The UN & Abortion for Kids

Rebecca Oas

(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / NY, 10.25.2026).- The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has once more pressured governments to promote abortion and gender ideology.  The committee of experts also adopted a new general comment on access to justice following intense debate over controversial abortion language and threats to parental rights.

The General Comment was circulated in draft form last year and immediately faced pushback from the government of Argentina and the Holy See for including a right to “effective access to safe abortion services for adolescent girls.”

The Holy See called this “unacceptable,” noting that “there is no recognized ‘right to abortion’ under international law” and that a lack of access to it “does not and cannot constitute a violation of international human rights obligations.”  The Holy See also criticized the draft for “effectively ‘adultifying’” children, “treating them as autonomous agents independent of their family.”

The Holy See also opposed references to LGBTQ children in the draft, pointing out that such terms “lack a generally agreed legal definition in international law.”  Egypt also objected to these references and insisted that any reference to abortion must be subject to national legal standards.  Due to the controversy, the committee postponed a final decision on the text at a meeting earlier this year.

The final language in the general comment remains under wraps until its final, edited form is published in the coming weeks.

During the committee’s recent session, the committee also reviewed the periodic reports of seven countries.  Kazakhstan faced criticism over laws restricting minors’ access to “age-appropriate information concerning sexual orientation and gender identity” and was ordered to ensure that sex education was mandatory and included “accurate and non-stigmatizing information on sexually transmitted infections and HIV, sexual orientation and gender identity.”

The committee told Tajikistan to “recognize the right to identity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex children,” ensure access to “safe abortion,” and ensure that all adolescents receive “comprehensive sexual health education.”

Lesotho, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, and Uganda were told to “decriminalize abortion in all circumstances” and ensure access for adolescent girls, often using a boilerplate paragraph that has been recycled in numerous country reviews by the committee.

The recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child are especially significant as the only UN treaty body that has a specific role in the work of a UN agency. Article 45 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child provides for an institutional partnership between the UN agency for children UNICEF and the committee. Even though its recommendations are not binding, they have a direct impact on UN programming for children through UNICEF and UNICEF’s lobbying in capitals around the world.

The U.S. government is UNICEF’s largest single donor, but it is not a party to the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has no scheduled interactions with the Committee on the Rights of the Child. The Trump administration would have to directly intervene in the work of the agency to prevent controversial recommendations of the committee from taking effect in UNICEF programs, even then, it would likely face opposition from European and other Western donors who collectively give significantly more money to the agency than the U.S. government.

Even if the final general comment is watered down compared to the draft, there is no indication that the committee will be any less aggressive in promoting abortion and gender ideology in its future interactions with national governments.

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