NEW YORK, (C-Fam) Civil society NGOs were allowed to make statements to the just-concluded UN Commission on Population and Development (CPD). Many were delivered by frustrated abortion activists but included at least one call to defend the unborn child.
Stefano Gennarini, J.D., delivered a statement on behalf of C-Fam, (publisher of the Friday Fax), calling for maternal health, not abortion. “There is nothing healthy about abortion,” he said. “Health care preserves and improves life. It does not intentionally dispense death.”
Gennarini noted that pregnancy and birth should not be treated as diseases, but as natural processes that sometimes encounter complications requiring treatment. He called for good nutrition, particularly during the “first thousand days” that are critical for a child’s development. This framing is widely used in public health and refers to the period from conception to the child’s second birthday.
“We cannot speak about the vital importance of the first thousand days of life, including the time a person spends developing in the womb—and at the same time speak about intentionally ending the same life through abortion,” said Gennarini.
The statement addressed the importance of the language being negotiated at the Commission. When the term “sexual and reproductive health” entered UN policy, it was only with caveats that abortion is not an internationally agreed-upon right, and that it is something tragic and to be avoided where possible, and never to be promoted as a method of family planning.
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“Member states recognized that countries presumptively protect life in the womb through legal restrictions on abortion and that countries must in any case provide women with alternatives to abortion,” said Gennarini.
Nevertheless, in the three decades that followed, the UN agencies tasked with carrying out the agreed agenda have interpreted their mandate to include pressuring countries on abortion and “gender-affirming” health services under the umbrella of “sexual and reproductive health.” These agencies have also adopted terminology preferred by activists but rejected in intergovernmental negotiations, such as “sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
“When painstakingly negotiated language is rendered meaningless, we have incoherence,” said Gennarini. “When health policy calls for health care for an unborn child and the means to end that same life for any reason, we have incoherence. When UN programs for women claim that men can be women, we have incoherence. Given such incoherence, is it any wonder that donors are withdrawing funding from multilateral institutions?”
“Multilateral institutions are at a fork in the road,” he warned.
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The statement was delivered before the final day of the commission, where the outcome would be determined. Recalling that numerous CPDs in recent years had failed to reach consensus due to controversial issues like abortion and gender language, Gennarini pointed out that “success depends on consensus and coherence.”
On the last day of the commission, the negotiators once again failed to reach consensus. Several delegates pointed specifically to the “sexual and reproductive health” language as controversial and called for “strong family policy” and for “gender” to be understood as referring to the biological sexes of male and female.
“Sexual and reproductive health language has always been controversial,” remarked the representative of the Holy See.
Editor's note: Rebecca Oas writes for C-Fam. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. This article appears with permission.
