Keeping UN language honest

Crafters of various decrees and charters put out by the United Nations keep trying to sneak euphemisms into the langauge of human rights that hide an abortion agenda. The Holy See is the true champion of human rights that the UN tries to be, and they’ve insisted again on clarity in the language of rights.

Made public today was a talk delivered by Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Holy See permanent observer to the United Nations in New York, concerning a Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, approved by the U.N. General Assembly on December 13, 2006 and due to be signed by member States on March 30.

In a note accompanying the talk, the archbishop recalls that, “since the beginning of work in July 2002, the Holy See has participated actively in the preparation of the document, collaborating in the insertion of explicit references to respect for the right to life and the recognition of the role of the family in the lives of disabled people. Nonetheless, in the final stage of the work, unacceptable references to ‘reproductive health’ have been introduced into articles 23 and 25 and, for that reason, the Holy See has decided not to adhere to the new convention.” (emphasis added)

So, when this document they’ve worked on for years was in its final stage, abortion activists slipped in some wording they hoped would go unnoticed. In a document about the rights of the disabled.

In his English-language talk, Archbishop Migliore highlighted how “the Holy See has consistently called for disabled individuals to be completely and compassionately integrated into society, convinced that they possess full and inalienable human rights.”

With reference to article 23 of the convention, he indicated that his delegation “interprets all the terms and phrases regarding family planning services, regulation of fertility and marriage in article 23, as well as the word ‘gender,’ as it did in its reservations and statements of interpretation at the Cairo and Beijing International Conferences,” held respectively 1994 and 1995.

Translation: those terms and phrases push an abortion/contraception agenda as they did in Cairo and Beijing in a First World effort by some activists to control the population and spread abortion facilities across the Third World. And, in fact, to make abortion a basic human right.

“Finally, and most importantly, regarding article 25 on health, and specifically the reference to sexual and reproductive health, the Holy See understands access to reproductive health as being a holistic concept that does not consider abortion or access to abortion as a dimension of those terms. …

We opposed the inclusion of such a phrase in this article, because in some countries reproductive health services include abortion, thus denying the inherent right to life of every human being, also affirmed by article 10 of the Convention. It is surely tragic that … the same Convention created to protect persons with disabilities from all discrimination in the exercise of their rights, may be used to deny the very basic right to life of disabled unborn persons. (Emphasis added)

“For this reason,” he concluded, “and despite the many helpful articles this convention contains, the Holy See is unable to sign it.”

That’s clarity and consistency in the ethic of life. For more background on this strategy to spread an abortion agenda across the world through the UN, check out some of the reporting by my colleague Mary Jo Anderson. We need to be familiar with the language and tactics of the ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ maneuvers at so prominent a world body as the UN.