UNFPA’s Abortion Doublespeak

By Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. | July 8, 2020

State of the World’s Population 2020, Figure 3.1

NEW YORK, July 10 (C-Fam) The UN Population Fund denounced sex-selective abortion this week, in contrast to its advocacy for abortion in general. The agency contradicted its own case against the practice in the report by saying that nations should not curtail abortion, even in an effort to save the lives of the 1.2 million girls killed every year in the practice.

“The termination of a pregnancy when the fetus is determined to be female, or pre-implantation sex determination and selection, or ‘sperm-sorting’ for in-vitro fertilization,” constitute a “violation of international law” according to the State of the World’s Population 2020.

Like pro-life advocates, the report’s authors argue that unfettered abortion leads to other harms to women, including sex ratio imbalances and resultant “marriage squeezes” from too few brides that increase “gender-based violence, including rape, coerced sex, sexual exploitation, trafficking and child marriage—all of which are human rights violations.”

“Gender-biased sex selection…depends on access to abortion after the first trimester, the point at which ultrasound technology can detect the sex of a fetus,” the report says, linking the liberalization of abortion laws to the rise in human rights violations against women and girls. Other “technological breakthroughs such as ultrasound imaging do not enhance reproductive health and rights, but instead transform choices into obligations.”

Nearly 1.2 million girls are killed before and after birth every year, resulting in more than 140 million women and girls now “missing,” mostly Chinese and Indian, according to the report. In contrast to previous years, UNFPA admits that the drive to smaller families—the agency’s mission since the late 1960s—is a primary cause of killings due to sex-selection. The Trump administration pulled funding from the agency because of its complicity in China’s brutal family planning policies.

UNFPA has strained against the restriction from officially promoting abortion as a human right, which nations imposed on the agency in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development at Cairo.

“International human rights law, to a large extent, defers to nations to legislate on abortion,” the report says. In fact, international human rights law defers abortion laws completely to national legislation. No UN human rights treaty mentions abortion. “However, a plethora of recognized human rights together frame son preference as manifested in gender biased sex selection as a human rights violation,” the report says. These include rights related to equality and nondiscrimination, security of person, the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

UNFPA tries to have it both ways, condemning one reason for abortion as a human rights violation and every other reason as a human right: “Overall, bans on sex selection are often ineffective and also infringe reproductive rights, including access to safe abortion in countries where abortion is legal.” It urges nations to make sure “laws and policies do no harm to the girls and women they are meant to protect” and to “formulate laws and policies that…do not infringe on other rights. Otherwise States risk non-enforcement, community rejection and clandestine practice.”

Dr. Natalia Kanem, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNFPA, in her preface to the report, said nations need to fund UNFPA $34 billion in the next ten years to end female genital mutilation and child marriage, experienced by some 84 million girls. The killing of baby girls, however, the report predicts will likely continue because of the persistence of abortion, ultrasound technology, the drive to smaller families, and son preference.

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