UN ADVANCES PUSH TO CRIMINALIZE “FORCED PREGNANCY”

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 24 (LSN) – Last week, the 54th Session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR) passed a resolution condemning what is termed “forced pregnancy.”“The Elimination of Violence Against Women”, “condemns all violations of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict and recognizes them to be violations of international human rights and humanitarian law”, the resolution said. It also calls for “a particularly effective response to violations to this kind,  including in particular, murder, rape, sexual slavery, and forced pregnancy,” New evidence has also confirmed that the term includes restriction of access to abortion.  The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (CAFHRI) reported Friday that, in a private meeting in Geneva, the Women’s Caucus (of feminist NGOs) said they will refrain from using the term “abortion”  in future UN documents and speeches, since the term is so controversial. Instead, they will use “forced pregnancy” or “enforced pregnancy,” terms which are harder to define and thus conceal the real agenda.  CAFHRI and other sources indicate that the strategy to use these terms is long established. In 1991,  in a Utah abortion case (Jane L. vs. Bangerter) launched by the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project, the plaintiff argued that any pregnancy that cannot be terminated was a “forced pregnancy” and that it was irrelevant whether the pregnancy resulted from rape or consensual sex. CAFHRI also notes that the plaintiff argued that the purpose of restrictions on abortion was to force continued pregnancy on women, and that this kind of “forced pregnancy” was a kind of slavery.  Feminists reacted with indignation to the Vatican’s suggestion to replace the term “forced pregnancy”  in International Court proceedings with the term “forcible impregnation.” A flyer distributed at the UN by the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Women’s Court said, “Forcible impregnation does not capture all the elements of enforced pregnancy. Forcible impregnation involves MAKING a woman pregnant through rape, insemination or other means, whereas enforced pregnancy involves KEEPING a woman pregnant.”  International Family Planning Perspectives (Vol 22, No. 3, September, 1996), a journal of the Allan Guttmacher Institute, published an article exposing the feminists’ intended definition of “forced pregnancy.” In a piece entitled “Advancing Reproductive Rights Beyond Cairo and Beijing,” Rebecca J. Cook and Mahoud F. Fathalla wrote “Forced pregnancy occurs when abortion following rape is legally denied, practically obstructed or unacceptable to women themselves on religious or cultural grounds.”