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NEW YORK, July 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A high-level push at the United Nations for more contraception and abortion among the world’s youths has met with resistance from over 120,000 people, including 57,000 young people, who have signed a Youth Statement that says that so-called “sexual rights” cannot trump the real rights of life and family.

Campaigners at the United Nations are seeking more permissive laws and policies towards homosexuality, drug use, explicit sexual education, contraception, and prostitution on all levels of world government, framed as advocacy for youth’s sexual and reproductive health and “rights.”

In preparation for the UN Youth Conference set to take place in New York in late July, Y-PEER, the youth program of the UN Population Fund, issued a statement expressing a vision of “a world where Young People’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights are fully realized and where youth can experience and celebrate their sexuality.” Notably, the UN Population Fund was defunded by the United States during the Bush administration after private and federal investigations concluded that it was complicit with China’s brutally coercive one-child policy.

Another major “sexual rights” proponent is Planned Parenthood. The international abortion and contraceptive juggernaut published a “sexual rights” guide ahead of the conference that denounced “widespread denial of young people’s sexuality.”

“It is important for all young people around the world to be able to explore, experience and express their sexualities in healthy, positive, pleasurable and safe ways,” it states, going on to list abortion-on-demand as essential to “youth-friendly” health services.

In response, the International Youth Coalition (IYC), in cooperation with C-FAM, launched a Youth Statement that declares that the rights of the family are foundational to the true rights of young people, and rejects the effort to stifle parents’ rights as their children’s primary educators.

“We are relational persons, not autonomous individuals. We firmly agree with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state,” the Youth Statement says.

The statement also rejects the UN campaign’s avant-garde philosophy of unbounded sexual awareness and activity as a human right. “In learning about and encountering our natural sexuality, we must be instilled with a sense of responsibility and self-respect,” it says.

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IYC director Tyler Ament told media at a press conference Wednesday that the Youth Statement was submitted to the UN General Assembly during its High Level Meeting on Youth this week.

Ament noted that the theme of the International Year of Youth was to promote “mutual dialogue and understanding” among youth of the world. “There is a voice missing from the discussion,” said Ament. “We wanted to make sure … that the voice that promotes life and family and integrity would be heard.”

Katherine Nikas, a Blackstone intern with the Alliance Defense Fund, said that the statement’s initial reception at the General Assembly was very encouraging.

“It was incredible to see the amount of young people actually on our side,” said Nikas, adding that the statement filled a sorely unmet need.

“We’re tired of the pain and the heartache of just having abortions pushed on us and condoms thrown at us.”

Representatives from youth coordinators in Spain and Mexico agreed that the real needs of youth across the world are being ignored.

“It’s important to demonstrate to the world and the UN that the youth of Spain do not agree with the UN proposition about youth laws,” said Jaime Hernández, the youth coordinator at Spain’s pro-life and pro-family organization HazteOir. He said international organizations have been pushing for abortion in Spain “until the last week of pregnancy,” something the Spanish people strongly reject.

Ament told LifeSiteNews.com that the invention of human “sexual rights” serves a financial agenda. “[UN youth campaigners] want legal structures and funding that apply to human rights to apply to so called rights that don’t exist in any international laws,” he said.

Ament also said there was clear antagonism to the conservative pushback: some members of the C-FAM Burke Fellowship were disinvited from the High Level Meeting on Youth because officials claimed they “didn’t have enough room.” “Once we got to the UN, there was plenty of empty space in the NGO galleries, where all the lack of space should have been,” he said.