As Susan Yoshihara noted in her post last week, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) hosted its Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean recently.

The resolutions at this summit used promises of economic development as a platform to promote a sexual rights agenda.  In the outcome declaration known as “The Brasilia Consensus,” Brazilian president Inacio Lula da Silva promised to propose legislation across the region to legalize abortion. The document also called for universal access to “reproductive health” and the specific promotion of contraceptives.

The pro-life Movimento Defensa de la Vida pointed out the fact that there is hardly a “consensus” on this issue. In most of Latin America (excluding Cuba), the general populace is overwhelmingly against abortion, they noted.   In a study cited in the Buenos Aires Herald, between 66% and 80% of citizens in four Latin American countries are against abortion. The Herald reports that abortion access is restricted by law in all countries across the region (excluding Cuba), except to save the mother’s life or cases of rape or incest.

In a news article posted today, Dr. Alexandra Colen, a member of the Belgian House of Representatives who was an official delegate for Belgian at the most recent Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), writes about the abortion agenda being pushed by other states during the negotiations on a text regarding maternal mortality.

Colen gives an eye-opening account and characterizes the negotiations as "a battle of words, psychology and endurance" which were chaired by the United States - a woman Colen describes as a "hard, impatient woman" who "would have rammed her text down the negotiators' throats if she could."  

She writes that the aim of the US and its allies - including the European Union, Australia, Canada, Sweden and Switzerland - was to gain ground on the ideological battlefield by including references to "sexual and reproductive rights" in the text, i.e. to include the right to unlimited access to contraception and abortion in the recommendations of the UN (on maternal mortality!) to the governments of the world."

Colen surmises that at this year's CSW, "the issue was not the plight of ill and dying mothers, but the promotion of a general acceptance of abortion as a form of healthcare."

Yesterday at an event organized by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) at the UN, a fresh faced law student from Ave Maria University stood up and asked simply if IPPF included abstinence education it its "comprehensive sexual education" programs in Latin America. Knocked off guard, the representative from the pro-abortion group Ipas literally wriggled then regrouped and told her: "Abstinence is not 100% effective for preventing pregnancy, so we would only recommend abstinence with condoms."

Giggles all around.

Next a woman identifying herself as a lesbian activist stood up to say that the movement needs to be honest in its aims. "Our opponents say that sexual education will destroy the moral fiber of society. They are right. Sexual education destroys the moral of virginity, they say. I say, 'good riddance.'" Applause from the panel and half the audience.

The panel, called "Young Women and Abortion," was typical of the NGO events taking place at UN headquarters this week at the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

The representative from the world's leading purveyor of sexual education for children, SEICUS, explained matter-of-factly that sexual rights are international human rights just like the right to life and free speech.

Sexual rights are grounded, she said, in three things: two general comments from treaty monitoring bodies (one from the committee that monitors the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and one from the committee monitoring the Convention on the Rights of the Child), and technical guidance contained in the Beijing Platform for Action). Never mind that none of these are binding on nations. Never mind that general comments are only the interpretations of a few UN bureaucrats. In fact, when another law student in the audience pointed this out, the SEICUS rep successfully ducked citing lack of time.

The SEICUS representative told what she called a heart-breaking story about a 16 year old girl named Fatima from Morocco who said, "I didn't know you could get pregnant doing that." I queried, "Is there any law forbidding parents from telling their children about how babies are made? Why the need for a new human right?" An agitated member of the audience informed the IPPF expert that she might want to enlighten me about the fact that not all parents will talk to their children about these issues. The government must step in to give them their rights!

Then, in what is a sad but perennial phenomenon at CSW, two earnest women from developing countries stood up in turn to support the need for sexual education but only with local collaboration. Their remarks showed how attempts at compromise with ideological purity fall flat. "You cannot just go in and talk to girls about this stuff without first going through the parents," one said. And another: "We have culture and tradition, aside from religion, that should be used when dealing with this issue." They seemed to want the content but not the structure.

But the structure of sexual rights IS the content. Circumventing the parents is the only way to ensure that children will be indoctrinated with the purest form of the Western-style message: sex for adolescents whenever and with whomever, without consequence.

When the panel enthusiastically said -- yes, yes! -- using religious institutions is the latest and best initiative they are pursuing, they did not in any way intimate that they would allow the churches any control over the message.

The pro-life conservative law students and the radical leftist, however, had no such crossed communications. They were in perfect concert about what what was really going on: supporting sexual rights as human rights and supporting traditional faith and family are mutually exclusive. Compromises with sexual rights orthodoxy leads only to silliness such as "Abstinence, but only with condoms."

 

What is striking about US statements at the UN these days is their woeful tone of longing for the good old days under Bill Clinton -- the era of rights revolution and hurly-burly UN conferences.

Typical of Obama-era statements is a line beginning, "As Secretary of State Clinton said, when she represented the US during (fill in the name of the Clinton-era meeting and year) as first lady..." Yesterday's statement at the ongoing Commission on Social Development was even gloomier, since the official had to quote Al Gore.

But in the Gore quote is the clue to what they yearn for: a "series of great UN global conferences represents an effort by the entire world to think through the principles and the practical requirements for the creation of [a better] world."

The world realized, in the hangover of the 2000s, that it had almost made horrible mistakes, like declaring abortion a human right. Time will tell whether the Obama team will get their own chance to change the world in today's more subdued climate, or will have to settle for more "us, too" at the UN.

The Washington Times ran a story yesterday that has become, at long last, more prominent in mainstream media over the last year: the connection between abortion and human slavery.

Specifically, evidence is mounting that sex selective abortion in China has a direct causal effect on increased human trafficking of women and girls. I was pleased to see quoted Mark Lagon, former ambassador for these issues at the State Department during the Bush administration. He now works on this issue full time as head of the Polaris Project in Washington.

The Bush administration, along with South Korea, valiantly attempted to get the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) to recognize this scandal in the outcome document of their 2007 meeting. Pressure from China, India, and the European Union blocked the resolution, resulting in a watered-down reference to sex selection without mentioning abortion at all.

The fifteenth anniversary of the Beijing Platform for Action (POA), so touted by abortion proponents at the UN, will be the subject of the upcoming meeting CSW in New York this March. The POA mentions the problem of sex selection some seven times. As the evidence mounts that abortion in particular is leading to the enslavement of women and girls in Asia, it will be telling to see whether this year's political outcome document mentions it even once.

C-FAM has finalized its team of Burke Fellows who will be helping us lobby for life and family at the upcoming Commission on the Status of Women this March. Over 3,000 individuals representing feminist groups are expected to descend on UN headquarters for this important meeting.  

We welcome 22 individuals from Ave Maria Law school to the Burke Fellowship class of 2010: Benjamin Barrientes, Majel Braden, Jonathan Cojuanco, Gifty Duah-Boakye, Anna Govier, Royce Hood, Elise Kenney, Melvin Laurel, Raymond Lazowski, Grace Lin, David Manni, Patrecia Ming, Allison Oi, Steven Pawlayshyn, Tamara Riadi, Jennifer Rowan, John Shea, Catherine Statler, Mateusz Szymanski, Preston Talanda-Fisher, Dave Tomaino and Jeffrey Wiggins.

These 22 students will join other Burke Fellows from Christendom College, the University of Delaware, St. Thomas Law School and the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

Today C-FAM named 15 students from Christendom College as Burke Fellows for 2010. These individuals will help C-FAM fight for life and family at the United Nations next March at the Commission on the Status of Women.

Congratulations to Tyler Ament, Naomi Anderson, Shelagh Bolger, Vincent D'Agostino, Steven Ginski, Emily Jaroma, Timothy Lanahan, Tyler Anne Lowe, Jonathan Minick, Jarrod Mooney, Paul Nangurai, Alan Ng, Krystal Schuetz, Dennis Toscano and Bonnie Wunderlich!

Preparations are underway for next March's annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) meeting. Thousands of participants from across the globe will be coming to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Conference on Women.

At the original Beijing Conference in 1995 and at the five year review session in 2000, delegations fought over the abortion issue in closed-door, all-night negotiating sessions.  Much to the disappointment of abortion advocates, these attempts were unsuccessful.  Longtime UN pro-life lobbyists are anticipating another push by radical feminist to make abortion an internationally recognized human right.

At an informal briefing on the CSW at the UN today, delegations hammered out logistics for the meeting, including addressing questions regarding the final conference outcome document, thematic panels and NGO participation.

C-FAM is also making its own preparations for this important meeting. This week, C-FAM is finalizing its team of Burke Fellows to help defend life and family at the UN in March.