(National Review) The vaunted international community is determined to impose extremely politically progressive policies on the entire world. Alas, this even includes injecting woke policies into the laudable attempt to draft an “International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.”
An end to racism is earnestly to be desired, of course. All people are inherent equals who should be judged on the content of their character.
But globalists at the UN push contentious cultural agendas under the guise of combatting racism, including as part of a supposed “right to health.” (Whether such a right should be recognized is a discussion for another day.) In its “First Draft of General Recommendations on Racial Discrimination in the Enjoyment of the Right to Health,” UN bureaucrats brand abortion restrictions as “racial discrimination.” Under the heading, “Racial Discrimination in the Right to Public Health, including Healthcare Facilities, Services and Goods,” the Recommendations assert:
Racial discrimination in physical, affordable, and information accessibility:
(vi) Restrictive conditions under which law permits access to sexual and reproductive information, services, and medicine, including family planning, vii) harassment, violence and criminalization of services related to sexual and reproductive health, especially abortions. [Emphasis added.]
And again, under the heading, “Racial Discrimination in the Right to Control One’s Health and Body:”
Unsafe abortions and racial discrimination:
Persons within the purview of the Convention are at a higher risk of unwanted pregnancies and of lacking the means to overcome socioeconomic and other barriers to access to safe abortion. Laws, rulings and practices nullifying in law and in practice access of women and persons with reproductive rights protected under the Convention to safe and legal abortion have a disproportionate impact on the sexual and reproductive health and rights of groups and minorities within the purview of the Convention, in particular those with low incomes. Safe, legal and effective access to abortion is part of the right to control one’s health and body and the right to life of persons protected under the Convention. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, restricting abortion is redefined as racial discrimination against the right to health — never mind that restrictions in law aren’t based on race — which must be eliminated:
Racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to health is prohibited under the Convention and States parties are required to eliminate it in all its forms and to guarantee equality before the law. Obligations should be read in light of the objectives set in the Preamble and the Convention as a whole. Eliminating racial discrimination in all its forms and manifestations requires prompt action and has a clear purpose: promote understanding between people and build an international community free from all forms of racial segregation and racial discrimination.
The UN internationalists have it all wrong. Laws that promoted easier abortion for minorities would be racist and a form of eugenics. But laws that inhibit abortion generally are predicated on the belief that the unborn are fully human and equal to all people. In other words, whether one agrees or disagrees with legal limitations, such laws promote equality under the law, not invidious discrimination based on race. Indeed, it is the mirror opposite of “racist” to want more babies of color to be born instead of fewer!
Beyond that, approaching the issue in this way is idiotic. Simply as a matter of strategy, the just cause of eliminating racism should focus exclusively on fighting actual discriminatory policies. Throwing racially irrelevant issues into the mix such as abortion muddies those waters. Progressive obsessions ruin even the most laudable agendas.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at the National Review and is reprinted here with permission.
