This week, a group of nearly 200 so-called human rights organizations sent a letter to the United Nations (U.N.) asking for intervention to prevent the protection of unborn children from abortion in the United States. The plea condemns the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, saying that, “people residing in the U.S. who can become pregnant are facing a human rights crisis.” The letter also suggests a number of troubling actions for the U.N. to take, including “calls for the U.S. to comply with its obligations under international law, and calls for private companies to take a number of actions to protect reproductive rights.”
While the abortion industry fights tooth and tail to perpetuate the idea that the Dobbs decision made the U.S. radically out of step with the rest of the world, this narrative is far from the truth.
Prior to the Dobbs decision, abortion laws in the United States were among the most extreme in the world; the national baseline standard was legal abortion at any point in gestation, for any reason. States could not protect children prior to viability — which the law maintained at around 24 weeks gestation, despite children having survived birth as early in gestation as 21 weeks and one day. U.S. abortion laws were on par with only five other nations in the world, the majority of whom are notorious human rights abusers: Canada, China, Vietnam, and North and South Korea. By contrast, only three out of 52 European nations fail to protect the unborn after 15 weeks gestation.
The Dobbs decision did not make the U.S. more extreme — it made it possible for our nation to leave the ranks of human rights abusers and protect life in the womb. While it is true that an abortion crisis exists and poses a threat to human rights, the United Nations would be remiss to challenge pro-life states by misidentifying who the victims of said crisis really are.
In a survey conducted for the “Brief of Biologists as Amici Curiae in Support of Neither Party” filed in the Dobbs case, results show that 96% of the 5,577 biologists surveyed agree that human life begins at the moment of fertilization, during which a unique and unrepeatable human being is created. An abortion intentionally ends the life of a human being and is, consequently, a violation of human rights.
Even beyond their clear desire to ignore the dignity of unborn children, it is disturbing that self-proclaimed human rights organizations would appeal to an international body as corrupt as the United Nations as the arbiters of good judgment when it comes to human rights. After all, the U.N.’s Human Rights Council, which exists for “strengthening the promotion and protection of human rights around the globe” includes such notorious violators as Canada, China, and Vietnam. While these three nations would certainly agree that reestablishing unlimited abortion is a top priority, they would gladly look the other way on matters of euthanizing individuals with disabilities, committing genocide on ethnic minorities in concentration camps, and empowering the police to use torture to extract confessions.
In fact, in China, abortion is used as a form of torture and population control against Uyghur women. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, abortion is used to perpetuate cultural sexism by empowering “son preference” — a practice in which unborn babies determined to be girls are aborted, because sons are more highly valued than daughters.
Perhaps equally as concerning is the U.N.’s disregard for tackling the true human rights violations being committed by its Human Rights Council and the organization’s track record for manipulating developing nations into legalizing abortion in exchange for needed resources and aid. In her book “Target Africa,” pro-life Nigerian activist Obianuju Ekeocha writes about how “international organizations such as the United Nations use their power and influence to spread the pro-abortion agenda all over the globe, especially in the developing world.” Despite pressure campaigns from international organizations like the U.N., there is still no nation in Africa where unborn children are not protected after 12 weeks gestation.
The letter to the U.N. concludes by saying, “With the stroke of a pen and without sound legal reasoning, the US Supreme Court has stripped women and girls in the United States of legal protections necessary to ensure their ability to live with dignity.” But there is no dignity in abortion — only bloodshed and desecration of the inherent dignity of all human beings. The U.S. has taken an immense step toward protecting human rights by allowing elected legislators to protect life in the womb; the hypocritical U.N. would do better to focus on the real human rights atrocities being committed by its member states than to mess with pro-life America.
