Who and What is “Women Deliver?”

By | July 27, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 28 (C-Fam) Rwanda recently hosted one of the largest international pro-abortion conferences in its capital, Kigali, drawing feminists from around the world.  The name of the conference, Women Deliver, evokes images of childbearing, yet its agenda is far more controversial.

Hungary’s first female president was excoriated by speakers and attendees at the conference after delivering a brief, anodyne presentation about Hungary’s policies to support women in their families as well as in the workforce.

The organization, which hosts conferences at three-year intervals, was founded in 2007 by Jill Sheffield, a longtime activist for improved maternal health within the larger “sexual and reproductive health and rights” agenda, which includes abortion, gender ideology, and other more controversial elements.  It became an independent nonprofit in 2009.

The first Women Deliver conferences, hosted in London in 2007 and Washington, D.C. in 2010, focused on the fifth Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of improving maternal health.  The conferences advocated for maternal health to be treated as a subset of the broader “reproductive health” framework, including abortion, contraception, and comprehensive sex education.

The phrase frequently repeated by activists and UN officials alike was “Women deliver—and not just babies.”

Some activists accused the first two conferences of downplaying the abortion issue.  While the organizers had privately referred to it as a “pro-choice” conference, the decision to step lightly around the abortion was soon to be reversed.

At the 2013 conference in Malaysia breakout sessions featured guidance on bypassing abortion laws, a doctor from Nigeria arguing against any gestational limits on abortion, and notorious late-term abortionist LeRoy Carhart on a panel of “human rights defenders.”

In 2016, the conference was in Denmark, home to Women Deliver’s new CEO Katja Iversen.  She, and the conference, took a strident position on the abortion issue: it is impossible to discuss women’s health, rights, and wellbeing “without discussing abortion and women’s right to choose.”

In 2014, Women Deliver expanded its work to include gender equality beyond the maternal and reproductive health area.  At its 2019 conference in Vancouver, Canada, there was an increased emphasis on LGBTQ issues, and the conference report asserted “when Women Deliver uses the terms “girls” and “women,” it is wholeheartedly inclusive of transgender girls and women.”

Along with several other SRHR advocacy organizations, Women Deliver faced a racial reckoning in 2020, following accusations of racial discrimination and a toxic workplace by some of its staffers.  Following an investigation, Iversen was ousted as CEO and replaced by Dr. Maliha Khan, originally from Pakistan, in 2022.

Women Deliver’s funding comes from a variety of public and private sources, including the governments of Canada, Denmark, and Switzerland, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the companies Merck, Unilever, P&G, and Johnson & Johnson.

In the decade and a half since its founding, Women Deliver has drifted progressively further from its origins as an organization ostensibly focused on helping women give birth safely.  Instead, it has broadened its mandate to include a wide range of gender-related topics, broadened its definition of “women” to include biological men, and sharpened its hostility toward those who advocate for the protection of the unborn or the traditional family.

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