Iulia Elena Cazan
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / New York, 04.18.2024).- Hundreds of parliamentarians from around the world gathered in Oslo, Norway for a sexual and reproductive health conference aimed at advancing abortion access, expanding sexuality education, and ensuring online speech complies with the abortion agenda.
The three-day IPCI conference was convened by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), a UN agency that promotes abortion services as indispensable for the realization of women’s health rights, and the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF).
The conference also marked the 30th Anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), the first global conference where abortion as a right was first discussed and ultimately rejected by UN member states.
This conference culminated with a Statement of Commitment and Plan of Action entitled “Life or Death is a Political Decision.” At its core, the eight-page document pledges to advance the pro-abortion agenda with greater assertiveness and says that parliamentarians “cannot afford business as usual…. [and] must mobilize new stakeholders and expand alliances.”
The statement calls for abortion access to women everywhere, stressing “the need for realizing SRHR for all…including…by providing safe abortion services.”
Norway, the host country and a staunch advocate for abortion access in Europe and beyond, recently pledged $54M to UNFPA. Norway said that “Sexual and reproductive health and rights are one of the most controversial areas within international development, with strong forces pushing back against progress made. UNFPA is at the forefront of the ‘push forward, against the pushback.”
The IPCI statement also asks for scaling up comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) programs, as a “key to ensuring that adolescents and youth are able to make informed decisions and develop respectful relationships.” In a 2022 publication, UNFPA called CSE a human right in itself yet the development and implementation of CSE curriculum is highly controversial. Critics call out CSE initiatives for exposing children to inappropriate sexual materials, dismantling heteronormativity, and encouraging sexual activity among adolescents.
The parliamentarians also pledged to combat technology-facilitated gender-based violence, an ambiguous term they say will combat online harassment against women and girls. In reality, it will be used to censor individuals to comply with the progressive agenda on homosexuality and transgenderism in their online speech. Using the “wrong” pronouns when addressing someone online, for example, could amount to technology-facilitated gender-based violence.
Another topic covered at IPCI was artificial intelligence (AI). Parliamentarians committed to ensuring that “AI development and deployment prioritize ethics, human rights, and address biases that exacerbate discrimination against women, girls, minorities, and marginalized populations. This includes […] combating discriminatory laws.” Such language could have serious implications for pro-life speech and legislation as the pro-life stance is considered discriminatory by IPCI standards.
Although the ethos of the conference is rooted in an ideologically progressive worldview that sees abortion as liberation for women, in an exchange with Inter Press Service, the President of the European Parliamentary Forum and pro-abortion advocate Petra Bayr, said “Fundamental human rights issues must never be dependent on ideology and religion.” However, while there is no internationally recognized right to abortion, Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognizes a universal right to life.
The document will have no force in law but will certainly be used to argue a global right to abortion.
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