Biden Promises to Scrap Federal Pro-life Laws Before Human Rights Council

By Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | March 12, 2021

The Biden administration just welcomed the calls of foreign governments to scrap federal laws that prohibit the use of U.S. foreign assistance to fund abortion, gaslighting the American People and frittering away U.S. Sovereignty in the process. Not even Obama was this radical.

No less than 14 countries attacked U.S. pro-life countries in the Human Rights Council because of U.S. pro-life laws and policies that don’t allow U.S. taxpayer funds to be used for abortions at home and abroad. Instead of defending U.S. law and the prerogative of the American people, the Biden administration welcomed these foreign attacks on U.S. sovereignty in written replies handed.

This is a seismic shift in Democrat abortion policy. My colleague Rebecca Oas, reported on this development in the Friday Fax this week. I only want to emphasize here how significant this is.

The 14 countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France,  Iceland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) called on the U.S. to “ensure access to sexual and reproductive health” and “remove restrictions” on abortion funding in U.S. law and policy in the context of the Universal Periodic Review.

The Biden administration “supported” each of these 14 recommendations. To “support” human rights claims such as these in the context of the Universal Periodic Review, means to accept that the claims are well-founded and to promise to do something about it.

It should be clear that what these 14 countries mean by “sexual and reproductive health and rights” is abortion and nothing else. The U.S. is by far the largest funder of family planning, HIV/AIDS, and maternal and child health internationally. To suggest that the U.S. is not doing enough to “ensure access to sexual and reproductive health” is ludicrous, unless one means abortion. And indeed, a couple of countries were more explicit and did not hide behind euphemisms.

Most forthcoming was the Netherlands, which explicitly called on the executive branch of the U.S. government to undermine federal law as enacted by the American People. Here is the recommendation:

Repeal the Helms Amendment and the Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance Policy and, in the interim, allow United States foreign assistance to be used, at a minimum, for safe abortion in cases of rape, incest and life endangerment.

The Biden administration supported this recommendation among the other 12, essentially committing itself, before the entire world, to undermine federal law. And by implication, the U.S. government agreed that restrictions on U.S. funding for abortion are a violation of human rights. This would include the Helms Amendment, the Hyde Amendment, the Siljander Amendment, and the Mexico City Policy. Laws and policies blocking U.S. funding for abortion abroad are supported by over 76% of Americans, according to a Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll conducted in January this year.

Sadly, gaslighting the American People and frittering away U.S. sovereignty isn’t the worst part of what the Biden administration just did. The Biden administration effectively told the whole world that abortion is an international human right.

The Universal Periodic Review is a cyclical mechanism through which the Human Rights Council reviews the human rights record of every UN member state. The mechanism allows countries to ask questions when a country’s human rights record is being reviewed. And the country under review has an opportunity to respond.

According to the mandate of the Human Rights Council, the questions asked in the context of the Universal Periodic Review should be based on the “human rights obligations and commitments” of countries under international law and policy. The 14 countries who attacked U.S. pro-life laws acted on the premise that the U.S. has an obligation or commitment to “ensure access” to abortion as part of “sexual and reproductive health.”

Therefore, when the Biden administration supported the 14 claims against pro-life laws, the U.S. government basically agreed that there is an obligation to ensure access to abortion under international human rights law or at very least that the U.S. government at some point in the past made a human rights commitment to fund abortion and facilitate access to abortion as part of “sexual and reproductive health.” This is an absurd position that was not even supported by the Obama administration.

The U.S. State Department did not “support” the same claims during the last Periodic Review of the U.S. government’s human rights record in the Human Rights Council in 2011. He merely “noted” them, which is the same as saying that the U.S. government disagrees with the claims and does not believe it has an obligation to fund abortion.

Interestingly, the Biden administration took the opposite position of the U.S. government under the Trump administration only a few weeks ago in the same Universal Periodic Review cycle.

During the live meeting of the review cycle in November 2020, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Robert Destro answered the attacks on U.S. pro-life laws saying, “Abortion is legal in the United States, and the U.S. supports both domestic and international programs for women’s health at a very high level. But we do reject the proposition that abortion is a matter of international human rights, and affirms that all lives, both born and unborn, should be protected.”

Following that November meeting, all the recommendations received by the U.S. government in Geneva were compiled and transmitted in writing in December. The same U.S. State Department personnel in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor who worked with Destro only weeks ago then turned around and submitted written replies taking the opposite position.

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