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UN Conference on Disabled Draws Fire for “Sexual and Reproductive Health Services”

"Fundamental Reproductive Right Is the Right to Be Born"

By Peter J. Smith

UNITED NATIONS, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A United Nations conference on the rights of the disabled has ignited in heated debate over the inclusion of “sexual and reproductive health services” in a forthcoming treaty on the rights of disabled persons. The language included in the International Treaty on Disabilities drew condemnation from a number of nations as too controversial, since it has often been used by radical feminists and the abortion lobby to impose anti-life agenda on pro-life nations.

According to C-FAM’s Friday Fax, a coalition of 23 nations led by Nicaragua objected to the phrase “sexual and reproductive health services” among the rights enumerated in the document on account of the phrase being far too vague, undefined, and often a source of controversy. Governments of other nations including United States, Honduras, Egypt, Costa Rica, Bangladesh, Tanzania, Tunisia, Qatar, Kenya, the Philippines, and (oddly enough!) even liberal Norway agreed with Nicaragua’s objection and requested the language be excised from the document.

However, C-FAM reports in the Friday Fax that regardless of the opposition to the language, the committee chair, Ambassador Donald McKay of New Zealand, refused to drop the language immediately and accede to the established UN tradition of consensus, where language found objectionable by a country is often removed. Instead, Ambassador McKay insisted the delegates must continue debating the language favored by the European Union, Canada, Peru, Cuba, and Brazil. At one point an Egyptian delegate chastised Ambassador McKay for blatant partiality.

Often the invented right to “sexual and reproductive health services” has generated controversy with anti-life non-governmental organizations and UN committees using the language to coerce pro-life governments into legalizing abortion. Although the UN has never officially defined the phrase in a ‘hard-law’ treaty, many nations including the Holy See, are worried that the vagueness of the language will be used to override nations’ pro-life legislation by those professing an anti-life anti-family ideology.

Last Wednesday, the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC) objected to the language agreeing with the Holy See that “while this is a convention on rights and disabilities, reproductive rights is a wide open term (and a contradiction).”

“The fundamental reproductive right is the right to be born. Life itself is the preeminent good beyond any contingencies or circumstances for ‘He made all things that they may have being’ (Wisdom 1:14),” FIAMC said in a statement given to the UN General Assembly.

FIAMC also declared it “opposes any and all definitions of pregnancy which would link it to maternal disability” warning that intra/extra uterine screening for disabilities to terminate life is “a heinous offense against humanity, the new life, and all of those disabled living heroically and joyfully, even in suffering, and those who with compassion and love care for them.

“A society which seeks to reduce suffering by abortion or by euthanasia of a disabled newborn, or at any time thereafter, will devour itself. In truth the human condition ultimately finds each and every one of us disabled, physically, emotionally or psychologically.”

The UN conference ends negotiations over the International Treaty on Disabilities on August 25. Should the U.N. General Assembly vote on the treaty, it would become binding international law on countries ratifying the treaty.

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