Blatant bias against pro-life and pro-family NGO’s at UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW60).

The 60^th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women took place at UN headquarters in New York  from March 14^th to March 24^th finishing around 11.00PM on Holy Thursday. There has always been bias against pro-life and pro-family NGO’s at the UN however this year’s session contained a new and pernicious level of bias, not previously experienced by pro-life and pro-family NGO’s. 

This new level of bias first showed it ugly head in the preparations for the session when the pro-life and family NGO’s applied for parallel events and were told that only one event would be allowed per organization and then were either refused outright or given slots on the most unsuitable dates and times. Contrast that with the slots, times, dates and numbers of events given to pro-abortion organizations many of which were given multiple slots for their parallel events, together with more appropriate dates and times. Radical Feminist organizations such as the Asian-Pacific resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) for example were given approval for three events  -  March 15, 2:30 pm, March 21, 10:30 am, March 21 4:30 pm, while the Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) were given 6 events – March 16  8:30 am, March 16 12:30 pm, March 17 6:15 pm, March 21 10:30 am, March 21 4:30 pm, March 24 2:30 pm. 

Second the  CSW approved NGO committee issued a publication for NGO’s condemning what they describe as negativity and yes, you have guessed it, negativity consists of the pro-life and family agenda. The following is and extract from the publication,  'NGOs and Women’s Human Rights Activists at the UN and CSW', which on page 23 sets out some of the so called negative trends that in the view of the committee have impeded their progress:
 

• Narrowing the concept of gender to only refer to women and men

• Dissent between pro-life and pro-choice groups

• Opposition to Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, in particular sexual rights

• Opposition to “sexual orientation and gender identity” or (SOGI)

• Opposition to “diverse forms of families”

• Opposition to Comprehensive Sexuality Education.

Thirdly and perhaps more serious than the other problems was that a new level of inflexibility entered into the inter governmental negotiations and despite strong representations from many pro-life NGO’s the CSW outcome document, Women’s Empowerment and the Link to Sustainable Development, (Draft) Agreed Conclusions, contains language aimed at increasing access to contraception and abortion and teaching children inappropriate so called comprehensive sexuality education. The health paragraph also includes a reference to controversial sexual rights.

'UN Women' Publish Radical Strategy Document

The recently-established UN agency, ‘UN Women’, has shown its true colours in the publication of its first major publication which was issued two weeks ago.

“Progress of the World’s Women: In Pursuit of Justice" is the title of the publication, whose object it is to report the ‘progress’ made worldwide in advancing women’s rights ‘through changing legal norms and ending discriminatory provisions of national laws.’   

Photograph shows Ms. Michelle Bachalet, former President of Chile, who is the first UN Under Secretary General and Executive Director of UN Women

The agency works to change individual nations’ laws by bringing international influence to bear through the recommendations of committees of CEDAW and other treaty monitoring bodies – probably also including the Universal Periodic Review of human rights to which Ireland is obliged to submit next October.

‘In Pursuit of Justice’ states, among other things, that the ‘criminal prohibition of abortion in all circumstances violates women’s fundamental rights’, and it talks of the need to confirm ‘women’s right to reproductive health, including safe abortion.’   So called 'achievements' of the international pro-abortion lobby throughout the world, notably in Columbia, Nepal, Kenya, etc., are praised and celebrated.

Relying on ‘recommendations’ made by the CEDAW committee worldwide, ‘In Pursuit of Justice’ encourages extending the scope of legal advocacy and international influence in the realm of the family, which has to date been looked on as being ‘outside justice’.   Legal advocacy groups and an individual nation’s ratification of CEDAW are ‘key tools’ in ensuring that religious or other laws or practices can be brought into conformity with ‘international human rights standards’.

Oh yes – and besides advocating the provision of ‘legal abortion’ in countries where it is not already available, the UN Women’s ‘In Pursuit of Justice’ also wants ‘lesbian, transgender, and bisexual women’ to have the protection of the law and ‘access to services’.

Times Article accepts abortion kills a human being but justifies it

The frank admission by a Times columist of her acceptance that abortion is the killing of a human being but that in her view this is a less important than a woman’s right to control her fertility is shocking to say the least.

Antonia Senior in an article in the Times on Wednesday June 30th concedes that life begins at conception but believes that killing of unborn babies is secondary to the right of a woman to control her fertility .

"What seems increasingly clear to me is that, in the absence of an objective definition, a foetus is a life by any subjective measure. My daughter was formed at conception, and all the barely understood alchemy that turned the happy accident of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg into my darling, personality-packed toddler took place at that moment. She is so unmistakably herself, her own person — forged in my womb, not by my mothering.

"Any other conclusion is a convenient lie that we on the pro-choice side of the debate tell ourselves to make us feel better about the action of taking a life. That little seahorse shape floating in a willing womb is a growing miracle of life. In a resentful womb it is not a life, but a foetus — and thus killable."

Despite the fact that she accepts that abortion is killing she describes it as the lesser evil. In other words a woman’s so called right to choose trumps the right to life,you cannot separate women’s rights from their right to fertility control. The single biggest factor in women’s liberation according to Ms Senior

was our newly found ability to impose our will on our biology. Abortion would have been legal for millennia had it been men whose prospects and careers were put on sudden hold by an unexpected pregnancy. The mystery pondered on many a girls’ night out is how on earth men, bless them, managed to hang on to political and cultural hegemony for so long. The only answer is that they are not in hock to their biology as much as we are. Look at a map of the world and the right to abortion on request correlates pretty exactly with the expectation of a life unburdened by misogyny.

Chillingly Ms Senior says she would stake her life on a woman’s so called right over the right to life of the unborn : “If you are willing to die for a cause, you must be prepared to kill for it, too.” She says

See comment by SPUC Director John Smeaton and comment by the Christian Institute

Catholic Church under attack

As the Catholic Church marked the 80th anniversary of the Vatican State the dissident pro-abortion group "Catholics" for a Free Choice (CFFC) has once again used the opportunity to renew its attacks on the Church even claiming falsely that the Holy See is duplicitous and that when it participates as a state in the international system, religious freedom is endangered, women's lives are placed at risk and public health efforts are hampered.

In reality the truth is the exact opposite, not only does the Catholic Church uphold religious freedom and the value of all human life, it provides practical support through its many agencies for women whose lives would otherwise be endangered.

Jon O’Brien of CFFC in a statement says that the Vatican’s claims to statehood can change depending on the circumstances and recently it “claimed statehood to ask for diplomatic immunity from sex abuse cases in the US while denying statehood to refuse co-operation with the International Criminal Court”.

The statement also says the Holy See is represented at these meetings by the hierarchy and blatently claims their views are in no way reflective of the views of the one billion-plus Catholics the world over. What nonsense.

The statement directly attacks the status of the Holy See at the UN and seeks to have it treated as a religious institution not a state.

This is not the first time the dissident group sought to have the international community review the position of the Holy See and appears to be a revival of its earlier "See Change" campaign to have the Holy See expelled from the United Nations.

The use of the name Catholic as a platform for promoting the taking of innocent human life and to ridicule the Church is offensive to all Catholics and the actions of CFFC prompted the US Bishops conference (NCCB) in 2000 to issue the following statement,

a group calling itself Catholics for a Free Choice has been publicly supporting abortion while claiming it speaks as an authentic Catholic voice. That claim is false. In fact, the group's activity is directed to rejection and distortion of Catholic teaching about the respect and protection due to defenseless unborn human life.

Women's Rights at the UN

I attended the first week of the 8th session of Human Rights Council in Geneva last week, on behalf of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. The session included an 6 hour debate on Thursday 5th June on women's human rights and I was able to make an intervention on the subject of abortion and maternal mortality. Due to the number of speakers however the available time slot was only two minutes. (Note: to view the webcast linked to above, you will require RealPlayer).

Mr Chairman, distinguished panellists, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children supports this important initiative. In dealing with maternal mortality however undue focus is placed by some governments and powerful international NGO’s on ideological issues rather than authentic human rights. This is most evident in the ongoing efforts by some organisations to make abortion a human right despite the objections of many countries. This is a distraction from genuine human rights infringements and not only undermines legitimate human rights campaigns but wastes time, effort and scarce resources. The international community has always rejected attempts to ‘hijack’ human rights initiatives in this way. The ideologies I speak of are hostile to the life of the child before birth and must be confronted and shown to be immoral, unethical, inadequate and detrimental to the future population of all nations, their economic viability and their social cohesion. Misleading terms such as ‘sexual and reproductive health’ are being abused by some countries, various UN committees and powerful NGO’s in order to force other countries to introduce abortion. When these attempts are exposed and result in failure, pro-abortionists find new ways of attempting to do so. One of the most recent abuses is the suggestion that legalizing abortion will reduce maternal mortality. The available evidence suggests that the reverse is true, as first world countries without legal abortion have a much lower level of maternal mortality. Ireland, for example, has the lowest maternal mortality in the world while the UK, which legalised abortion over 40 years ago, has a maternal mortality level eight times the Irish level and the US level is approximately 11 times higher. The blatant falsehood that maternal mortality will be reduced by the introduction of legalized abortion is responsible for the killing of countless babies and the needless deaths of women through the misdirection of scarce resources. The major factors in reducing maternal mortality include ante and post-natal care, the availability of midwives and birth attendants, medical interventions such as assisted delivery and Caesarean section, decent sanitation, clean water and the ability to provide powerful antibiotics and blood transfusions where necessary.

Monsignor Bert Van Megan made an excellent intervention on behalf of the Holy See and told the meeting that abortion is not a human right and that no UN treaty or convention makes such a claim. He also reminded the meeting that the Convention on the Rights of the Child says that "the child, by reason of his physical and mental immaturity, needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth."