U.S. May ‘Withhold All Funding’ If WHO Partners with Radical Abortion Group: House GOP

House Republicans have warned the World Health Organization (WHO) that the U.S. may “withhold all funding to the organization” if it goes forward with plans to grant special partnership status to a global abortion lobbying group.

WHO proposed furnishing enhanced “official relations” on the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) — a well-funded, U.S.-based non-governmental organization that attempts to override pro-life laws at the state, national, and international level — last December. WHO’s executive board will decide whether to confer the special relationship at its 155th session on June 3-4. If approved, WHO will draw up “a plan for collaboration” with CRR on “agreed objectives and outlines activities for the coming three-year period.”

“The Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) is a radical organization that manipulates international mechanisms to impose abortion on countries,” says a letter from 26 members of Congress to members of the WHO executive board on Thursday. The letter points out that “there is no internationally recognized human rights obligation with regard to abortion either by treaty or customary international law.” As The Washington Stand has noted, “two international conferences on the issue — in Cairo (1994) and Beijing (1995) — ended by affirming, ‘In no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning.’” Yet, the congressmen note, “CRR claims that such an obligation exists.”

“This is part of CRR’s well-documented scheme to impose abortion on all countries, undermining sovereignty and bypassing all democratic processes,” write the 26 House Republicans — which include Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Bob Good (R-Va.), Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Mary Miller (R-Ill.), and Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.).

Domestically, the CRR has funded efforts to defeat state pro-life ballot initiatives and has convinced judicial activists to read nonexistent abortion rights into state constitutions after the Dobbs decision. CRR has also sued to overturn bona fide constitutional rights, filing suit to overturn conscience protections for Christian doctors and medical staff who refuse to take part in abortion or transgender procedures/surgeries on religious grounds. When Walgreens and CVS announced they would carry the abortion pill mifepristone, CRR celebrated the fact that Americans could soon pick up an abortion pill “through their neighborhood pharmacy.” A report shows 100% of CRR’s 2024 campaign donations have gone to Democrats, including President Joe Biden, as well as New Age presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson, along with Senators Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Raphael Warnock (Ga.), and Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego.

Internationally, CRR seeks to influence global governance bodies, including the United Nations and WHO, to expand abortion around the globe. Abortion activists at “the Center for Reproductive Rights issue their own reports to these treaty bodies as civil society stakeholders, denouncing what they call human rights abuses in the U.S., and sometimes the treaty bodies take up issues from these stakeholder reports,” Rebecca Oas, the associate director of research for the U.N. watchdog organization Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), told TWS.

For example, in a 2017 comment to the United Nations’ Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), CRR asserted, “International law affirms the importance of providing adolescents access to sexual and reproductive health services,” including “contraceptive information and services [and] safe abortion services.” CRR bemoaned the fact that “some [nations] have laws that require parental notification or authorization” for contraception or abortion, complaining that Argentina required parental consent for minors under the age of 14 to receive contraceptives.

CRR recently signaled its intention to weaponize the U.S. State Department’s annual reports on human rights abuses on a nation-by-nation level to promote abortion-on-demand and transgender injections and surgeries. Last month Nancy Northrup, CEO of CRR, called these human rights reports “an invaluable instrument” to pressure nations allegedly “infringing upon the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQI+ individuals by impeding their access to fundamental healthcare services” — which the CRR specifies means “abortion and gender-affirming care in the United States.”

CRR’s tactics sometimes skirt the facts and bleed into medical disinformation, critics say. In January, 33 U.S. pro-life organizations including Family Research Council and The Heritage Foundation, documented how the CRR has “repeatedly compromised scientific evidence in its advocacy materials in favor of its preferred policy outcomes.”

Yet the organization’s methods have prevailed in several nations which had demurred from the Western pro-abortion consensus. CRR’s court-focused abortion-expansion strategy has assured that, as its website boasts, “2.3 billion people across 17 countries are living under stronger protections for reproductive rights.” It does not specify how many people are not living due to its litigation.

The WHO grants “official relations” status to NGOs which “have a sustained and systematic engagement in the interest of” the WHO. “The Center for Reproductive Rights, Inc. has been advancing WHO’s work on reproductive health and rights by advocating for legal progress at national and international levels … in alignment with WHO’s recommendations,” the application states — adding that CRR has already “provided technical input for WHO’s consideration on different subjects.”

The congressmen note that the U.S. is the WHO’s largest national governmental donor and provide WHO with $700 million a year before concluding, “we will look upon a decision to give special status to the Center for Reproductive Rights as evidence that the WHO is unreformable and as a further argument to withhold all funding to the organization.”

Their letter comes as officials have missed their deadline to draw up a finalized text of the WHO Pandemic Agreement before delegates meet on May 27. Conservatives warn the proposed accord would threaten national sovereignty, transform WHO from an advisory body to a world government, further drain U.S. resources, and globalize medical practices and recommendations that manifestly failed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I don’t think there was a single thing that they did that was helpful, but that’s to be expected from an organization that believes that there should be a one-world order,” said Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.) on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.”

“I’m very concerned that this could be a precursor to one-world governance, because there is power with this, given to the WHO,” replied FRC President Tony Perkins.

The proposed text requires the American government to transfer 20% of all U.S. vaccines, treatments, and personal protective equipment to the WHO for redistribution to “developing countries,” which include China. It establishes a global super-parliament of unelected bureaucrats called the “Conference of the Parties,” which could amend the rules at any time. And it does not allow a nation to stop obeying any agreement it made as a member even after withdrawing from the agreement.

The Biden administration has also engendered controversy with its plan to evade its constitutional duty to receive the Senate’s advice and consent before signing onto the document. Earlier this month, 21 state attorneys general sent a letter to President Biden highlighting “significant legal flaws” with his plan to adopt the accord — which WHO explicitly called a “treaty” until suddenly changing its title to an “agreement” — without Senate ratification. The legal experts added the WHO agreement is a “terrible policy position [and is a] slouch towards a one world government.”

Tiffany introduced the House version of the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act (H.R. 1425) — a bill introduced in the Senate by his colleague, Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) — to force Biden to seek Senate ratification. Tiffany urged “Washington Watch” listeners to lobby their congressmen to support H.R. 1425.

“Tell them to get on that bill so that we are not subject to the whims of international accords that are driven by countries like Communist China,” he told Perkins.

FRC has set up a streamlined website empowering readers to contact their members of Congress about sponsoring the No WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty Without Senate Approval Act.