Tag Archives: United Nations

UN Security Guards Confiscate Pro-Life Literature from Students

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Wendy Wright

(NEW YORK – C-FAM) Youth attending a UN conference on women’s issues this week say UN security officers confiscated their backpacks after discovering pro-life literature.

The confiscated materials were petitions to “Stop Sexualizing Children,” and were connected to a UN approved workshop led this week by Dr. Miriam Grossman, a child psychiatrist and author of “You’re Teaching My Child What? A Physician Exposes the Lies of Sex Education and How They Harm Your Child.”

The offending flyer announced a project called the “Girls Coalition to Protect the Health and Innocence of Children,” which is an ad hoc group that sponsored the Grossman event. At the panel, girls from China, Spain and Mexico launched a petition calling on UN agencies to “Stop Sexualizing Children.” They charge the UN’s promotion of “comprehensive sexuality education” is harmful to children.

The young people insist they were not leafleting, which is forbidden on UN property, though it is routinely ignored. The young students left UN grounds to make more copies. Upon their return they were stopped by UN security.

One of the students, Kalli Lawrence, said that the guards noticed the group’s distinctive green backpacks and then ordered the students to hand them over. “The guards had this confused, angry look on their faces,” she reported, “and they started telling all the security guards, ‘don’t let any of these yellow papers go through, just take them all and keep them.’”

The green backpacks and literature were stored in lockers at a security checkpoint. Students and their teachers were allowed to retrieve some of the backpacks as they left UN property. According to teacher Jody Dunn, some of the backpacks were not returned, those that contained a pro-life documentary called “180”. Dunn then insisted and those backpacks were returned also.

Pro-lifers have long felt the sting of selective enforcement of UN rules. Kali Lawrence said, “They didn’t stop anyone else that we could see passing out flyers.”

Upon questioning by the Friday Fax, the security officer in charge at the time said guards don’t “target” items. He went on to say they were not allowed to discuss policies or procedures.

Observers speculate that someone connected to Commission organizers complained to UN security. At the Cairo conference on Population and Development in 1994, without any evidence, former US Senator Timothy Wirth told UN security that a certain pro-lifer was a violent threat. The person was detained and deported.

Alliance Defense Fund attorney Piero Tozzi told the Friday Fax, “The UN cannot censor speech it does not agree with. Both the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression and the Human Rights Committee have recently emphasized the need to protect this fundamental freedom. Why then is speech by respectful, clean cut kids on a topic vital to keeping young people healthy being censored at the UN?”

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom . . . to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

Wendy Wright is Interim Executive Director at the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. Her article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM and is republished here with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in politics

Tagged , , , ,

Homosexual Lobby Group Funded Mostly by Governments

Posted on January 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Austin Ruse

(WASHINGTON, DC – C-FAM) European human rights lawyer J.C. von Krempach has taken a close look at the funding stream of the International Gay and Lesbian Association – Europe (ILGA) and concluded that most of their money comes from governments. Writing in the foreign policy blog Turtle Bay and Beyond, von Krempach found a vast majority of ILGA’s funds come from just two governmental entities, the European Commission and the Dutch government.

ILGA is an advocacy group promoting homosexual rights. They were notoriously denied UN accreditation for years because of their connection to groups that promote pedophilia. The NGO Committee of the UN Economic and Social Council consistently rejected ILGA until the Economic and Social Council, led by European countries, overruled their decision.

Among the requirements for UN NGO accreditation is “the major portion of the organization’s funds should be derived from contributions from national affiliates, individual members, or other non-governmental components.”

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) accredited to the United Nations must show actual people or non-profits, such as foundations, fund them. The UN holds that if their money comes mostly from governments that would make them governmental entities.

The UN included “civil society” to represent people independent from governmental intrusion, not to be an arm of government or a deceptive front for political officials. “Civil society” is comprised of voluntary social relationships and civic organizations and institutions, distinct from the state and market.

Von Krempach discovered that in the year just ended, the European Commission, an intergovernmental entity, provided fully 68% of ILGA’s budget. The Dutch government provided an additional €50,000 bringing ILGA’s governmental funding up to 71%. The rest of ILGA’s funding comes from left-wing donors George Soros, Sigrid Rausing, and one anonymous donor.

Von Krempach also looked at the organization’s budget forecast for 2012 and found a total income of €1,950,000 of which €1 million come from the European Commission and €334,000 come from the Dutch government. Von Krempach writes, “This raises questions with regard to ILGA-Europe’s accreditation to the UN Economic and Social Council.”

Von Krempach also points out the anomaly of the European Commission being the largest sole funding source for a group set up to lobby the European Commission and the European Parliament. He says this is basically the European Institutions lobbying itself.

In light of this new information, it is expected the UN NGO Committee will take up ILGA’s accreditation once more. There is a great deal of bad blood at the UN on the question of the homosexual agenda. European nations are forcing extremist homosexual groups upon the UN NGO Committee. Other governments have taken up the cause of making homosexual activity a human right enforced by international law.

A document called the Yogyakarta Principles, written in part by UN bureaucrats, claims that “sexual orientation and gender identity” are already part of international law. A solid bloc of 80+ nations consistently stops this phantom re-interpretation of UN treaties from actually happening.

In recent weeks the US government announced that advancing the homosexual agenda would be one of its top foreign policy priorities, directing all US government entities that do business overseas to make this agenda a priority.

Austin Ruse is President of C-FAM whose article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in news, politics

Tagged , , ,

Clash of Competing Rights Claims Raises Free Speech Concerns: Analysis

Posted on January 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Piero Tozzi, J.D.

(NEW YORK C-FAM) Tension between free speech advocacy and efforts to curb “hate speech” has arisen over the past year as the result of recent initiatives at the United Nations (UN) and by the Obama administration.

Freedom of opinion and expression have long been recognized as fundamental, and a recent UN Human Rights Committee “General Comment” affirmed these twin liberties as “the foundation stone for every free and democratic society.”

Yet while heralding these bedrock rights, others are seeking to curtail criticism of homosexual behavior and shelter certain religions from “defamation.” Such efforts also butt against religious liberty and conscience rights, two other bright constellations in the firmament of fundamental rights.

The tension became evident in a 2010 initiative by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which sought to reconcile broad free speech protections found in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) with article 20, which calls upon governments to limit “advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence.”

Though the ICCPR is largely a charter of “negative rights” protecting liberties from government intrusion, article 20 is anomalous, calling for affirmative governmental action. Concern over Article 20’s compatibility with domestic constitutional guarantees caused the United States (US) and other western governments to opt out from this particular article at the time of the ICCPR’s ratification.

Critics noted that in calling for dialogue on the interplay between free speech and “hate speech”, the OCHCR conspicuously misquoted the text of Article 20, stating that it banned “incitement of hatred” – a lowered standard that could cause provocative speech which did not incite violence to be banned. Such concern is not merely theoretical, as a number of Western nations once tolerant of the free exchange of ideas have enacted strictures curbing non-violent speech deemed critical of certain groups and individuals.

For example, Germany’s criminal code punishes “insults” – defined as “an illegal attack on the honor of another person by intentionally showing disrespect or no respect at all” – with up to one year’s imprisonment.

Fortunately, free-speech stalwarts such as the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank La Rue, pushed back, and the General Comment on ICCPR article 19 issued last September is largely protective of free expression while giving short shrift to article 20.

How such interpretations work in practice is another matter, however. “Workshops” on the interplay of the two articles have taken place in a number of cities around the world, including Vienna and Santiago de Chile. At the latter, most panelists sought to import “sexual orientation,” a concept absent from the ICCPR, as a category equivalent to the specified categories of nationality, race, and religion.

The cheerleading at the Santiago meeting in favor of “sexual orientation” speech restrictions by the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, Heiner Bielfeldt, was especially disconcerting. It indicated lack of awareness or concern over heavy-handed state restrictions on legitimate religion-based criticism of homosexual behavior by the rapporteur tasked with speaking out in defense of religious liberties.

Attempts to punish religious speech include Sweden’s criminal prosecution of a Pentecostal pastor for a sermon he gave in church critical of homosexual behavior and human rights proceedings in Canada against a pastor who had written a letter to a newspaper critical of the “homosexual agenda” and its threat to “innocent children and youth.” A human rights panel held the cleric to have violated a provincial statute that prohibited speech “likely to expose a person or class of persons to hatred or contempt” due to the “sexual orientation of that person or class of persons.”

Global concern over the issue has been heightened by the Obama administration’s initiative, announced last month, that would make promotion of the rights of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender” persons a high US foreign policy priority. US embassies across the globe are now tasked with advocating repeal of anti-sodomy laws in nations which have them and with monitoring groups, including religious groups, deemed opposed to this agenda.

Piero A. Tozzi is a Senior Fellow at the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM). This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in government, politics

Tagged , , ,

UN Agencies Sitting on Billions in Cash Reserves, Refuse Full Compliance with Auditors

Posted on January 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Wendy Wright

(NEW YORK C-FAM) A confidential audit of UNICEF and UNFPA found “gross” failures in transparency and surprisingly billions of dollars of unspent cash. Both agencies refused to disclose information on staff costs and travel. The auditor found that donors have “little knowledge regarding the ultimate destiny” of funds.

Fox News editor George Russell studied the yet-to-be-disclosed two-volume draft report written by the consulting firm IDC at the request of the government of Norway. UNFPA and UNICEF refused to answer Fox News’ questions, other than claiming the cash reserves were earmarked for future work on programs.

The audit of five UN agencies sought to discover “where does the money go.” The report found UNFPA and UNICEF had $3.2 billion in cash in 2009. UNICEF, which is free to spend money where it wants despite the project that earned it, gained $109 million in interest income in 2008. The United Nations Development Program had $5 billion in cash reserves, invested large amounts on bonds, and increased personnel costs 80% in the last decade. These together with the World Food Program (which alone was judged transparent and its performance “impressive”) had $12.2 billion in unspent cash. The United Nations High Commission on Refugees did not have a cash stockpile but refused to disclose spending, particularly on staff costs.

The report found UNFPA was unable, or unwilling, to account for $200 million a year funneled to governments and non-governmental groups. It refused to disclose details of wages, salaries, travel, consultant costs, and other items. The report declared, “UNFPA fails grossly” in its official commitment to transparency.

Details on UNICEF’s overhead were lacking, and scraps of information on expenditures make “it difficult to track use of funds from headquarters down to the ultimate beneficiaries on the ground.” It, too, could not account for expenditures within countries, which is the majority of its spending, earning a designation of “gross failure.”

Several UN agencies are increasingly focusing on giving policy advice and advocacy, and relying on others to deliver goods and services. They form vague strategic plans at headquarters that defy tracking outcomes or progress within countries. The UN refugee agency delegates most of its program activities to “implementing partners” that do the work on the ground.

The study warned that the hoard of money “implies that substantial donor funding is not being used for development purposes.” Donors may be reluctant to fund the UN until the “reserves are utilized.”

For years UN agencies have resisted divulging their finances. Government officials have suspected the lack of transparency hides lavish salaries and expensive travel. Diverting funds to non-governmental groups provides a coterie of accomplices who defend the UN agencies.

Shadowy accounting often signals systemic waste, fraud and abuse. In a moment of candor in 2007, a UNFPA executive boasted at a conference that, though the agency was barred from directly funding abortion, it disburses money to abortion providers.

An examination of UNFPA annual reports finds its budget ballooned from $249.9 million in 1999 to $870 million in 2010. Despite its vast resources and audit failure, in November it urged leaders to “galvanize greater political, financial support for family planning.”

Wendy Wright is Interim Director of C-FAM whose article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in government, news, politics

Tagged , , , , ,

Obama Elevates LGBT as U.S. Foreign Policy Priority

Posted on December 21, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Wendy Wright

(GENEVA – C-FAM)   All federal agencies dealing with U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance must now promote lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. This new priority puts U.S. foreign policy on a collision course with religious freedom.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced President Obama’s sweeping directive to UN diplomats in Geneva last week. Along with the full-force of the U.S. government, a Global Equality Fund will equip foreign LGBT groups to agitate within countries.

Every federal agency engaged overseas, and “other agencies as the President may designate,” is directed to “combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad,” assist LGBT refugees and asylum seekers, leverage aid to advance LGBT nondiscrimination, respond swiftly to abuses of LGBT persons abroad, enlist international organizations “in the fight,” and report on progress.

A State Department official said, “We are not just having people . . . whose full-time job it is to occupy ourselves with concerns of human rights, but also people whose daily grind is, most of the time, spent on different things.”

This elevates LGBT above every other people group, including those persecuted for religious beliefs, promoting democracy and human rights, ethnic minorities, and women.

Asked by the Friday Fax if any other minority has this status, the State Department did not respond.

By one account, only nine countries do not discriminate in some way against LGBT individuals, such as donating blood or “higher age of consent laws.”

Obama’s directive comes as Nigeria debates a bill to protect marriage. The Catholic Medical Association of Nigeria denounced “the coordinated ferocity” by foreign governments and international groups “browbeating” legislators to adopt laws that are premised on “dubious science and ethical mischief.”

Reacting to Obama’s order, Oliver Kisaka with the National Council of Churches of Kenya told the CS Monitor, “God did not make a mistake; being gay is that person’s own perspective. Those who live as gays need help to live right and we should not be supporting them to live in a wrong reality.

“Society should reach out to gays and transgender people to help them out of their situation. They have not ceased to be God’s children and no one is a gone case.”

Clinton equated religious and cultural views on sexuality and gender identity with “violent practices toward women like honor killings, widow burning or female genital mutilation.”

Tina Ramirez of the Washington DC–based Becket Fund for Religious Liberty told the Friday Fax, “The Administration is sticking its head in the sand when it comes to the conflict between gay rights and religious freedom. The failure of either the President or the Secretary of State to articulate how the international LGBT rights initiative will interact with religious conscientious objection is a recipe for conflict between the two. No one disagrees with Secretary Clinton’s truism that religious freedom doesn’t protect religiously-motivated violence against anyone. But the real issue, that neither the President nor Secretary Clinton talked about, is what happens when the LGBT initiative conflicts with sincere conscientious objection. Religious liberty is a fundamental human right protected in the United States Constitution, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and countless other human rights instruments; the Administration seems to be treating it as an afterthought.”

Wendy Wright is Managing Editor of FridayFax, internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.”

Leave a comment

Posted in news, politics

Tagged , , , ,

Rogue UN Officials Reprimanded by UN Member States

Posted on December 8, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Timothy Herrmann

NEW YORK (C-FAM) Delegations fought back again last week against the lack of accountability and transparency of independent experts at the United Nations. Pakistan led the charge, proposing an amendment that called for experts to “exercise their functions independently and in full observance of their respective mandates.” Forty-eight countries supported the amendment, all of them increasingly frustrated by the tendency of many of the appointed independent experts to overstep the boundaries of their mandates.

The most recent example of an independent expert going beyond their mandate is Anand Grover, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health who claimed in his report last month that abortion is an international right. Individuals like Grover are appointed for their expertise in a particular area of human rights, but when they show significant bias in their reporting or claim that their opinions have international legal force, that expertise is called into question.

Independent experts are appointed, not elected, and receive minimal oversight at the UN. As a result, the incentive for many to go rogue is becoming commonplace and notoriously difficult to moderate. In October of 2009, the Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism Martin Scheinin left the scope of his mandate on terrorism to define gender as a “social construction.” In November of 2010 (A/65/162) the former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Vernor Muñoz, called into question the inviolable role of parents in the sexual education of their children. Given the frequency and controversial nature of these cases, Pakistan determined it as necessary to propose an amendment to remind delegations of the importance of independent experts remaining within their mandate.

For many countries, like Jamaica, the proposed amendment afforded a unique opportunity to speak out against the way their country in particular had been bullied by special rapporteurs in the past. The Jamaican delegate said a special rapporteur “publically accused” her of misrepresenting the views of her own country when reading a statement that was in fact prepared by her government. The Russian delegate also expressed support for the amendment, calling it an improvement to the resolution’s text.

Though member states can make formal complaints throughout the year about the questionable behavior of independent experts, the “persistent non-compliance of mandate holders” is only considered when their mandate comes up for renewal three years after appointment. Even then, the final decision on whether or not to extend the mandate of the special rapporteur is decided by the President of the Human Rights Council, not member states. In the case of some independent experts, like special representatives, only the Secretary General determines whether or not the expert in question is guilty of exceeding the boundaries of their mandate.

The opinion of these experts is neither binding on international law nor on the countries they criticize. Even when their opinions are referenced in a resolution, they maintain only the force of their personal opinion or of the internationally recognized norms that their opinions support. At the same time, many advocacy groups have attempted to use the independence of these experts in order to push their agenda at the UN. For Pakistan and many other countries, the time has come for this practice to end.

Timothy Herrmann is the UN Representative for the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in news, politics

Tagged , ,

San Jose Articles Used to Block Right to Abortion in Uruguay

Posted on November 29, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Austin Ruse

NEW YORK (C-FAM) An impressive list of dignitaries launched the San Jose Articles in the national legislature of Uruguay last week. Led by Congressman Gerardo Amarilla, the list included many members of the Uruguayan Congress, several former high-ranking Ministers, medical doctors, professors of constitutional law, and one famous soccer player.

There have been efforts in the Uruguayan Senate to liberalize their laws on abortion by the left-leaning coalition. In order to get this achieved they needed a coalition that would include the right-of-center Colorado Party. The Colorado Party declined to join the effort and cited the San Jose Articles when they did.

The Uruguayan launch of the Articles took the San Jose organizers by surprise. “We did not know about this launch until just before it happened,” said a spokesman for the San Jose Signatories. “While we were surprised, we welcome this effort. This is exactly what we had intended, that the Articles would take on a life of their own, that people from around the world would embrace them, make them their own, and promulgate them.”

The Articles were also launched, before a crowd of 1,000 people at the National Philippines for Life Congress in Cebu City. Former Majority Leader of the Philippine Senate Francisco Tatad led the effort. Present were many high-ranking Churchmen including the Archbishop of Cebu and the incoming president of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines. The launch of the Articles was the high point of Senator Tatad’s keynote address to the Congress.

Tatad told the Friday Fax, “The San Jose Articles are primarily meant to shut down the false claim of an international right to abortion; but they constitute one of the biggest boosts so far to our fight against foreign-dictated contraception and sterilization.” The Philippines is under great pressure from UN agencies and American advocacy groups to accept UN-style population control programs.

The San Jose Articles are an expert document signed by such luminaries as Professor Robert George of Princeton, Professor John Haldane of St. Andrews, Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Anna Zaborska of the European Parliament and former French Cabinet Minister Christine Boutin who has launched a bid for the French presidency.

The Articles are intended to help people around the world, especially government officials, to refute claims made by UN personnel and abortion advocates that there exists an international right to abortion. Anand Grover, the UN Special Rapporteur for Health, made this claim as recently as last month in his report to the Secretary General. Governments complained at the time that Grover had overstepped his mandate and that asserting an international right to abortion was none of his business.

Even this week, a large number of Member States imitated a debate in the General Assembly scolding Grover and others for their overreach. They attempted to place an amendment in a GA Resolution to that effect. The effort lost but not by much and marks the first time such a widespread pushback against Special Rapporteurs has occurred.

The San Jose Articles have now been launched at the UN, the European Parliament, the British House of Lords, the World Pro-Life Congress in San Jose, and the National Pro-Life Conference in Calgary. Formal launches are still pending in the US, Chile, Argentina, and the Italian Parliament.

The Articles are now circulating in eight languages including English, French, Spanish, Polish, Croatian, German, Italian, and Slovak. Organizers say many more are to come.

Austin Ruse is President of C-FAM. His article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org/). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in news

Tagged , , ,

Lords in London Launch San Jose Articles

Posted on October 14, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Lord David Alton

(C-FAM, London) When Lord Nicholas Windsor became a Catholic, he renounced his claim to the throne and embraced the Church’s teaching on the right to life of the unborn. This week in a Committee Room of Parliament, he supported a groundbreaking defense of that right, stating “I see the San Jose Articles as an attempt to draw a line and fight back against the strong drift towards conjuring a fully-fledged right to abortion from out of the provisions of international human rights law.”

More than 30 senior politicians, diplomats, lawyers, scholars and public figures from around the world have signed the San Jose Articles, a document that defends the unborn child and refutes the subversive international campaign that falsely claims that abortion is a human right.

The importance of the Articles was recently underlined when the UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the UN Secretary General all wrongly stated that a right to abortion exists. It is precisely this approach which has led to the gendercide that has taken the lives of over 100 million girls – aborted because of their sex.

The San Jose Articles, named for the city where they were drafted in Costa Rica in March 2011, were launched this month at the United Nations. Further launches have taken place in legislatures around the world – with Jim Dobbin MP and Fiona Bruce MP, the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the All Party Pro Life Group, joining me at Westminster.

The San Jose Articles begin by proclaiming the scientific fact that human life begins at conception and further explains that no UN treaty mentions abortion or defines reproductive health as including abortion. On the contrary, a number of human rights treaties recognize the humanity of unborn children and the rights and duties of governments to protect them as members of the human family.

Over two-thirds of UN member-states have laws recognizing that unborn children deserve protection. Only 56 countries permit abortion for any reason, and only 22 of these are without restriction.

Some UN agencies, non-governmental organizations and wealthy countries are waging a campaign to bully and manipulate nations – from Nicaragua to Kenya; from Columbia to Ireland – into changing their laws on abortion. In this effort they misquote treaties and, more deplorably, use aid as a form of blackmail. Developing countries are told they will lose help for the poor if they fail to conform. Protecting the unborn can lead to retaliation and retribution. Sweden, for instance, withdrew all assistance to Nicaragua after it failed to pass a liberal abortion law. To justify this shocking intrusion, Sweden said abortion “is super important to us”.

Some countries are undoubtedly succumbing to the bullying and bogus assertions. The High Court of Colombia changed its country’s abortion laws based on false claims.

While no international right to abortion exists, the “right to life” is set out in Article 3 of The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which had its genesis in the horrors of the Second World War. The San Jose Articles re-assert the admirable impulses that gave birth to the 1948 Declaration and recognize that the greatest of all rights is the right to life.

I ended my remarks at the Westminster launch with a true story.

In 1954 Joanne Schieble, a young unmarried student, discovered she was pregnant. Her father would not let her marry the child’s father. Although she could have had an abortion, it was illegal and dangerous. Instead, she arranged to have the baby adopted.

Paul and Clara Jobs adopted the baby boy and named him Steven.

Not every child will have a life as remarkable as Steve Jobs. But with every abortion we have little idea of who we are so casually losing. As the San Jose Articles remind us, every life is precious.

This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM (Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (http://www.c-fam.org). This article appears with permission.

Leave a comment

Posted in health, news, politics

Tagged , , , ,

News Flash! UN Officials Wrong. No Right to Abortion. New Expert Document Issued at United Nations

Posted on October 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Tomorrow morning at the UN press briefing room, internationally recognized scholar Professor Robert George of Princeton and former US Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees will challenge claims made by UN personnel and others that there exists an international right to abortion in international law.

As recently as a few weeks ago the UN Special Rapporteur on Health, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Secretary General have all said such a right exists. And, according to Human Rights Watch the CEDAW Committee has directed 93 countries to change their laws on abortion.

Professor George, Ambassador Rees and 30 other international experts are releasing the San Jose Articles to refute these claims and to assert the rights of the unborn child in international law.

Other signatories to the Articles include Professor John Finnis of Oxford, Professor John Haldane of the University of St. Andrews, Francisco Tatad, the former majority leader of the Philippine Senate, Javier Borrego, former Judge of the European Court of Human Rights, and Professor Carter Snead of UNESCO’s international committee on bioethics.

“The San Jose Articles were drafted by a large group of experts in law, medicine, and public policy. The Articles will support and assist those around the world who are coming under pressure from UN personnel and others who say falsely that governments are required by international law to repeal domestic laws protecting human beings in the embryonic and fetal stages of development against the violence of abortion” said Professor George.

Ambassador Grover Joseph Rees, former US Ambassador to East Timor, said, “When I was in Timor I witnessed first-hand a sustained effort by some international civil servants and representatives of foreign NGOs to bully a small developing country into repealing its pro-life laws. The problem is that people on the ground, even government officials, have little with which to refute the extravagant claim that abortion is an internationally recognized human right. The San Jose Articles are intended to help them fight back.”

Leave a comment

Posted in health care, news, politics

Tagged , , , ,

International Right to Abortion, Global Elite Group Presents Contrary Evidence

Posted on October 5, 2011 by | Leave a comment

This week a global elite of political, legal, and health care professionals joined by pro-life activists will present legal evidence proving the pro-abortion advocates at the United Nations have no legal standing in their assertions of an international right to abortion.

International efforts to legalize abortion-on-demand has been going on for many years. Planned Parenthood International has been among those lobbying the United Nations since its existence. The goods and services provided by abortion providers like Planned Parenthoods amount to a multi-billion dollar enterprise. Sadly, the United States gives billions of tax payers dollars to such organizations though the USAID program.

Dr. Ligaya Acosta is right: If the billions given by the United States to promote abortion in Asia and throughout the world were used to actually help the poor, there would be no more poverty in the world.

The most recent effort to legalize abortion came from the U.N. Secretariat. In a Human Rights Council policy statement, the Secretariat seeks to make abortion as a unfettered global health right. If adopted, all members nations will be obligated to decriminalize their abortion-related laws. Doing so will enable organizations like Planned Parenthood to sell their goods and abortion-on-demand services without legal hindrance.

Here is the worst example of the bureaucratically instituted form of free enterprise.

Among those expected to participate in the U.N presentation this week are Robert George of Princeton University, Ambassador Grover Rees (Ret.), and Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.

(For more information about the U.N. policy report, read C-FAM article titled “UN Official Says Abortion is a Human Right, Secretary General Endorses Report”, visit the blog Turtle Bay, and/or read the UN Report .)

Leave a comment

Posted in health care, news, politics

Tagged , ,