Earlier this month, President Joe Biden’s State Department released the federal government’s annual report on the condition of human rights around the world.
The department overturned a Trump administration policy and included abortion access as a fundamental human right – that is, for women. For the unborn, not so much.
The Washington Post reported in early November that the yearly report had not included abortion in its chronicling of the human condition until Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state under former President Barack Obama.
Former President Donald Trump changed that. His diplomats believed including “reproductive rights” in the document was using a loaded term, and unnecessarily divisive, according to the Post.
The government’s initial report was released in March as it had been under Trump. But Biden’s State Department reversed that, adding abortion in re-releasing the report this month.
With the revised report, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters at the time, “We reaffirm our full commitment to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive health of all individuals, recognizing the essential and transformative role they play in gender equality and women and girls’ empowerment around the world.”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank, and advocacy group, about 64 of the world’s 193 countries ban abortion outright or restrict the procedure only in cases of preserving the mother’s life.
Yet that group includes some of the worst abusers of human rights for those outside the womb – nations like Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Writing on Monday at CNSNews.com, Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Human Dignity at the conservative Family Research Council, noted that Biden’s overhaul of the report sends the wrong message.
Proclaiming America’s unfettered support for “reproductive rights,” which puts the U.S. in the same category as China and North Korea, will alienate the human-rights squelchers among those anti-abortion nations, while also penalizing pro-life allies like Poland and Ireland.
“The topics that the United States chooses to cover in these reports convey to the rest of the world what the United States considers human rights and what type of human rights issues our foreign policy will prioritize,” Del Turco wrote.
Noting Price comments, she added, “This is a false and damaging narrative for women. Instead of leveling the playing field, legalized abortion pressures women into viewing their children as enemies of their success. Abortion is not necessary to ensure equality — having equal protections and rights under the law are.”
“We advocate for human rights around the world because we aim to protect rights that every person already has by virtue of their humanity,” she concluded.
“The United States must preserve the integrity of human rights advocacy in its annual reports and all other aspects of its foreign policy. We can start by making sure the State Department’s annual reports monitor what they purport to monitor — human rights.”
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