Latin Americans unexpectedly flip to pro-abortion from past history of being pro-life
NEW YORK, September 4, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Negotiations at the United Nations that were to conclude the preparations for the September 19-21 World Summit for Children, were bogged down last week over references to abortion and parental rights. Contentious wording prevented agreement on a final draft document for the Summit and resulted in the scheduling of an additional session to run from tomorrow until Friday.
LifeSite correspondents at the United Nations noted that the most contentious language in the document concerning abortion, homosexuality and parental rights is to be debated this week. Sessions last week were closed to NGO participation as are this week’s sessions.
Last week’s Monday and Tuesday sessions were partially open and pro-life NGO’s were surprised to see the RIO group – a coalition of countries mostly representing Latin America – pushing for language supporting abortion. Chile, the current spokesman for the Rio group, insisted on the inclusion of the term “reproductive health services” in the document, despite the fact that it was revealed by Canada that the term includes provision of abortion. The United States and other countries objected to the terminology since it may constitute a mandate for providing abortion for adolescents. The Rio group claimed it would not interpret the phrase as including abortion, but refused to agree to an additional phrase in the document that would exclude abortion as part of such services.