(ZENIT News – Bioethics Observatory / Valencia, 10.15.2024).- A recent report published this month by the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states in paragraph 16, point b, the following:
“The Committee notes with concern; (b)That societal perceptions that persons with Down syndrome and other impairments are less valuable than other persons contribute to the high level of selective termination of pregnancies following prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome or other impairments”.
This concern for people with Down syndrome by the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities appears in the conclusions of a report on policies developed in Belgium.
This is a surprising defense of people with disabilities and a critique of abortion practices carried out as a result of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which are widely used as eugenic practices.
These statements are astonishing precisely because the UN has been promoting for many years the extension of birth control policies that prioritize access to free abortion.
An example of this is the Bucharest Conference, which already promoted the idea that “a small family is a happy family”, as a culmination of the World Population Year of 1974.
At this conference, let us recall that, promoted by the United Nations, John D. Rockefeller III addressed the delegates stating that “population planning must be a fundamental part of any modern development program as recognized and accepted by the leaders of nations”.
It was at this Conference that the opposition of some South American countries and Algeria prevented attempts to approve a world population action plan that was clearly eugenic.
Other conferences that took place during the 1990s took up the issue of population control. Specifically, the Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, where Hillary Clinton, a staunch defender of abortion, stated that abortion should be free until the last day of pregnancy.
The United Nations also promoted in the Kissinger report the dissemination of contraceptive methods among the population, as well as making development aid dependent on the acceptance by national governments of policies related to contraception and abortion.
It was in the 1960s that the UN began to use the term “sexual and reproductive health and rights” as a semantic mask to provide legal justification for contraception and abortion.
The UN has also promoted international conferences organized by the United Nations Population Fund, of neo-Malthusian inspiration, that is, with clear intentions of promoting the reduction of the supposed “world overpopulation.”
The use of the term safe abortion has been a tool for introducing the pro-abortion mentality into the agendas of all governments.
Bioethical assessment
First of all, the use of the term safe abortion constitutes an intolerable manipulation of language.
Abortion is never safe because it constitutes a violent aggression against the pregnant woman and her child, causing the death of the latter and consequences for the former, as clearly demonstrated in several studies.
On the other hand, the spread of the antinatalism culture promoted by the UN has only promoted the acceptance of abortion as another contraceptive method that contributes to population control, an objective repeatedly stated by this organization. In this regard, the generalization of prenatal and preimplantation genetic diagnosis methods has become a powerful eugenic tool that ends the life of embryos and fetuses affected by any disability.
The now paradoxical statement by the United Nations highlighting the value of people with disabilities and rejecting discrimination against them is in open contradiction with the policies that this organization has promoted in all areas since the 1970s.
People affected by Down syndrome, or any other disability deserve to have their personal dignity recognized like any other person and to have their lives respected.
But not only them: the millions of abortions in the world every year constitute an intolerable attack on human dignity and rights, which the UN should protect and about which it is now showing surprising concern.
Weak, dependent, sick or disabled people deserve care and respect for their dignity, which is inherent to every human being. The way a civilization behaves towards these people is a good indicator of the moral status of its citizens and their level of decadence.
The defense of human rights, such as the right to life, is an imperative that the UN should promote as a priority, but not only in cases of disability, but as protection of the dignity and rights that every person deserves.
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