News

December 2, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (PNCI) based in Washington, D.C. and headed by Marie Smith, wife of US Congressman Chris Smith, periodically issues reports on international developments related to abortion. The reports are especially intended to update pro-life legislators in various nations on critical abortion-related developments. The following three items from the November 30 PNCI report are republished with permission from PNCI.

Abortion Advocates Target Africa

Pro-abortion NGO’s are partnering with African governments and leaders to develop strategies and policies on abortion policy. A stakeholder meeting in Sierra Leone this month brought together the nation’s Health Ministry with UNFPA, Ipas and Marie Stopes Sierra Leone to address access to abortion and population control. Abortion advocates seek to expand access to abortion through public policies and emphasize the need to remove the “stigma” of abortion.

Increasingly, pro-abortion NGO’s are becoming key partners in regional and national discussions on reproductive health. Currently, Ipas is participating in the Sixth African Population Conference in Burkino Faso, where it will discuss “unsafe abortion” in Africa. Ipas will participate and/or lead several panels on strategies to integrate abortion into family planning services. Additionally this month, Global Doctors for Choice (GDC) held a three day training program for physicians in Ghana on reproductive health advocacy. A world wide network of physicians, GDC seeks to connect pro-abortion doctors with NGO’s, government officials and communities to affect policies.

UN Committee’s Recommendation Pushes Peru to Ease Abortion Laws

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) has instructed Peru to compensate a girl who was denied an abortion and amend its abortion law to permit an exception for rape. The CEDAW recommendation was reported by the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which brought the case of a teenage rape victim to the committee. However, CRR has been misleading in its reporting claiming: “This is the first UN decision in history requiring a country to protect women’s health and human rights by changing its abortion laws.” The Center is well aware, as is everyone that advocates at the United Nations, that recommendations from CEDAW and other treaty body recommendations are merely the “opinion” or “view” of the members and are not binding on a country.

Warning: MPs Should Expect Increased Pro-Abortion Activity

Leading pro-abortion organizations that operate under the guise of human rights, women’s rights and women’s health are latching onto the recent UN report on health and its recommendation that governments overturn laws against abortion.

Over 30 organizations including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Catholics for Choice, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Ipas, IPPF, Marie Stopes International and Planned Parenthood Federation of America have stated their support for report (A/66/254) by the UN Special Rapporteur on health, Anand Grover, to the General Assembly. The report is highly critical of laws which protect the lives of children in the womb from the violence of abortion and even condemns laws against drug use by pregnant women aimed at protecting the health of the unborn child. Pro-life laws are described as “misguided legal restrictions that governments frequently impose in violation of sexual and reproductive rights”.

These leading pro-abortion organizations are committed to activity on national levels “to immediately decriminalize abortion” and implement the recommendations of the report which portrays access to abortion as a “human rights obligation”. Parliamentarians are advised to be ready to refute pro-abortion arguments that distort sovereign laws protecting unborn children and their mothers from the violence of abortion and that portray life-affirming laws and policies as “harmful to women’s health, equality, bodily integrity and dignity.”