Youth Blog

NEW YORK CITY, UN HEADQUARTERS March 11, 2024 (Campaign Life Coalition)

Each year, Campaign Life Coalition sends a delegation of young, Canadian pro-life activists to New York City to participate in the United Nations' annual Commission on the Status of Women – an intergovernmental body that seeks to negotiate policy and discuss various issues affecting women and girls around the globe. Akin to other UN commissions, the events are tainted by the desire to establish a universal “right” to an abortion, with the dissemination of contraceptives and gender ideology at the forefront of decision-making. The theme of this year’s Commission is “accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening institutions and financing with a gender perspective.” Although it's vague, we can posit how abortion and other harmful, anti-life practices could be embedded in it.

Our delegation seeks to “stir the pot” and make present the pro-life position in each of the events that our youth activists attend, by means of networking with diplomats and NGO representatives, challenging event panelists during Q&A segments, making contacts with pro-life delegations, and collaborating with our pro-life colleagues to host pro-life and pro-family events. With hundreds of side and parallel events held throughout the week addressing many issues, our delegates seek to attend as many events as possible each day.

One of the first side events of the day was titled, “What Adolescent Girls Want: Priorities and Solutions.” It was hosted by the UNICEF Global Girls Advisory Group, a UN agency, and sponsored by the United Kingdom. Catherine Russell, the Executive Director of UNICEF, highlighted the desire to ensure that teenage girls in the Global South have access to education and remain in school. Some of the proposed barriers to young women accessing education in rural areas included child marriage, cultural and domestic responsibilities, lack of infrastructure and most concerningly – pregnancy. The proposed solution? Certainly not investing in maternal health and education-based infrastructure that would support the health and integration of young pregnant girls seeking access to school; instead, Russell presented the “needed” establishment of SRHR policies (Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights – an umbrella term for abortion on demand, sterilization, and gender ideology) to ensure that no dependent baby will stand in the way of a young girl’s education. Russell further emphasized that if a young girl in the Global South “doesn’t have control over her reproductive health, how can she thrive?”, parroting the all-too-familiar concept that women cannot possibly be successful or achieve their dreams without killing their preborn children.

Later, in an event hosted by Oxfam International, with several women speakers from around the world, titled, “Feminist Financing: The Cornerstone for Gender Justice,” the panelists sought to advance the rights and well-being of women through “decolonizing” economies around the world. The main goal was to promote the financing of “gender development” through a “feminist” economic lens. While this all sounds fine – and even virtuous – in theory, the way the panelists interpreted women’s rights was incredibly flawed. For example, one of the panelists, Ghewa Nasr, a representative of the organization FEMALE from Lebanon, maintained that endemic to their social and economic project is securing the reproductive rights of women and LGBT people, including the state funding of SRHR services. The panel criticized the economic institutions that inhabit our world today as “neocolonial” systems – empowered by the market economy – which ultimately view women as endless cheap commodities for exploitation. The sentiment behind such a statement is admirable, and it is a point pro-life people are in direct agreement with – the exploitation of women’s bodies is immoral and should not be tolerated in a civil society. Unfortunately, the panelists (perhaps in a case of severe cognitive dissonance?) upheld their strong anti-exploitative stance while propping up the UN’s SRHR agenda, unacknowledging the disastrous effects such policy has on women and girls. In an event centred around the theme of exploitation and injustice, there was no denying the awkward elephant in the room – that abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.

During a panel discussion on "A Gender-Equal Future for Financial Freedom," ministers from a vast array of Nordic countries – including Sweden, Norway, Finland, Greenland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland – focused on the gender pay gap. The ministers were adamant that societies should work to address unequal divides in the labour market – such as women or men disproportionately participating in certain types of jobs – to advance “women’s equality.” One of the panelists, Marie Bjerre (the Danish Minister of Digital Government of Gender Equality), mentioned the need for “reproductive health care” for women to be able to decide what to “do with their bodies” – thus securing them more control over their careers. These are the same anti-life and anti-family lies propagated by the pro-abortion movement; they are rooted in a denial of the essential (and important) differences between men and women, and the ultimate integrity and dignity of the family.

A parallel event on "Rebuilding the Social Organization of Care: A Key to Dismantling Womxn's Poverty," also sponsored by Oxfam international (amongst other groups), advocated for economic measures to be implemented around the world to address the “unpaid labour” of “womxn” – a “gender inclusive” term meant to encompass a spectrum of gender identities and representations. One of the key focus points during the discussion was the fight against unpaid labour, which women are “disproportionately” affected by. The unpaid labour in question? The panel had in mind the domestic tasks of maternal roles fulfilled by women in familial contexts: changing diapers, cleaning the house, taking care of children, etc. Easing the burden felt by women in motherhood and facilitating care for their childre is laudable, but their supported efforts went beyond mere funding. One of the panelists maintained that the underlying ideological and religious systems in place that promote a view of femininity associated with domestic tasks must be “dismantled and challenged.” The exact extent of such dismantling, however, was left untouched – would education (funded by the state, no doubt) play a role in disincentivizing such “religious beliefs?" Ultimately, the event painted motherhood in a burdensome light, overlooking key differentiating factors between maternal work and paid labour, and ultimately treating motherhood in a vacuum; not once during the conversation was the supportive role of fathers brought up. These issues exist only in a context that has lost sight of the integrity and unity of the family, one which fallaciously posits that men and women are essentially the same. Women in cohesive family structures with present husbands do not feel the weight of these economic burdens nearly as much – but such a pro-family solution to the issue was, obviously, unexplored.

Aside from the reports provided by our youth delegates on the contents of various events, our young activists made significant strides in pertinence to challenging panelists, and urging delegates and diplomats to uphold the pro-life position. As we continue to challenge the status quo at the Commission on the Status of Women and call upon delegates and diplomats to uphold the sanctity of human life, please keep our young delegates in your prayers.