Category: Abortion

abortion lobby strategy

UN’s abortion strategy is to radicalise pro-life countries

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Through the UN, the abortion lobby enacts a strategy of maintaining pressure on pro-life countries to become increasingly anti-life and eventually radical advocates for abortion.

C-Fam’s new human rights database shows how pressure on pro-life countries does not diminish once they allow abortion. It increases until they allow abortion on demand and become radicalized abortion advocates themselves.

This week, the committee monitoring the UN treaty on discrimination against women published its reports on ten countries that had ratified it.  Among them were two countries that used to have strong pro-life laws but have repealed them in recent years: Ireland and Mexico.

The CEDAW Committee has a long history of pressuring both countries to liberalize their abortion laws. In 1999 and 2005, it called on Ireland to facilitate a national dialogue about changing their restrictions, and in 2017, it demanded that the Eighth Amendment to Ireland’s constitution be amended to allow abortion, as well as legalizing abortion on broad grounds and decriminalizing it in all cases.

Ireland did repeal its constitutional protections for the unborn in 2018.  However, the CEDAW Committee continues to push Ireland to go further.  It welcomes the passage of Ireland’s law legalizing abortion, but expresses concern about the lack of available abortion services, the practice of conscientious objection to abortion by health care workers, and the stigma that still remains toward abortion.  It asks Ireland to “consider the possibility of fully decriminalizing abortion and abolishing the mandatory three-day waiting period.”

Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion at the federal level in 2021.  The CEDAW Committee had been calling for this since 1998. Now it is telling Mexico to harmonize abortion laws across the different Mexican states in order to ensure access to legal abortion.

In its recent review, the committee expressed satisfaction about the Supreme Court ruling, but noted that nine states still criminalize abortion.  They reiterated their call to “harmonize criminal law provisions with legislative advances on abortion access,” to dismiss cases brought against women accused of having illegal abortions, and to “address stigma and resistance by healthcare providers through mandatory training.”

Before changing their laws, both Ireland and Mexico had withstood pressure from UN human rights experts, citing their national sovereignty and pointing to the agreement from the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development that held that the abortion was not an international human right, but something for national governments to address.

Once the laws of Mexico and Ireland allowed abortion their governments began to promote abortion as a human rights issue internationally. Both countries abandoned not only their legal protections for the unborn, but also their position that abortion was a matter of national sovereignty.  They lost no time before starting to apply pressure to their fellow nations, just as they themselves had been pressured.

C-Fam’s human rights database also shows how in the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), where countries evaluate each other’s human right records, Ireland called on Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic to decriminalize abortion, and also pressured El Salvador and Malta.

Mexico has similarly used the UPR to promote abortion as a right, pressuring seventeen countries so far in the ongoing fourth UPR cycle, including the Bahamas, Ecuador, El Salvador,, Nigeria, and Tuvalu.  Mexico urged Romania to ensure access to “safe” abortion and comprehensive sexuality education.  It told Japan to remove the requirement for spousal consent and to ensure that women are able to access abortion regardless of their migration status in Uruguay.

The new reports from the CEDAW Committee will be added to C-Fam’s database when the final versions are published; they are currently available in draft form.

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Injectable contraception

WHO is pushing injectable contraception for adolescents

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The World Health Organisation wants to increase access to contraception and sex education among adolescents, and frames religious opposition to early sexual activity as ‘disinformation.’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) released a new guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies in low and middle-income countries. The proposed framework advances a vision of sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for young people that promotes controversial ideas, and norm changes inconsistent with what governments have agreed to.

Revised for the first time in over a decade, the guideline focuses almost exclusively on preventing adolescent pregnancies through increased and prolonged contraception use, including “self-administered injectable contraception,” and access to sexuality education.

In its recommendations, the WHO frames adolescents’ choice to discontinue “contraceptive use due to side-effects, and due to changing life circumstances and reproductive intentions” in a negative light and as an obstacle to overcome.

The framework calls on mobilizing “[p]olitical, governmental, religious, traditional and other influential leaders” to “support the access to, uptake of, and continued use of contraceptives.”

The guideline also asks policymakers to ensure that laws on age and consent related to sexual activities are designed in such a way as to promote adolescents’ access to contraception. Such a move could mean lowering the age of legal consent or making regulations more flexible to enable young people’s access to contraception without stigma.

Critics note that an exclusive focus on mass contraceptive use among adolescents monopolizes the discourse on how to best prevent adolescent pregnancies and undermines efforts to tackle the problem holistically.

The 112-page guideline does not mention the merits of raising awareness about the negative consequences of nonmarital sexual behavior through programs centered around abstinence and delay of sexual debut.

Critics also disagree with the WHO framing adolescents’ opposition to contraceptives due to side effects or religious beliefs as based on myths and misinformation.

Beyond its recommendations on contraceptives, the guideline promotes adolescents’ access to sex education, saying that “[m]any adolescents are unaware…[on how] to have sex safely and pleasurably.”

The document references the latest UN inter-agency technical guidance on comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), which has helped shape sexuality education curricula and materials in many countries around the world.

The technical guidance dedicates an entire section to the “Social Construction of Gender and Gender Norms,” teaching children aged 5-8 the difference between biological sex and gender and encouraging them to “reflect on how they feel about their biological sex and gender.” The same section says children aged 9-12 should be able to “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” and “acknowledge that masturbation does not cause physical or emotional harm.”

Another goal laid out in the CSE guidance is that children aged 12- 15 are able to state that sexual “fantasies and desires are natural and not shameful and occur throughout life.”

The WHO guideline on preventing adolescent pregnancies is prefaced with the notion that “the global community has reaffirmed its commitment to advancing adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).”

UN member states have not affirmed such a commitment. SRHR is a controversial term at the UN and has never been agreed to by consensus. Its imprecise and controversial interpretation by the UN system does not enjoy support from socially conservative countries who routinely dissociate from any SRHR references.

By Iulia-Elena Cazan andRebecca Oas, Ph.D.

C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Abortion to birth is now legal in the UK

UK decriminalises abortion to birth

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Press release from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) on the UK’s decriminalisation of abortion to birth.

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has reacted with horror to a vote in the House of Commons decriminalising abortion. 

The clause, tabled by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, was approved by MPs by 379 to 137.

The amendment changes the underlying laws on abortion so that “no offence is committed by a woman acting in relation to her own pregnancy”. Ms Antoniazzi’s explanatory statement says that the clause “would disapply existing criminal law related to abortion from women acting in relation to their own pregnancy at any gestation”, allowing abortion up to birth.

 Alithea Williams of SPUC said “We are horrified that MPs have voted for this extreme and barbaric proposal. If this clause becomes law, a woman who aborts her baby at any point in pregnancy, even moments before birth, would not be committing a criminal offence. In fact, by dismissing the Infant Life Preservation Act intended to provide legal protection to a child during birth, a woman who killed her baby during delivery would not be committing an offence.  

 “Our already liberal Abortion law allows an estimated 300,000 babies a year to be killed. Now, even the very limited protection afforded by the law is being stripped away. And this has been pushed by an abortion lobby cynically exploiting a situation that they brought about. The cases they use of women being prosecuted for abortion – a number in the single digits – came about because of a policy they championed – sending women abortion pills in the post without in person appointments.  

 “This change has been made after only a few hours debate, with little notice. It was not in the Government’s manifesto, and it certainly doesn’t reflect public opinion.  Recent polling found that 62% of the public agree that ‘Having an illegal abortion should continue to be a criminal offence to protect both the unborn and vulnerable women who could be coerced into losing a baby they may have wanted, for example by an abusive partner’. Only 5% support extending the abortion limit up to birth. We call on the Lords to throw this undemocratic, barbaric proposal out when it reaches them. We will never accept a law that puts women in danger and removes all rights from unborn babies.” 

SOURCE: Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. SPUC is the world’s first and UK’s largest pro-life campaigning and educational organisation.

Image source: Pexels.

C-Fam is documenting abortion pressure from UN

C-Fam is documenting abortion pressure from UN

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C-Fam has created a database which tracks the pressure from the United Nations directed at countries on abortion as well as sexual identity and gender identity.

Countries around the world are under pressure to liberalise their abortion laws and enshrine special protections and recognition on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) in their laws and policies, all in the name of human rights.

None of the nine core UN human rights treaties mentions SOGI, nor establishes a right to abortion.  These topics remain highly controversial in General Assembly and other negotiations, and would not have been agreed to by the diplomats who negotiated the treaty texts.  However, beginning in the 1990s, the expert committees that monitor compliance with the treaties by the states that ratified them began to exceed their mandates.  They started including pressure on abortion and SOGI in their communications with member states.  While these communications are not legally binding, unlike the actual texts of the treaties, they can still be influential, particularly when they are citied by activist courts within countries looking to change their laws.

More recently, a new mechanism was established by the Human Rights Council, called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).  Unlike the treaty bodies and other special procedures associated with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in the UPR, countries are reviewed on their human rights records, not by independent experts, but by their fellow nations.  Countries being reviewed receive brief recommendations from other UN member states, and mark them as either “supported” or “noted.”

Up to now, there has been a dearth of information about this kind of pressure. Two years ago, C-Fam created a database that tracks all of this pressure. This online database tracks the pressure directed at countries on abortion and SOGI in both the UPR and the observations of the treaty bodies.  Using this tool, anyone can look up, for example, what the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is saying to El Salvador on the subject of abortion, with the relevant paragraphs excerpted from each sequential review the committee performed of the country.  Links to the full reports are also included for reference.

In the UPR, every country is reviewed in a four-to-five-year cycle, and the process is currently in its fourth cycle since it began in 2008.  Using the C-Fam database, visitors can look up what recommendations on SOGI and abortion were received by a country during its review, and see how it responded to each recommendation.  Also included is a list of all the relevant recommendations that country made to other countries throughout the same UPR cycle.  For example, one can see that in the third UPR cycle, New Zealand both issued and received recommendations on SOGI.  New Zealand expressed support for ending discrimination on the basis of SOGI in a general way, but stopped short of supporting calls to formally enshrine SOGI explicitly in its nondiscrimination law.

The database is intended to be a tool for research and advocacy, enabling users to quickly access information that can be difficult to locate without knowledge of the UN’s human rights websites. It also provides a one-stop resource for people in any country to see how their government is responding to pressure within the UPR system and hold their elected officials to account.  Similarly, it allows users to see firsthand the extent of treaty body overreach on issues that fall outside their mandates and do not enjoy consensus at any level within the UN system.  Forthcoming articles will showcase some developing trends and observations drawn from this important data.

Using the new database, in the coming weeks, the Friday Fax will report on recent instances of pressure or lack thereof on and from governments.

By Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.

C-FAM: The Centre for Family & Human Rights was founded in the summer of 1997 in order to monitor and affect the social policy debate at the United Nations and other international institutions. C-Fam is a non-partisan, non-profit research institute dedicated to reestablishing a proper understanding of international law, protecting national sovereignty and the dignity of the human person.

Down Syndrome abortions have increased in Scotland

Scotland’s massive jump in Down Syndrome abortions

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Scotland has recorded an 82% jump in the number of Down syndrome abortions since 2021.

According to a 2013 study, almost 99 percent of people with Down syndrome report being happy with their lives; 96 percent like how they look; 97 percent like who they are. While rates of mental illness, loneliness, and chronic misery are at all-time highs across many Western countries, people with Down syndrome are a happy exception. 

Despite that, babies with Down syndrome are being systematically targeted and killed in the womb specifically because they have Down syndrome. In a gut-wrenching 2018 article in The Atlantic titled “The Last Children of Down Syndrome,” some parents who chose to abort their children with Down syndrome insisted that their choice was an act of mercy.  

They don’t mean for these happy people. They mean for themselves. It is pure, lethal ableism. 

Every few years, there is another ugly story about the unseen and ongoing prenatal genocide of people with Down syndrome. In 2017, it was the news that Down syndrome has “almost disappeared” in Iceland. In 2019, only 18 children with Down syndrome were born. In Norway earlier this year, parents spoke out against the pressure to abort babies with a Down syndrome diagnosis.  

This week, a new report indicated that Scotland has seen “a dramatic rise in abortions involving Down syndrome diagnoses, with government figures showing an 82% increase since 2021.” In 2024, 60 pre-born children with Down syndrome were aborted; in 2021, it was 33. OSV News noted that “the increase also represents a 15% rise over the 52 abortions of Down syndrome-affected unborn babies in 2023, according to statistics released by Public Health Scotland.” 

According to Lynn Murray of the advocacy group Don’t Screen Us Out, the increase can be largely attributed to the roll-out of “non-invasive prenatal tests” known as NIPT, which has made it easier to detect Down syndrome.  

“It is deeply concerning that despite the leaps that advocacy groups have made in raising awareness in support of people with Down’s syndrome, abortion in the case of Down’s syndrome is still so commonplace and widespread in the U.K.,” she said. “In fact, we hear from parents all the time how abortion was repeatedly presented to them in the hospital as an obvious solution following the receipt of the news that their baby had Down’s syndrome,” she added. 

Keep reading at LifeSite News

By Jonathon van Maren

Jonathon is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne. He serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Abortion expansion - unborn baby

Abortion access continues to expand in Australia

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By Kathy Clubb

The outlook is grim for Australian babies as abortion expansion is becoming a top priority for progressive politicians, especially in the Greens party.

While the abortion rate in Australia has remained fairly steady in recent years, the powerful abortion lobby has not stopped its attempts to make it even easier, cheaper and more convenient for mothers to have their unwanted babies put to death.

There are estimated to be around 100,000 abortions committed in Australia every year, with about half of those achieved by the chemical regimen of mifepristone, also known as RU-486, and misoprostol. In Australia, this protocol is manufactured and sold by Marie Stopes International as ‘MS-2 Step’.

While the more stringent protections surrounding surgical abortions remain in place, the advent of chemical abortions has resulted in a relaxation of many policies. In 2023, the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Act) sought to bring Australia into line with other higher-income nations and removed restrictions on who can prescribe and dispense mifepristone and misoprostol. The current gestational limit for the use of MS-2 Step is 63 days.

Prescribing drugs instead of performing surgical abortions makes life easier for abortion providers, as there is less effort and minimal followup; in many cases, women who experience side-effects are directed to go straight to their local emergency department rather than return to the abortion practitioner.

Despite the availability of the abortion pill, and the general acceptance of abortion by our society, Australia states are experiencing a universal push for abortion expansion. Fuelled largely by the Greens party, at the heart of this push is a diabolical industry which is never content, no matter how many babies it kills.

A new bill for New South Wales

A proposed amendment to the New South Wales abortion law is on the table and it sets a dangerous precedent for the conscience rights of medical professions and institutions. If successful, the Abortion Law Reform Amendment (Health Care Access) Bill 2025 would force pro-life health professionals to refer for abortions. It also seeks to force the Minister for Health to ensure that every women in New South Wales can easily access an abortion and that abortion is widely, publicly promoted by LHDs (Local Health Districts).

Amanda Cohn, the MLC putting forward the bill, is a doctor who when in practice, aborted babies via the abortion pill. Cohn, a member of the radically pro-abortion Greens Party, believes that abortion must be ’embedded within mainstream public health services’ in order to guarantee its availability in Australia.

Consistent with the new TGA policy, the bill seeks to expand the number of medical professionals who are able to provide abortions. The existing law allows for ‘medical practitioners’ while the proposed law would enable endorsed midwives, nurse practitioners and other nominated registered health practitioners to prescribe the abortion pill up to 9 weeks gestation.

The bill is very short, and there are some sections that do not seem to have been thought through adequately from either a legal or medical point of view. Schedule 1-[5] aims “to expand the class of health practitioners who may perform a termination on a person who is not more than 22 weeks pregnant“, yet the abortion pill may only be prescribed to 9 weeks gestation. So does this bill require non-doctors to perform surgical abortions between 9 weeks and 22 weeks gestation? Or does it allow the abortion pill to be prescribed past the maximum allowable date through the second trimester? FLI attempted to contact Dr. Cohn to have this section explained, but has received no response at the time of publishing.

Killing Babies is healthcare?

Cohn’s website explains the details of her bill and her philosophy of abortion as healthcare:

“At least first-trimester surgical abortions should be provided at every public hospital in NSW that provides reproductive health services, by tying service provision to funding. If a hospital provides birthing services and can support someone experiencing a miscarriage, it can provide abortion. This will not only address the postcode lottery but also provide a level of privacy for people who may not feel comfortable or safe accessing a standalone reproductive health service.

“GPs should be supported to become medical abortion prescribers, so that people can access comprehensive reproductive health care in the community from a professional they already know and trust. This is medically straightforward but currently requires GPs to undertake additional training, unpaid and in their free time, because it is not a standard part of their training.

Cohn is also calling for the removal of mandatory reporting obligations for practitioners. These require abortions to be reported to the Secretary of the Ministry of Health within 28 days, which inexplicably, Cohn links to doctors not wanting to provide abortions. Cohn told the ABC that mandatory reporting ” is quite unnecessary and they can be a barrier for some health practitioners wanting to become abortion providers.”

Perhaps most concerning of all, explicitly demanding that departments and institutions be forced to provide abortion services. This means that if a hospital is not able to source an abortionist, then its pro-life staff may be forced to be involved in the taking of an unborn human life.

Cohn’s proposal that mandatory reporting by abortion providers be discontinued is in direct conflict with suggestions contained in the 5-year abortion law reform review. The review’s Report, published last September, recommended that “The Ministry of Health review the data notification requirements to consider how this may be improved to ensure data is consistently reported and of sufficient quality, to support service planning and, if necessary, update”

Canberra is the model for Australia

The proposed New South Wales laws would allow it to conform with permissive abortion laws already existing in other states. Victoria’s abortion law has included a conscience-violating clause since 2008; Tasmania since 2013.

The ACT introduced a similar amendment last year, as part of its ‘accessible abortions scheme’, forcing pro-life medical practitioners to violate their consciences by referring patients to another practitioner who will provide an abortion or at least providing information so that patients can find one themselves.

This was concurrent with a nationwide relaxation allowing nurse practitioners and authorised midwives to prescribe the abortion pill.

The first part of the ‘accessible abortions scheme’, which came in April 2023. made abortions free for ACT residents, even if they are not covered by Medicare. Thus immigrants are able to access free abortions if they love in Canberra! Under the same scheme, residents can receive long-acting reversible contraceptives, known as LARCs, which apart from being harmful to women, have the potential to cause abortions.

The similarity between abortion laws in the various states, shows that the long-term goal of the abortion lobby is to have every state and territory mimic the ACT: the end game is to have free abortions for everyone with medical staff and hospitals being forced to provide them.

Pregnancy Support is Decreasing

The NSW bill comes at a time when it is becoming more difficult for women to access pregnancy support; some private hospitals are no longer able to provide maternity services. Healthscope, Australia’s second largest hospital operator, has just announced that its hospitals in Darwin and Hobart are closing their maternity departments. By contrast, Hobart Private, Healthscope’s Hobart facility, will continue to provide abortions to 26 weeks.

Citing population decline and inability to secure practitioners, Healthscope and the wider private hospital industry are hoping for more government funding to enable them to maintain services. It is concerning that under the influence of pro-abortion politicians like those found in the Greens Party, increased funding will almost certainly be tied to abortion provision.

Workforce shortages are currently affecting many medical departments (due in part to mass sackings under COVID vaccine mandates) and the Financial Review reports that maternity and mental health services are suffering the most. It is ironic to think that as the population rate decreases, the abortion services which play so large a role in demographic decline are set to expand. To add a cruel twist, the mental health services essential for the healing of post-abortive mothers, are also shrinking.

Unintended consequences

Women’s Health Tasmania has begun to unwittingly highlight the reality of the harm done to women by abortion by providing its own brand of post-abortion support. The programme doesn’t acknowledge the intrinsic harm caused by an abortion, nor the fact that a baby is deliberately killed, rather it seems designed to make mothers feel peaceful about having their children put to death.

Yet, this is really an admission that many women feel so emotionally scarred by their abortion that they require outside assistance to deal with the aftermath. It is likewise a subtle confession of one unintended consequence of terminating a child’s life: the guilt that threatens to overshadow a post-abortive mother’s feeling of relief or empowerment.

In the face of this onslaught of abortion expansion comes a new cause for alarm. The pro-life organisation Students for Life have just discovered that residue from the abortion drug, mifepristone, is being found in drinking water in the US. This constitutes a ‘forever chemical’ and violated America’s EPA standards. The effect this poison is having on female and male fertility across the population can only be guessed at.

This article first appeared at Family Life International.