Commentary by Austin Ruse
NEW YORK, NY, November 7, 2008 (C-FAM) – The pro-abortion law group the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) has already called for President-elect Obama to renew America’s commitment to “reproductive rights” which, according to CRR, prominently includes a right to abortion. It is likely the new president will work almost immediately to correct what his ideological allies like CRR view as multiple mistakes of the Bush administration with regard to international social policy on this issue.
Obama has in the past spoken out against the so-called Mexico City Policy, which forbids US money from supporting groups overseas that promote or perform abortions. This is a Reagan era policy that was struck down during the Clinton years and resurrected on the first day in office of George W. Bush. No one should be surprised if Obama strikes this down on his first day in office and that US money will begin to flow again to pro-abortion groups overseas.
Obama has spoken out against US refusal to fund the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), a United Nations (UN) agency that promotes population control, fertility reduction, and abortion all over the world. UNFPA helped the Chinese government set up and run its one-child policy, which has resulted in upwards of 100 million abortions, many of them forced or coerced.
A US law called Kemp-Kasten mandates that US money cannot support groups that cooperate in coerced abortions. The US State Department has repeatedly determined that UNFPA is complicit in the coercive policies of the China government and has therefore refused funding for the past eight years. Congress has for many years voted to resume UNFPA funding and has been overruled by President Bush. It is expected that Obama will resume funding.
There is the question of UN treaties that the US has refused to ratify. These treaties include the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention of the Rights of the Child, the Kyoto Treaty on the Environment, the International Criminal Court and the Landmines Treaty. While various US presidents have signed some of these treaties, the Senate under both Democratic and Republican rule has ratified none of them. It is unclear that the left has enough votes in the Senate to meet the necessary two-thirds needed for ratification. Still critics fear that an Obama administration will try to move the Senate toward ratification. Obama’s UN and European allies will certainly pressure Obama to do so.
Although there was a frenzy of global UN conferences back in the 1990s, including such massive affairs as the Cairo Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Conference on Women, the time of the Bush administration has been relatively quiet. There was a global conference on disabilities, a racism conference in South Africa, and a two-year negotiation on human cloning, but not much more. The left at the UN counseled quiet during the Bush years for fear of losing ground in the documents that would have come under negotiation. With an Obama administration this fear is removed and one can expect a veritable flood of UN conferences to be announced beginning as early as this year.
(Note: This article was first published by C-fam, www.c-fam.org)