NRL News
Page 12
October 2009
Volume 36
Issue 10

Obama Administration Wastes No Time Picking Up Where
Clinton Administration Left Off at the United Nations

By Jeanne Head, R.N.

When the pro-abortion Obama Administration took office in January, National Right to Life and our Pro-Life and Pro-Family Coalition colleagues at the UN braced ourselves for the most daunting challenges since the Clinton Administration.

Starting with the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, we have so far been successful in thwarting the establishment of abortion as a fundamental human right worldwide—a priority on the Clinton Agenda for Cairo and beyond.

We soon learned that we were right to be concerned with the new President. The Obama Administration wasted no time in picking up the Clinton pro-abortion agenda. The latest manifestations occurred during a speech by the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Susan E. Rice, delivered at Howard University School of Law on October 8, 2009, and by the actions of the U.S. Delegation at the Human Rights Council in Geneva on October 2, 2009.

During her speech at Howard, Ambassador Rice proclaimed that over the past nine months “the United States has taken a fresh look at our positions across the board, including some policies that left us and others scratching their heads to understand what we objected to—policies that failed to advance our interests or our values. So we have taken concrete steps in a new direction. We have changed course ... .”

Among these “concrete steps” to advance U.S. “interests and values” she cited the following:

* Rescinding the Mexico City Policy which she inaccurately characterized as barring “U.S. assistance to programs that support family planning and reproductive health services.” The Mexico City policy denied funds only to those family planning organizations that perform or promote abortions.

* “Stopped withholding con-tributions to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA)” but failed to mention that the U.S. has withheld these funds because of evidence that the UNFPA is involved in forced abortion programs in China.

* “... no longer reflexively op-pose mentions of reproductive health.” The Obama Administration interprets “reproductive health” to include abortion, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made clear in testimony at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing April 22. This is in sharp contrast to the general understanding at the UN and to the Bush Administration’s interpretation. During the last eight years the U.S. delegation made frequent interventions stating that it was the U.S.’s understanding that reproductive health does not include abortion or constitute support, endorsement, or promotion of abortion.

* No longer balking “at any reference to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women” (CEDAW) which the U.S. has not and should not ratify. The word abortion does not appear in the text, but CEDAW has been creatively interpreted by official bodies—ranging from the European Parliament to the United Nations CEDAW Committee (the UN committee responsible for enforcing compliance to the Convention)—to condemn limitations on abortion on grounds that any restrictions on abortion are per se discrimination against women.

The CEDAW Committee has consistently exceeded its mandate and used it as a basis for pressuring at least 80 different UN member nations to weaken or repeal laws protecting unborn children.

In Geneva, on October 2, 2009, the U.S. Delegation voted against a resolution, “Promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms through a better understanding of traditional values of humankind,” adopted by the Human Rights Council (HRC). The reason the U.S. gave for voting against the resolution was that the concept of traditional values was undefined.

The resolution, sponsored by the Russian Federation, represents a rare break from the long-term strategy of attempting to dictate newly conceived so-called rights on everyone through the UN. It was strenuously opposed by the countries that are trying to impose their own values on mankind. The resolution was carried by 26 votes to 15 against with 6 abstentions.

This resolution, which cites the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, calls for the holding of a workshop in 2010 for an exchange of views on how a better understanding of traditional values of humankind underpinning international human rights norms and standards can contribute to the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Isn’t that the kind of dialogue that candidate Obama said he wanted to have with the rest of the world?

Jeanne E. Head, R.N. is NRLC’s vice president for international affairs and UN representative. NRL’s Educational Trust Fund has Special Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) as a Non Governmental Organization (NGO)—a subsidiary body of the UN General Assembly.

Sidebar

The battle to establish abortion as a fundamental human right worldwide began in earnest with the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) when it became evident that the Clinton Administration and others intended to use this conference as a vehicle to do just that.

In March 1994, before the final preparatory meeting for the conference, a Clinton Administration “action cable” was uncovered and made public. The “action cable” which was sent to every U.S. ambassador and envoy abroad by the Clinton State Department directed them to lobby with “senior diplomatic interventions” in support of U.S. priorities for the ICPD. These priorities included access to safe, legal, and voluntary abortion as a “fundamental right of all women.”

Further, on April 5, 1994, White House Spokeswoman Dee Dee Myers stated in regard to the Cairo Conference that the Clinton Administration believes that abortion is “part of the overall approach to population control.”