Trump administration signs anti-abortion declaration with 30 other countries ahead of presidential elections
The Trump Administration has signed an anti-abortion declaration with at least 30 member states in the United Nations (UN), many of whom are conservative and authoritarian governments in Uganda, Egypt, Belarus, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, among others. Ahead of the US presidential election on November 3, the “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health – but without access to abortion.
The declaration says both men and women should enjoy civil, political, and economic, social and cultural rights as well as equal rights and opportunities, but emphasizes that “in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning” and that any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system “can only be determined at the national or local level” according to the national legislative process. It calls on improving and securing access to health and development gains for women, including sexual and reproductive health, “which must always promote optimal health, the highest attainable standard of health, without including abortion.”
“We, the representatives of our sovereign nations do hereby declare in mutual friendship and respect, our commitment to work together to reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion, consistent with the long-standing international consensus that each nation has the sovereign right to implement programs and activities consistent with their laws and policies,” says the document. It, however, adds, “All are equal before the law, and human rights of women are an inalienable, integral, and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The non-binding declaration, intended “to promote women’s essential contribution to health, and strength of the family and of a successful and flourishing society,” is a rebuke of UN human rights bodies that have sought to protect access to abortion. It marks the Trump administration’s latest aim to curtail abortion rights, a move that reorients US foreign policy ahead of the presidential election.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the US has defended the dignity of human life everywhere and always. He’s done it like no other President in history. We have mounted an unprecedented defense of the unborn abroad,” said the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, at the virtual signing of the declaration. Further, most of the signatories are among the 20 worst countries to be a woman, according to the Women, Peace, and Security Index created by Georgetown University.
Among other things, the declaration supports the role of the family as “foundational to society” and as a source of health, support, and care, and emphasizes that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the state.”
The signatories reaffirm that every human being has the “inherent right to life,” that the child needs “special safeguards and care before as well as after birth” and that special measures of protection and assistance should be taken on behalf of all children. They also reaffirm to engage across the UN system to “realize these universal values, recognizing that individually we are strong, but together we are stronger.”
Tarah Demant, the Director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Identity program at Amnesty International, US, told Forbes: “Today's news marks another giant step backward for the US as it joins a list of countries willingly endangering people’s health and lives. The US stance flies in the face of human rights and decades of health research. This is about people living full lives that are their own, not the lives that the government has prescribed for them.”