NEW YORK — A United Nations directive encourages its personnel to lobby countries emerging from war to liberalize their abortion laws under the guise of offering reparations to women who were sexually victimized during hostilities.

The document, known as a guidance note, that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued in June, is not a treaty, and it does not officially create a new international legal norm that member states are obliged to follow. However, Catholic and pro-life observers of the United Nations say the measure is an alarming example of the secretary general overstepping his mandate to promote an aggressive pro-abortion agenda.

“Obviously, this is very controversial. There is no mandate for this. There is no U.N. consensus that abortion is a right in any circumstance,” said Stefano Gennarini, director of the Center for Legal Studies at the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM).

Gennarini told the Register that the secretary general’s guidance note is a “betrayal of trust” for women and children in war-torn countries, where U.N. personnel are tasked with providing vital humanitarian assistance. He said the guidance note also fails to explain how legalizing abortion will prevent sexual violence against women.

“If anything, there’s evidence that wide availability and easy access to abortion facilitates sexual violence,” Gennarini said. “It’s one of the reasons why sex traffickers get away with what they do.”

The secretary general’s document, “Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence,” says women should have a “choice of safe and legal abortion” in countries emerging from armed conflict. The document’s stated aim is to “provide policy and operations guidance for United Nations engagement” in post-conflict situations. The U.N. Human Rights Office and U.N. Women, the official U.N. agency for “gender equality and women’s empowerment,” prepared the guidance note.

 

‘Gravely Mistaken’

The abortion provision, a brief sentence in the 20-page document, says, “Among other legislative measures that are needed, legislation is required to provide women and girls who become pregnant as a result of rape with the choice of safe and legal abortion.” The document also lists forced abortion as one of the multiple forms of conflict-related sexual violence that include rape, forced prostitution and sterilization.

Msgr. Robert Vitillo, an attaché at the permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the U.N. in Geneva, told the Register it was “most regrettable” that the secretary general would promote an agenda of so-called “safe abortion” in his guidance note.

“The notion that abortion could serve as a way to address structural violence already committed or to compensate its victims is gravely mistaken,” Msgr. Vitillo said. “The destruction of life in the womb can never be proposed as a way to make reparations for the harm done to a woman and should never be proposed as an institutional response to sexual violence committed in conflict situations.”

However, Msgr. Vitillo also said that the guidance note, despite the problematic abortion provision, includes several positive recommendations that should be acknowledged and affirmed.

“For too many years, states have allowed the military and other combatants to commit horrific sexual crimes and violence against women and girls, for the most part, but also against some men and boys, with impunity,” Msgr. Vitillo said, adding that the document at least tries to address the inadequate response of individual governments and the international community to protect and compensate victims of sexual violence.

 

National Decisions

In the United Nations, abortion laws have always been considered a matter for individual member states to decide, though that has not stopped the U.N. committees assigned to monitor states’ compliance with international treaties from trying to interpret those treaties to contain a right to abortion. Still, the secretary general has no mandate to push states to liberalize their abortion laws, said Susan Yoshihara, C-FAM’s senior vice president for research and director of the International Organizations Research Group.

“It’s really puzzling why he’s going so far outside his mandate. Although he has been promoting abortion for some time, this really pushes it to a new boundary,” Yoshihara said, adding that the guidance note tries to frame abortion as health care and a natural right under international law.

“It’s highly ironic, because it essentially argues that women raped in war, who were victims of sexual violence, should then undergo more violence and even more death and that this somehow will make amends to them. It’s bizarre and unfounded,” said Yoshihara, who noted that previous U.N. surveys of women in conflict settings indicated that they wanted education, health care, security and social acceptance for children conceived as a result of sexual violence.

“None of them asked for abortion,” said Yoshihara, who also added that countries emerging from war often lack basic infrastructure that makes it a challenge to even provide standard health care.

“A post-conflict setting is not a good environment to liberalize abortion,” Yoshihara said. “There are major health risks. Often, there is no water; no roads to get to emergency obstetrical care. So what they’re suggesting is really dangerous to women, and it’s completely unsubstantiated.”

 

Secretary General: No Comment

The secretary general’s office declined the Register’s request for comment. On Aug. 1, when the directive was presented to member states at U.N. headquarters in New York, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the head of U.N. Women, said the document’s call for legalizing abortion in post-conflict settings was part of a “broader struggle” for gender equality.

None of the U.N. member states’ delegations raised objections to the guidance note, though C-FAM said that several delegations, mostly from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, are preparing a cautionary note for the secretary general to say he is interfering with exclusively national prerogatives.

“I’m sure part of the reason why there hasn’t been an open pushback to this is the fact that a lot of the African countries are concerned [about] being on good terms with the U.N. Secretariat, because it has an important role in all the logistical aspects of providing assistance to those countries,” Gennarini said. “But I’m sure, behind closed doors, there’s going to be pushback against the secretary general’s work where countries see him overstepping his mandate.”

Gennarini said the secretary general, in promoting his policy, might try to cite two U.N. Security Council resolutions in 2013 on women, peace and security. The resolutions make references to women’s reproductive health, but do not declare a specific right to abortion, despite some Security Council members’ attempts to include that provision in the resolutions.

“That was unheard of until the last couple of years,” Gennarini said.

 

Pressure on Catholic Aid Agencies?

Msgr. Vitillo said liberalizing abortion laws in post-conflict settings would likely result in increased pressure on Catholic relief agencies and health-care workers who refuse to participate in actions that result in the destruction of human life.

“Tragically, the culture of death seeks to impose a secularist, pro-abortion agenda within the U.N. system and in many other governmental and intergovernmental processes,” said Msgr. Vitillo, who added that the Holy See has “respected and affirmed” many of the U.N.’s positive elements, noting that Popes Paul VI, St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI all visited the U.N. General Assembly in New York.

“At the same time, however,” Msgr. Vitillo added, “the Holy See finds it necessary to denounce attempts to impose and integrate an anti-life agenda with such structures and on the world at large.”

Register correspondent Brian Fraga writes from Fall River, Massachusetts.