[According to UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid, obtaining a “reproductive health” target under the maternal health MDG 5 is essential to increasing global legitimacy and funding for the reproductive rights agenda.]
New Approach to Abortion Rights at UN: “Motherhood and Apple Pie”
by Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D
(C-FAM) Abortion rights advocates at the United Nations (UN) are pursuing a new approach – one that avoids mention of abortion, promotes a right to maternal health, and seeks to enforce “reproductive rights” norms among UN member States.
The reason for the shift seems to be an increased confidence among activists and UN officials that they have secured or are close to securing a new international right to abortion. According to statements by Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and others, their confidence has been boosted by winning legal cases, most notably in Colombia where the 2006 constitutional court’s decision to liberalize abortion was based upon the activist’s interpretation of UN treaties.
By creating a new “right” to maternal health over the next several years, advocates can consolidate gains while avoiding scrutiny by opponents. Then, once they are confident the new right is established, they can assert the claim that abortion is part of the new international obligation. A blueprint for the legal dimension of the approach is the “International Initiative on Maternal Mortality and Human Rights.” The initiative was launched in 2007 at a UN conference sponsored by the UN Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health, which includes the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization, the World Bank, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and various abortion rights organizations.
Indicative of the new approach is a recent “shadow report” on Brazil submitted to the committee that monitors the International Convention on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights (ICESCR). Prepared by the abortion rights law firm Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), the report focuses on basic maternal health care such as skilled birth attendants. One UN delegate described the new effort as “the motherhood and apple pie approach to abortion rights.” CRR recently backed its first model “case” in Brazil, sponsoring a complaint brought to the committee that oversees the Women’s Convention (CEDAW) by the family of a woman who died in childbirth which was unrelated to abortion.
In adopting the maternal health approach to abortion rights, advocates rejected more open approaches, such as the pursuit of a new UN treaty. A 2003 internal memo outlining CRR’s legal strategy for the next 5 years stated that, “If, at the end of 2007, we determine that the existing norms are proving inadequate (as evidenced by the interpretations we seek) then we would reconsider whether to undertake a concerted effort to secure a new international treaty or addendum to address this gap.” The memo, obtained by the Friday Fax and published in the U.S. Congressional Record, also stated that this should signal a shift from creating new norms on abortion rights to focusing on “enforcement mechanisms” at the international, regional and national level.
An important part of enforcement is linking reproductive rights to maternal health in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a link UNICEF and UNFPA claim already exists but which UN member states refute. According to UNFPA executive director Thoraya Obaid, obtaining a “reproductive health” target under the maternal health MDG 5 is essential to increasing global legitimacy and funding for the reproductive rights agenda.
[Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. writes for C-FAM. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (www.c-fam.org). This article appears with permission.]
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PREVIOUS POST – *Tying Abortion to Millennium Development Goal #5 – UPDATE:
New Report Details Fudged WHO Numbers on Maternal Morality
(C-FAM) A newly released research paper identifies structural flaws in United Nations (UN) data collection and analysis of global maternal health, finding that UN maternal heath policies based on the bad data are jeopardizing women’s health in the developing world. The paper, “Removing the Roadblocks from Achieving MDG 5 by Improving the Data on Maternal Mortality,” by Donna Harrison, M.D., was published by the International Organizations Research Group (IORG) [IORG is a division of C-FAM, publisher of the Friday Fax]. The paper shows how the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guidelines to UN member states require nations to collect faulty data while at the same time pressuring them to enact UN policies such as liberalizing abortion laws based on that data. Read more.
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PREVIOUS POST – Tying Abortion to Millennium Development Goal #5:
by Fredi D’Alessio
Here we go again.
Yet another report (Induced abortion: estimated rates and trends worldwide) crafted to promote “reproductive health” (a term that is frequently used by UN agencies to promote legal abortion) and tying that goal to Millennium Development Goal #5, Improve Maternal Health.
Although it is true that the MDGs do not include the controversial issue of “reproductive health”, after having done research for my commentary on the Millennium Development Goals, I am no less concerned about the underlying goal of many UN agencies and NGO. I believe the pro-life community should be made fully aware of their agenda and their perspective of MDG #5. If you haven’t yet read my exposé and all of the documents referenced therein, I urge you to do so. As an addendum to the commentary I believe we need to advocate for a new MDG and renumber the others making the new one the first and fundamental goal. That MDG should emphatically charge the worldwide community to respect and protect every human being’s right to life from conception to natural death. Let’s face it, the agenda to promote legal abortion and contraception worldwide will not cease.
Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States, said in the general debate of the recent 62nd session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, “We must work to stop and reverse the culture of death embraced by some social and legal structures that try to make the suppression of life acceptable by disguising it as a medical or social service.” Thus, the MDG I proposed above should be the foundation for all the others.
The Archbishop added, “In this sense, the abolition of the death penalty should also be seen as a consequence of full respect for the right to life.” The proponents of population control desire to invoke the sentence of death upon all unwanted (by them) children in their mothers’ wombs and suppress the lives of those as yet not conceived.
I implore you to read “The Millennium Development Goals and the Critical Next Step for the Catholic Church“ and all of the resources referenced therein to learn for yourself how serious this issue is and share this information with others.
Below are three articles. Be sure to read the last one that exposes the fallacy of reports on the numbers of abortions. Regardless of what the actual numbers are, the consequences of this holocaust are immeasurable.
