WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — An international pro-life group has prevented the Organization of American States (OAS) from declaring a “right” for refugee children to have abortions.
“Leading a coalition of life-affirming organizations, the global Human Life International neutralized multiple attempts to include abortion as a right in policy resolutions, most prominently, the Declaration on the Protection and Integration of Migrant and Refugee Children,” Human Life International (HLI) stated in media comments. The General Assembly was held from June 21 to June 23.
Other pro-life advocates that helped at OAS included “And Then There Were None, Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, Heartbeat International, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Vitae Foundation, Sacred Heart Institute, and Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe,” HLI said.
The OAS “brings together all 35 independent states of the Americas and constitutes the main political, juridical, and social governmental forum in the Hemisphere,” according to its website.
“In the same week that marked the first anniversary of the United States Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, the Gospel of Life has triumphed at the Organization of American States,” stated Luis Martinez, the Human Life International representative at OAS, in the news release.
The draft document would have provided a right to “comprehensive health care, including sexual and reproductive…health services.”
HLI celebrated other victories for the pro-life and pro-life agenda.
“The Resolution Strengthening Democracy now clearly defines hate speech so that it cannot be misinterpreted to include pro-life or pro-family speech,” the group announced.
“Comprehensive Sexual Education (which contained abortion) was not included in the Declaration of Human Rights, and the attempt to introduce it in the Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights was neutralized,” HLI noted. “The dialogue presented by the Civil Society Organizations at the assembly was predominantly pro-life and pro-family, and obtained explicit support from the El Salvador, Guatemala, and Paraguay delegations.”
The OAS has been a regular source of battles for pro-life and pro-family advocates. In 2020, pro-lifers and President Donald Trump’s administration pressured Secretary General Luis Almagro to declare that the “right to life” is a fundamental human right.
“Mr. Almagro’s 180-degree turn on abortion is a testament to the administration’s efforts to prioritize the right to life in its foreign policy,” Gualberto Garcia Jones, LifeSite’s then-Director of Advocacy, said at the time. “From President Trump’s speech at the U.N., to Secretary Pompeo’s enforcement of the Siljander Amendment, and U.S. OAS Ambassador Carlos Trujillo’s leadership in Latin America, the Trump administration has shown how American leadership can influence the hemisphere.”