By Micaiah Bilger
Article Source
Dozens of pro-life countries took a united stand this month against U.S. President Joe Biden and other pro-abortion leaders who are trying to pressure all nations to legalize the killing of unborn babies in abortions.
Writing at The Federalist this week, ADF International director of legal communications Elyssa Koren said most countries protect unborn babies from abortion. And through the Geneva Consensus Declaration, 36 countries are working together to resist pressure – often accompanied by financial incentives – to abandon their protections for babies in the womb.
Last week, pro-life leaders celebrated the second anniversary of the historic document with two additional countries signing onto it: Colombia and Kazakhstan.
The Geneva Consensus Declaration represents an international coalition dedicated to protecting the health and well-being of women at all stages of life, defending the family, declaring that there is no right to abortion and protecting the sovereign rights of every country to protect these values.
In 2020, the United States under President Donald Trump signed the historic document along with 34 other countries. However, Biden removed the U.S. soon after taking office.
Now, Koren said the Biden administration is aggressively working against the Geneva Consensus.
The U.S. currently is “the greatest international exporter of the abortion agenda,” she wrote. “In 2022, the Biden administration increased its annual budget for international ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ services (code for abortion) by 9 percent, totaling $597 million in program allocations around the world.”
Most countries protect unborn babies’ right to life or limit abortions to, at most, the first trimester. Only a few, including the United States and China, allow unborn babies to be aborted for any reason up to birth.
Abortion laws in America under Roe v. Wade were among the most extreme in the world, but these extreme pro-abortion policies are the ones that the Biden administration and a few other world powers, including Canada, are trying to pressure the rest of the world to adopt.
Koren continued:
The positions of pro-life governments stand in sharp contrast to persistent efforts on the part of the Biden administration to lure developing countries, by incentive or by force, into upending their laws and policies on abortion. In fact, by design, efforts such as the Geneva Consensus serve as a crucial buffer against these persistent attempts. Undergirded by a foundational respect for national sovereignty, the declaration reaffirms that “any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level” — a veritable “no thank you” to unwanted government incursions on others’ turf.
… Given the state of play in the United States, it is both profoundly incongruous and inappropriate for the U.S. to lead the charge on global abortion promotion. Not to mention it is also illegal for the U.S. government to assume this role, considering the plain fact that abortion is against the law in the vast majority of countries where the Biden administration engages in the dirty work of bankrolling the practice.
Some U.S. political leaders do speak out against the president’s efforts. Last week, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, and other pro-life Republicans urged Biden to rejoin the declaration.
“The Geneva Consensus Declaration is not just a piece of paper — it’s a family of nations anchored in the universal principles of life, family and national sovereignty,” Daines said in a statement. “President Biden’s withdrawal from the Declaration did not mark the end of the American commitment to protecting life and family. Instead, President Biden should reverse this decision and have the United States rejoin the Declaration.”
Valerie Huber, who helped to craft the document, said the coalition represents true global progress for human rights, and she hopes even more countries will join in 2023.
Huber, president of the pro-life Institute for Women’s Health, said the effort “was born out of a need to refuse to permit women and girls to needlessly suffer just because special interests have sidelined the most pressing needs in favor of their own ideological agendas.”
Abortion is the number one cause of death world-wide. Estimates vary, but research suggests somewhere between 42 million and 73 million unborn babies are aborted every year across the world.
