Rebecca Oas
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / Washington, 01.13.2024).- As the UN carries out a sixteen-day campaign against “gender-based violence,” its Western European regional office proposed a definition of “femicide,” historically understood as the intentional murder of women, usually by men, to include deaths related to “unsafe abortion.”
The term “femicide” dates to 1976, and was coined by feminist activist Diana Russell, but as the UN Western European office notes, the concept has “grown increasingly complex” since then, leading to “a lack of standardization” and “inconsistent definitions across regions and countries.”
In 2012, the World Health Organization (WHO) wrote that femicide is “generally understood to involve intentional murder of women,” and that this definition is “commonly used in policies, laws and research.” Nevertheless, they note that some “broader definitions include any killings of women or girls.”
Sex-selective abortion is often included in femicide definitions because it involves the intentional killing of unborn girls specifically because they are female. However, the idea of including the deaths of women due to abortion complications is more novel—and controversial.
In 2017, the European Institute for Gender Equality surveyed the definitions of rape, femicide, and intimate partner violence across Europe. It noted that several European countries define deaths resulting from female genital mutilation or “unsafe” abortion as separate crimes, but none of them include these deaths within the definition of femicide. The only source surveyed that proposed its inclusion was the then-current UN Special Rapporteur on the causes and consequences of violence against women and girls, Rashida Manjoo.
In her 2012 report to the UN General Assembly, Manjoo wrote about “gender-related killings,” also known as femicides, and proposed that “deaths due to poorly conducted or clandestine abortions” are an indirect category of such killings. Also included were maternal mortality and deaths related to organized crime, drug dealing, and human trafficking.
While the inclusion of deaths from indirect causes risks diluting the concept of femicide and directing attention away from perpetrators who intentionally murder women, it also provides abortion activists with a new way to pressure countries to change their laws. The organizers of the 16 Days campaign against gender-based violence published a 2022 fact sheet on “femicide due to unsafe abortions.” In it, they make no mention of prosecuting abortionists who cause women death or injury. Instead, they argue that abortion restrictions force women to seek abortions in risky ways, causing deaths, effectively accusing countries with pro-life laws of the crime of femicide. The entire basis for their claim that abortion-related deaths of women are a form of femicide is Manjoo’s 2012 report.
The WHO, which the fact sheet also cites, has defined “unsafe” abortions as “the termination of a pregnancy by people lacking the necessary skills, or in an environment lacking minimal medical standards, or both.” Since the WHO publishes medical standards, including on abortion, this means the definition can be adapted in line with the WHO’s longstanding pro-abortion agenda.
Importantly, the WHO does not define all illegal abortions as “unsafe,” provided they are carried out according to the WHO’s increasingly lax standards, including self-induced abortions with pills. Accordingly, the 16 Days fact sheet on “femicide due to unsafe abortions” includes among its “promising practices” the group Women on Waves, which sends abortion ships to countries with pro-life laws, and its project to fly drones carrying abortion pills into countries where it is illegal.
UN member countries seeking to protect women from intentional violence and murder may become increasingly skeptical of the term “femicide” if abortion proponents are able to successfully hijack its definition.
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