Lila Rose Addresses The United Nations, Calls For Human Rights Protections For Unborn Children
TRANSCRIPTS
We are gathered to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
When the member states of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the world was reeling. We were three years removed from the liberation of the Nazi death camps in 1945, where the horrors of the evils committed against the Jewish people and political dissidents emerged and the world would never be the same.
Their human rights were violated. They were enslaved. Their bodies used for labor or experimentation at the whim of their captors. They were cruelly tortured and degraded as if they were less than animals. They were murdered.
When the drafters of the UDHR put pen to paper, this was not an academic exercise. This is not the defense of some theoretical idea. This was a robust response to some of the greatest atrocities and most severe and systematic human rights abuses perpetuated in modern history. These were bloody times in living memory of some who are with us today. The 20th century saw more bloodshed than any century before. World War One. Over 20 million deaths. World War Two. Over 70 million deaths, including 6 million Jews murdered in the Nazi Holocaust.
Later, many more millions of Russians, Poles and other subjugated people would be murdered in Joseph Stalin’s reign of terror. Later, still, Mao’s Cultural Revolution would murder millions more. It was killing on an industrial scale. The capacity for evil exists in every human heart, but so does the capacity for good.
As Solzhenitsyn points out, the line between good and evil has always cut through every human heart. The truth is, every single one of us are spiritual, formed in the image and likeness of goodness itself, oriented towards the highest of powers, God Himself. Each of us possess reason to know and to choose the good, respect for the everyday miracle of human life. Respect for every human person must be the first movement of our shared moral conscience. And so inspired the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which we commemorate and celebrate today.
From Article Three of the Declaration, everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of the person. From Article Six, everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Article Seven, all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection and of the law.
Who is the “all” this declaration promises rights to? Who is included in “everyone?” The Declaration’s preamble states that the rights enumerated are for “all members of the human family.” It states, “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”
So how does one become a member of the human family? I’m proud to be a member of the human family, as I know all of you are with me today, as is the little baby daughter in my womb. Here is a quick review for us. Thanks to a team of medical experts and scientists created with Live Action and world class animators, we can play Baby Olivia now.
Many powerful people today, including in the institution of the United Nations, argue that a human in the womb is not a human, is not a life, and is certainly not worthy of the basic human rights enumerated in the Declaration.
Instead, these powerful people like to argue that one must pass through the magical birth canal in order to receive one’s humanity.
How ludicrous. It’s clear, science is clear, that human life does not begin at birth but before, at the moment of fertilization.
Since our universal human rights are grounded in being human and being a member of the human species, not in your age, not in your level of development, not in your location. Human embryos and fetuses have the same inalienable and universal right to life as human infants, toddlers, teenagers, and adults.
So how are we doing here in 2023 when it comes to human rights for all, for everyone, for all members of the human family?
Here’s the hard truth. Every year globally 70 million children are slaughtered by abortion. That’s as if World War Two happened again every single year with its victims, exclusively civilians, particularly children. Abortion is by far the worst human rights crisis of the last half century.
In fact, most members of the United Nations outright support this human rights abuse. The helpless victims of this abuse have no representation here. They are too young, too vulnerable to speak. They are totally dependent on others. They cannot rally. They cannot vote. They cannot demonstrate. They require and rely on adults to speak for them. They are babies. Infants growing in the womb of their mothers, the womb, which should be a safe haven, a place of nourishment and unconditional love, has become a war zone.
What are the euphemisms used in polite society today, including in this building, to cloak the brutal reality of abortion? Even the word abortion sanitizes the unnatural act that kills a human being. Reproductive health care. Women’s rights. The right to choose. Bodily autonomy. Health care.
Reproductive health care does not include the right to kill a child. That is ludicrous. Women’s rights do not include the right to kill a little woman. A little girl in the womb. That is ludicrous. The right to choose does not include the right to choose to murder a child. That is ludicrous. And my bodily autonomy as a woman does not include the right to destroy the little daughter growing in my womb.
That is ludicrous. How have we bought so many ludicrous lies? It’s because the unborn cannot speak, that the born, the powerful, have succeeded in trampling on their rights. The human rights abuse of abortion has killed billions of innocent human beings over the last half century, eclipsing every other cause of death or human rights abuse. Abortion is the leading cause of death globally, and it deprives its innocent victims of their first human right, life.
As the mass murderer Joseph Stalin said, “A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic.” The murder of one individual is a tragedy, a terrible injustice. But the murder of millions is not a mere statistic. It is a million-fold calamity, a crisis that calls us here today to urgent action. Let’s go back for a moment to the Declaration of Human Rights.
From Article Four of the Declaration, no one shall be held in slavery or servitude. Slavery shall be prohibited in all forms. From Article Five. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Abortion not only violates the unborn child’s right to life. Abortion also violates the child’s right to be free from slavery and their right to be free from torture.
With abortion, human beings are treated as property to be created and killed at will. Unborn children are routinely bred for stem cell research. Their cells used for medical experimentation, their body parts sold or traded in the name of medical research. Millions of human embryos are created only to be victims of experiments, manipulated and ultimately destroyed in labs across the world.
Abortion also is torture for millions of murdered children. In abortion procedures, children are routinely subjected to the worst acts of violence imaginable. A dilation and evacuation, or D&E abortion is the most common abortion procedure used for a second trimester abortion committed on babies ages 14 weeks old through 22 weeks old. In a D&E abortion, the abortionist inserts a large suction catheter into the uterus and turns it on, emptying the amniotic fluid. After the amniotic fluid has been removed, the abortionist uses a sopher clamp, a grasping instrument with sharp teeth, to grasp and pull one by one the living, moving baby’s arms and legs, ripping their limbs from the child’s body.
The abortionist continues to grasp the child’s intestines, spine, heart, lungs, and any other limbs or body parts. The most difficult part of the procedure for the abortionist is usually finding, grasping, and crushing the baby’s head.
You see, many abortions are not just killing. A D&E abortion is excruciating, torturous, killing of a baby who feels every second of his or her live dismemberment. Abortion, at its core is a contradiction of every human right, for if human rights are not for all then they are for none. If human rights do not apply to human life in the womb, then they apply to no one.
If our youngest child is not considered worthy of these rights, then why do these rights matter for anyone? Or as Mother Teresa said prophetically, her words echoing long after her passing, “In a nation where a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for you or for I to kill one another?” We must do better.
We can do better to live up to the great ideals of this declaration. We must stand for all, human rights for all and the most basic human right, life, for all. For all members of the human family.
So how do we move forward? How do we protect human rights worldwide? I call on the United Nations to address the human rights crisis of abortion and set a resolution of all its member nations to end it.
A strong leader stands on the truth, and the truth is the first step towards lasting political victory. We must refuse to tolerate in our nations the homicide of any child in the womb, no matter the circumstances or excuses. It is our duty to abolish abortion. It is our duty to listen once more to our human conscience and refuse to rationalize why one child should be welcomed and another one killed.
As we protect fundamental human rights, we can ensure that every soul has the opportunity to be born, to live and to thrive. Our shared commitment to the dignity of every life for every member of the human family will secure the freedom, justice, and peace that we so deeply desire for each of our beloved nations.
Thank you.