibotec, Exxon Mobile, and GlaxoSmithKline. A Spanish delegate told the Friday Fax, “It seems Europeans have been completely ignored since we already have widespread abortion, and this is about English speaking elites trying to convince elites in the developing world to accept abortion in their countries.”

     Around thirty government officials attended the conference including three members of the U.S. Congress. The delegates announced a strategy for access to “family planning and reproductive health services” and the “reduction of the stigma associated with abortion” that included plans to call for a UN General Assembly special session on maternal health that would result in a global plan of action, and the creation of a global fund for women’s health, focused on maternal health.  Conference organizers pledged to meet again within two years.

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