PRI Weekly Briefing: Exposing International Abortion Strategies
Dear Colleague:
In a series of secret memos, the pro-abortion movement has shown its hand.
Last week, PRI examined some of the domestic strategies laid out by the
so-called Center for Reproductive Rights to advance its anti-life agenda.
(To read the CRR documents, go to:
http://www.c-fam.org/pdfs/SecretProabortionInternationalLitigationStrategy.pdf)
This week, we expose its international strategy to force
abortion-on-demand on every country around the globe.
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Steven Mosher
President
PRI Weekly Briefing
7 January 2004
Vol. 6 / No. 1
Exposing International Abortion Strategies
The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) and its allies would like to
legalize abortion around the globe. So they tell us in a series of secret
memos made public by C-FAM. Yet they find themselves in a position of
grave weakness, since most countries outlaw abortion, some international
treaties and agreements explicitly oppose it, and not a single treaty or
agreement promotes it. But for the true believer, none of this matters.
Treaties can be twisted, documents can be distorted, and words can be made
to mean what they want them to mean.
CRR begins by openly acknowledging the weakness of its hand. "We have been
leaders in bringing arguments for a woman's right to choose abortion
within the rubric of international human rights. However, there is no
binding hard norm that recognizes a women's right to terminate a
pregnancy."(1) This is a glaring "normative gap," to use
CRR's own words,
in international documents and treaties. How does CRR intend to bridge
this normative gap?
CRR intends to fill this normative gap by explicitly including
"abortion"
as a "reproductive right" within the panoply of human rights referred
to
in international treaties and norms, which include: "the rights to life
and health; the right to be free from discrimination; [and] those rights
that protect individual decision-making on private matters."(2)
In a sense, they are seeking to replicate the infamous Roe vs. Wade
decision of the Supreme Court, which found a "right" to abortion in
the
"penumbra" of the 14th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Their
stumbling
block is that there is no international equivalent of the "Supreme
Court,"
dominated by people of like mind, to hand down this ruling.
In lieu of this, CRR lays out a strategy of legalizing abortion through
legislative action around the world. In CRR's words, "The goal of
strengthening international norms and enforcement is to ensure that
appropriate legal norms are in place at the national level."(3) They
describe the "adoption and implementation of appropriate national-level
norms" -- namely, legislation enacted by national governments to legalize
abortion -- as a "prerequisite" to establishing the right to abortion
in
international norms.
At the same time, however, CRR seeks to justify the legalization of
abortion in specific countries by claiming that international norms and
standards already include a right to abortion. This is smoke and mirrors,
since they have just admitted that international norms do NOT include a
right to abortion.
Nevertheless, the CRR abortion strategists go on to say that they will
promote such a right to abortion by "repeated interpretations" of the
concept of "reproductive rights." Through these "repeated
interpretations," they hope that international treaties and norms will
gradually be seen to support abortion. To wit, "As interpretations of
norms. are repeated in international bodies, the legitimacy of these
rights is reinforced." In other words, they will continue to repeat
the
lie that abortion is an international right until the lie is, they hope,
believed.
Pro-abortion lobbyists overseas will cite these false claims to promote
the legalization of abortion in their own countries. Whenever any country
legalizes abortion based upon these lies, then this would be used to
strengthen the "interpretation" that abortion is a "reproductive
right"
under international law.
If all this sounds confusing, not to worry. It is. It is the product of
minds who will stoop to any lie, to any deceit, to promote abortion.
Truth and justice matter nothing to such zealots.
But take heart. While the CRR memos hope to promote abortion in
"international jurisprudence," they go on to note that "we are
forever at
risk of losing ground in the same fora."(4) Their worst fear should
be
our plan. And a public examination of their memos is a good place to
start.
ENDNOTES
1. Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), DOMESTIC LEGAL PROGRAM OF
STRATEGIC PLANNING THROUGH OCTOBER 31, 2003; placed into the U.S.
Congressional Record by U.S. Representative Christopher Smith (R-NJ),
December 8, 2003.
2. Ibid., CRR.
3. Ibid., CRR.
4. Ibid., CRR.
__________
Steve Mosher is the president of Population Research Institute, a
non-profit organization dedicated to debunking the myth that the world is
overpopulated.
__________
© 2003 Population Research Institute. Permission to reprint granted.
Redistribute widely. Credit required.
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