(NEW YORK — C-Fam) As the successes of conservative movements at the UN have become impossible for progressives to ignore, gatekeepers throughout the UN system have increasingly closed ranks against what they derisively refer to as the “backlash” and “pushback” from so-called “anti-rights” groups.
For two years, conservative groups have been rejected by feminist UN bureaucrats to hold official events alongside the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). They have started hosting their own parallel conference across the street from UN headquarters.
Pro-life groups have also been rejected for giving interventions during plenary sessions of the CSW. Speaking slots instead went to pro-abortion groups like Catholics for Choice and the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
The “anti-rights” label has been used to describe those who argue that abortion is not a human right, and has never been accepted as a right by the General Assembly or any other organ of the UN that actually negotiates documents. In practice, the “anti-rights” label has become a way for high-ranking UN officials to censor mainstream conservative positions. The label is now routinely used by pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQ+ groups interchangeably with “fascist” to justify the exclusion of their opponents in the debate.
An Austrian parliamentarian actually likened the “pushback” to male supremacy and slavery, declaring that “anybody who’d try to push back, that is my personal enemy.”
At an event on “addressing backlash,” one speaker said that “sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) faces fierce resistance by the so-called anti-gender movement,” and connected the “backlash” to conservatism more broadly.
Another panelist said that there is no point in engaging with “extremists.” When a C-Fam volunteer asked how productive it has been so far to label pro-life voices as “anti-rights” or “fascists” simply for sharing a different view that seeks to protect human life from conception…
Editor’s Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. and Iulia-Elena Cazan write for C-Fam. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. This article appears with permission.”
