{"id":237051,"date":"2020-12-29T07:40:50","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T13:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=237051"},"modified":"2020-12-28T14:09:34","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T20:09:34","slug":"abortion-advocates-demand-us-advance-internationally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-advocates-demand-us-advance-internationally\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion advocates demand that U.S. increase efforts to advance abortion internationally"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/c-fam.org\/friday_fax\/abortion-advocates-say-u-s-needs-international-oversight-2\/\">Washington, D.C. \u2014 C-Fam<\/a>)\u00a0Pro-abortion leaders are calling on the incoming Biden administration to push for ratification of the UN\u2019s treaty on women\u2019s rights. They admit the hard-law treaty requires abortion-rights and charge the U.S. with being a \u201cbad actor\u201d on human rights. Additionally, they say the U.S. requires oversight from international organizations to do better.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, leaders of the Global Justice Center, Ipas, and CHANGE held an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=K-p3q4RYZ-M\">event<\/a> discussing feminist priorities on \u201csexual and reproductive health and rights\u201d for the Biden administration.\u00a0 Abortion was the predominant topic of discussion, and participants called for the removal of pro-life laws and policies, including the Helms Amendment and the Mexico City Policy.<\/p>\n<p>Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, said U.S. accession to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was an\u00a0\u201cuphill battle.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She noted that President-elect Biden has made CEDAW ratification one of its <a href=\"https:\/\/joebiden.com\/womens-agenda\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">priorities<\/a> for women. She noted that in 2002, Biden <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sfgate.com\/opinion\/openforum\/article\/Senate-needs-to-ratify-the-treaty-for-the-rights-2810056.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">coauthored<\/a> an op-ed with California Senator Barbara Boxer arguing in favor of ratification but said the treaty \u201cwould not impose a single new requirement in our laws,\u201d which they saw as already in compliance with the treaty. The U.S. law, imposed by the Supreme Court in 1973, allows for abortion on demand through all 9 months of pregnancy.<\/p>\n<p>Radhakrishnan took a different view, calling the U.S. a \u201cbad actor\u201d on international human rights and denouncing Biden and Boxer\u2019s stance as \u201ccolonial\u201d and disregarding of the \u201cdire state of women\u2019s rights here in the United States.\u201d She called on the Biden administration to ratify CEDAW in order to impose its framework at home, and move away from the \u201cregressive\u201d view shared by Biden and others that CEDAW is \u201cabortion-neutral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCEDAW is not abortion-neutral!\u201d she emphasized, adding that if the U.S. were to ratify the treaty, it should not issue a statement that it is doing so on the understanding that it is abortion-neutral. \u201cThat is harmful for women here, it is harmful for women around the world\u2014 and anyone else who may need access to abortion,\u201d said Radhakrishnan, careful to include pregnant individuals identifying as men.<\/p>\n<p><strong>READ:\u00a0<em><a href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/trump-hhs-united-nations-no-right-abortion\/\">Trump HHS Secretary to United Nations: \u2018There is no international right to an abortion\u2019<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>While the treaty has been ratified by nearly all UN member nations, many of them did so with reservations, some of which explicitly denounce any suggestion that it implies a right to abortion.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.un.org\/womenwatch\/daw\/cedaw\/text\/econvention.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">text<\/a> of the treaty itself does not mention abortion, nor the phrases \u201creproductive health\u201d or \u201creproductive rights.\u201d\u00a0 Nevertheless, UN member states that ratify it must engage in a periodic reporting process in which an expert committee reviews their compliance with their treaty obligations. This CEDAW Committee has aggressively pressured countries that have ratified CEDAW to liberalize their abortion laws and remove barriers to access to abortion, including conscientious objection by health workers and exceptions in health insurance for funding abortions.<\/p>\n<p>The U.S. under President Jimmy Carter was among the first signatories of CEDAW in 1980, but the ratification process stalled in the Senate, despite being debated several times since then.\u00a0 The most recent hearing was in 2010, but the ratification process never made it to the full Senate, and it is unlikely that it could receive the required 67 votes in favor of ratifying it in the near future.<\/p>\n<p><em>Editor&#8217;s Note:<\/em>\u00a0<i><em>Rebecca Oas, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/em>writes for C-Fam. <a href=\"https:\/\/c-fam.org\/friday_fax\/abortion-advocates-say-u-s-needs-international-oversight-2\/\">This article<\/a> first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family &amp; Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute (<\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/c-fam.org\/\"><i>https:\/\/c-fam.org\/<\/i><\/a><i>). This article appears with permission.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/liveactionnewsonline\/\">\u201cLike\u201d Live Action News on Facebook<\/a> for more pro-life news and commentary!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Washington, D.C. \u2014 C-Fam)\u00a0Pro-abortion leaders are calling on the incoming Biden administration to push for ratification of the UN\u2019s treaty on women\u2019s rights. They admit the hard-law treaty requires abortion-rights and charge the U.S. with being a \u201cbad actor\u201d on human rights. Additionally, they say the U.S. requires oversight from international organizations to do better. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":715,"featured_media":218085,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"categories":[7077,7,5],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Abortion advocates demand that U.S. increase efforts to advance abortion internationally<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pro-abortion leaders want the Biden administration to push for ratification of the UN\u2019s pro-abortion treaty on women\u2019s rights, calling the US a &quot;bad actor.&quot;\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/abortion-advocates-demand-us-advance-internationally\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" 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