ASUNCIÓN, February 18, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In January, LifeSiteNews.com reported that United Nations overseers were targeting Paraguay next on the list of Catholic countries who refuse to legalize abortion.
The feminist-controlled UN organization, Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), issued a press release in which they outlined the kind of pressure placed by CEDAW as a matter of course against many Christian countries that have laws or constitution clauses against abortion and IVF.
News reports in Paraguay publicized the routine pressuring of delegates from Paraguay and other pro-life countries by UN officials. Now the local UN office in Asunción has responded to local outrage by issuing a statement downplaying the UN’s tactics.
The statement said, “The Committee is only making suggestions and recommendations based on the analysis of reports and data provided the membership States, with the idea of carrying out the goals of the Convention.”
CEDAW’s customary pressure tactic is to emphasize typical pro-abortion propaganda that illegal abortion causes women to die “by the thousands from illegal back-alley” abortions. The obvious solution to this problem, claims CEDAW’s abortion promoters is to legalize abortion.
Silvia Pimentel, the committee vice-chair from Brazil said in the January press release, “Complying with the Convention meant the Government must address maternal mortality and clandestine abortions. Did the government (of Paraguay) have concrete strategies to comply with the Committee’s previous recommendations?”
Paraguay’s Health Minister, Julio Cesar Velazquez, said that the recommendations would be examined but that the ‘no to abortion’ policy is the starting point for Paraguay’s relations with the UN. “As Minister, my position is pro-life. I believe that killing people will not solve the problem of over-population,” he said.
The CEDAW enforcement procedure is to call delegates to sit in front of the committee and demand an accounting by these sovereign nations in their compliance with the UN’s anti-family programme. That countries are not required to participate in this regular grilling is not widely known. Any sovereign state has complete freedom to opt out of the UN’s agreements. But the inquisitions continue, with Malta, Samoa, Paraguay, St. Kitts, Andorra and Costa Rica numbered among recent targets.
Read CEDAW’s January 14th media release.