(New York, C-Fam) Attendees crowded into a conference room a week ago at UN headquarters to hear expert testimony about the importance of improving women’s health without promoting abortion. The event took place during the Commission on the Status of Women, as delegates continued to debate over controversial language—including on abortion—in closed negotiations nearby.
The event, sponsored by C-Fam, the publisher of the Friday Fax, and the government of Guatemala, celebrated the Geneva Consensus Declaration, which was signed by over 30 countries, and affirms four pillars: the importance of women’s health, the family, and national sovereignty, and reiterates the fact that abortion is not an international human right.
The ambassador of Guatemala to the UN, Ms. Carla Maria Rodríguez Mancia, told the assembly that her government had just celebrated the first anniversary of the day of life and the family, when the country was declared the pro-life capital of Ibero-America.
As a political appointee of President Donald J. Trump, Valerie Huber, President of the Institute for Women’s Health, played a direct role in the establishment of the Declaration. She said, “I would like to commend all of us to think again before we put ideology over the life and health of women.”
Other panelists shared their uniquely Latin American perspectives on the pro-life movement. Neydy Casillas, Vice President for International Affairs at the Global Center for Human Rights, warned the audience about how activist courts and international bodies in the Organization of American States are pressuring countries in the region to liberalize their abortion laws, despite the lack of a legal basis for doing so. “Women in Latin American need employment, they need access to education, they need health in general,” said Casillas. “They need the means to overcome poverty. They need security.”…
Editor’s Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph. D. writes 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 (https://c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.
