Blocks Abortion at G7 & Organization of American States
Part 1: U.S. Slaps Down Abortion Language at G7 Negotiations- by Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.: In the lead-up to this year’s G7 summit in Quebec, Canadian officials were explicit: women and children were going to be central, and an essential component of their health and empowerment is abortion. But when the final declarations were released, all language about “reproductive rights” was removed, and, according to Devex, “the U.S. delegation…was responsible for the softer official language.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following the famous example of Sweden, has characterized his government and its foreign policy as “feminist.” He employs quotas to ensure that half his cabinet members are women and imposes regulations on his party to support only pro-abortion policies and candidates. For the first time, as G7 host, Canada established a Gender Equality Advisory Council which submitted its recommendations to integrate gender into the G7’s work. Other inputs included a statement from more than sixty feminists that included a call for an end to the “criminalization or restrictive regulation of abortion.”
The Gender Equality Advisory Council also included abortion in its recommendations, which called for the withdrawal of the U.S. Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy (also called the Mexico City Policy), the provision of abortion as a component of humanitarian assistance, and funding for abortion advocacy, and government-subsidized coverage of abortion.
According to the chairman’s summaries of the discussions, several leaders called for the inclusion of “reproductive rights” language in the official declarations, but this proved impossible without U.S. agreement.
One member of the council is Katja Iversen, president of Women Deliver, which will host its next conference in Canada next year. After the conference ended, Iversen and Canadian foreign minister Marie-Claude Bibeau co-authored an editorial framing the formation of the Gender Equality council as the major outcome of the G7, omitting any mention of the official outcome documents.
One of the council’s two co-chairs was philanthropist Melinda Gates, whose willingness to attach her name to a document with such an extreme pro-abortion message stands in sharp contrast to her prior insistence that her promotion of family planning would be separate from abortion. Using the tagline “no controversy,” Gates drew criticism from feminist groups for “stigmatizing” abortion. Meanwhile, pro-life groups noted her willingness to partner with and fund family planning organizations that are outspoken abortion proponents. Recently, Gates has also been critical of the U.S. Mexico City Policy.
The last time Canada hosted the G7 (then the G8) was in 2010, where then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched the Muskoka Initiative, a global effort to improve maternal and child health around the world—without reference to abortion. This was criticized by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under President Barack Obama, and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Following elections in both the U.S. and Canada, their administrations’ positions on abortion have effectively reversed.
When Harper renewed funding for the Muskoka Initiative in 2014, the backlash over the exclusion of abortion flared up again. At the time, Melinda Gates defended him: “Maternal and child health is on the global health agenda, in part, really, thanks to what Canada did.”
Regarding the abortion controversy, Gates repeated her intention to sidestep it: “I’ve decided not to engage on it publicly—and the Gates Foundation has decided not to fund abortion.”
If the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council’s recommendations are any indication, her reticence to engage on abortion publicly is now a thing of the past.
Part 2: Abortion Lose at Organization of American States - by Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.: Diplomats from the Trump administration intervened at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) last week to reverse a trend toward liberalizing abortion laws throughout the region.
At the 48thGeneral Assembly of the OAS, the United States and Canada are the most influential nations. The United States and Canada were at odds over a passage in the draft resolution referring to “sexual and reproductive health.” Canada tried to make it more explicit in favor of abortion, seeking to add “sexual and reproductive rights” to the resolution under negotiation. Bureaucrats from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights also lobbied for the rights language.
The American Convention on Human Rights says, “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception.” The treaty also says that every human being is a person. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has in recent years used the phrase “in general” to widen the cases in which abortion should be made legal in the region.
In the negotiations underway Paraguay had successfully gotten reference to “sexual and reproductive rights” deleted in the draft document before formal negotiations began last week. Peru said it could accept the term “sexual and reproductive health” however, and so did Argentina, pointing out that the term had appeared in a previous OAS document.
The United States, on the other hand, insisted on deletion of the divisive phrase altogether. On the last day of the two-day negotiation the U.S. delegation added a footnote to the resolution which was in effect a reservation on the section.
In the end, the entire reference to sexual and reproductive health was deleted.
“This is a huge victory for the pro-life movement,” said Neydy Casillas, “It reverses five years’ momentum for the pro-abortion side.” Casillas, an attorney for the public interest law firm ADF International, said another surprise was the deletion of any reference to a controversial advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that would include reference to sexual orientation and gender identity as a category of non-discrimination for the first time in an OAS document.
Paraguay, Guatemala, and St. Lucia opposed the inclusion of the reference and stood firm to the very end despite strong pressure from the Core Group of nations, including Canada, which promoted it. Casillas said the defeat of the Core Group was due to the influence of the United States. This too represented a setback on an agenda that has been making quick progress in the last five years.
Mexico and Canada introduced a new resolution on inclusion and diversity which Casillas says must be monitored in future negotiations to make sure it does not evolve into another divisive document promoting social policies which nations cannot accept.
Marlene Gillette-Ibern, an attorney with Human Life International says that after years of work, the pro-life and pro-family civil society organizations have established a solid presence at the OAS. They are well respected by OAS officials and member State ambassadors, she says. “Our seriousness and arguments in addressing the issues, will continue to open doors for us at the OAS. The kindness and respect we have shown towards members of the anti-life and anti-family organizations have earned us our respect from them in turn, for the most part.”
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Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Research & Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the International Organizations Research Group at the Center for Family & Human Rights.
Tags: Blocks Abortion at G7, Organization of American States, Rebecca Oas, Rebecca Oas, Center for Family & Human Rights To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, following the famous example of Sweden, has characterized his government and its foreign policy as “feminist.” He employs quotas to ensure that half his cabinet members are women and imposes regulations on his party to support only pro-abortion policies and candidates. For the first time, as G7 host, Canada established a Gender Equality Advisory Council which submitted its recommendations to integrate gender into the G7’s work. Other inputs included a statement from more than sixty feminists that included a call for an end to the “criminalization or restrictive regulation of abortion.”
The Gender Equality Advisory Council also included abortion in its recommendations, which called for the withdrawal of the U.S. Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance policy (also called the Mexico City Policy), the provision of abortion as a component of humanitarian assistance, and funding for abortion advocacy, and government-subsidized coverage of abortion.
According to the chairman’s summaries of the discussions, several leaders called for the inclusion of “reproductive rights” language in the official declarations, but this proved impossible without U.S. agreement.
One member of the council is Katja Iversen, president of Women Deliver, which will host its next conference in Canada next year. After the conference ended, Iversen and Canadian foreign minister Marie-Claude Bibeau co-authored an editorial framing the formation of the Gender Equality council as the major outcome of the G7, omitting any mention of the official outcome documents.
One of the council’s two co-chairs was philanthropist Melinda Gates, whose willingness to attach her name to a document with such an extreme pro-abortion message stands in sharp contrast to her prior insistence that her promotion of family planning would be separate from abortion. Using the tagline “no controversy,” Gates drew criticism from feminist groups for “stigmatizing” abortion. Meanwhile, pro-life groups noted her willingness to partner with and fund family planning organizations that are outspoken abortion proponents. Recently, Gates has also been critical of the U.S. Mexico City Policy.
The last time Canada hosted the G7 (then the G8) was in 2010, where then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper launched the Muskoka Initiative, a global effort to improve maternal and child health around the world—without reference to abortion. This was criticized by then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who served under President Barack Obama, and Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Following elections in both the U.S. and Canada, their administrations’ positions on abortion have effectively reversed.
When Harper renewed funding for the Muskoka Initiative in 2014, the backlash over the exclusion of abortion flared up again. At the time, Melinda Gates defended him: “Maternal and child health is on the global health agenda, in part, really, thanks to what Canada did.”
Regarding the abortion controversy, Gates repeated her intention to sidestep it: “I’ve decided not to engage on it publicly—and the Gates Foundation has decided not to fund abortion.”
If the G7 Gender Equality Advisory Council’s recommendations are any indication, her reticence to engage on abortion publicly is now a thing of the past.
Part 2: Abortion Lose at Organization of American States - by Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D.: Diplomats from the Trump administration intervened at a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) last week to reverse a trend toward liberalizing abortion laws throughout the region.
At the 48thGeneral Assembly of the OAS, the United States and Canada are the most influential nations. The United States and Canada were at odds over a passage in the draft resolution referring to “sexual and reproductive health.” Canada tried to make it more explicit in favor of abortion, seeking to add “sexual and reproductive rights” to the resolution under negotiation. Bureaucrats from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights also lobbied for the rights language.
The American Convention on Human Rights says, “Every person has the right to have his life respected. This right shall be protected by law and, in general, from the moment of conception.” The treaty also says that every human being is a person. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has in recent years used the phrase “in general” to widen the cases in which abortion should be made legal in the region.
In the negotiations underway Paraguay had successfully gotten reference to “sexual and reproductive rights” deleted in the draft document before formal negotiations began last week. Peru said it could accept the term “sexual and reproductive health” however, and so did Argentina, pointing out that the term had appeared in a previous OAS document.
The United States, on the other hand, insisted on deletion of the divisive phrase altogether. On the last day of the two-day negotiation the U.S. delegation added a footnote to the resolution which was in effect a reservation on the section.
In the end, the entire reference to sexual and reproductive health was deleted.
“This is a huge victory for the pro-life movement,” said Neydy Casillas, “It reverses five years’ momentum for the pro-abortion side.” Casillas, an attorney for the public interest law firm ADF International, said another surprise was the deletion of any reference to a controversial advisory opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that would include reference to sexual orientation and gender identity as a category of non-discrimination for the first time in an OAS document.
Paraguay, Guatemala, and St. Lucia opposed the inclusion of the reference and stood firm to the very end despite strong pressure from the Core Group of nations, including Canada, which promoted it. Casillas said the defeat of the Core Group was due to the influence of the United States. This too represented a setback on an agenda that has been making quick progress in the last five years.
Mexico and Canada introduced a new resolution on inclusion and diversity which Casillas says must be monitored in future negotiations to make sure it does not evolve into another divisive document promoting social policies which nations cannot accept.
Marlene Gillette-Ibern, an attorney with Human Life International says that after years of work, the pro-life and pro-family civil society organizations have established a solid presence at the OAS. They are well respected by OAS officials and member State ambassadors, she says. “Our seriousness and arguments in addressing the issues, will continue to open doors for us at the OAS. The kindness and respect we have shown towards members of the anti-life and anti-family organizations have earned us our respect from them in turn, for the most part.”
------------------
Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Research & Susan Yoshihara, Ph.D. is Senior Vice President for Research and Director of the International Organizations Research Group at the Center for Family & Human Rights.
Tags: Blocks Abortion at G7, Organization of American States, Rebecca Oas, Rebecca Oas, Center for Family & Human Rights To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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