New York City, N.Y., Mar 22, 2019 / 15:49 pm
As participants in the UN Commission for Women's annual gathering advocated for increased international access to abortion, side events hosted by the Vatican and other Catholic groups presented a pro-life perspective on women's empowerment at the UN.
The ten-day international meeting in New York March 11-22 included debate as to whether this year's final document will include "universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights," as a part of the commission's "agreed conclusions," as it did last year.
The topic of the commission's 63rd session this year is "access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls."
For some at the UN meeting, access to public services means access to abortion.
"It's a crime to prevent a woman from having access to abortion," said French Minister of Gender Marlene Schiappa at an event at the UN headquarters March 13.
Obianuju Ekeocha, president of Culture of Life Africa, said that her "head almost exploded" when she heard this.
She added that in her view, the UN Commission for Women's annual gathering is "the heart of the pro-abortion movement."
"The meetings that I have gone to … the people I have listened to speak right here at the United Nations, [for them] there is no room for compromise," Ekeocha said in a video statement.
"They want abortion to be legal. They want it to be legal in every country in every situation," she added.
Ekeocha said she attended a UN event in which an abortionist-midwife demonstrated how she trains other abortionists in developing countries. The UN event was entitled "All united for the right to abortion."
During the week of the commission meeting, a screening of Ekeocha's documentary, "Strings Attached," was streamed at the Nigerian Mission to United Nations on March 12. The documentary uncovers "ideological colonization" of contraceptives and abortion into African countries and gives voice to African women who are suffering its effects.
Pro-life advocate Lila Rose spoke on the topic "Motherhood is a gift" at UN side event co-hosted by the Holy See Mission to the UN and C-Fam, entitled "Protecting Femininity and Human Dignity in Women's Empowerment and Gender Equality Policies Today."
The Holy See Mission to the UN sponsored five side events addressing issues that affect women, from human trafficking to protections for women and girls with Down syndrome.
In conjunction with the Catholic Women's Forum, the Holy See helped to organize an event on "Valuing Unpaid Work and Caregiving."
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations said at the event that there has been a presumption in the United Nations that "a person's work outside the home is far more valuable than a person's work inside the home."
Auza questioned whether "a prioritization of a person's work in the labor markets over care work at home flows from woman's deepest desires or whether it's an emulation of a flawed, hyper-masculine, way of looking at the world, one in which work, and what work can provide, is treated as the most important value."
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"No women who desires to give of her time in this way should be stigmatized by society or penalized in comparison to other women or to men. Work schedules should be continuously adapted so that if a woman wishes to work she can do so without relinquishing her family life or enduring chronic stress," he said. "Rather than having her readjust everything to the rules of the marketplace, the marketplace itself should be adjusted to what society recognizes is the enormous personal and social value of her work."
"Humanity owes its very survival to the gift of caregiving, most notably in motherhood, and this indispensable contribution should be esteemed as such, by both women and by men," Auza said.
