51st Session, New York, February 26 - March 9, 2007
By Ginger Malacko
UN Representative
REAL Women of Canada
The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women chose as its topic of review this year the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination and Violence Against the Girl Child, meaning an entire two weeks devoted to drafting an official document focused on protecting female children in every nation. This posed a unique challenge for the delegates – how to move away from the predictable women's rights discussion into something that addressed the particular needs of what is probably the most vulnerable portion of the world's population. In other words, how to deal appropriately with children's issues in a forum overrun by radical feminists. It was not at all surprising to witness Canada and the European Union attempting to load this document with language that would guarantee a right to abortion services and confidential (without parental knowledge or consent) 'sexuality' counseling to adolescents. What was surprising though, was the introduction and promotion of a neglected and highly explosive issue proposed by the United States: the Elimination of Harmful Practices of Prenatal Sex Selection and Female Infanticide.
Both compelling and urgent, this issue strikes at the heart of discrimination against women. After all, do any other rights matter if a baby girl is not allowed to live? Unfortunately, population control has been the paramount social and development issue at the UN for decades. Even though it is as divisive an issue among member nations as it ever was, and the western world and some of Asia are experiencing a serious depopulation problem, the UN organization operates as though the world's population is still its chief mandate and priority. Nowhere is this more evident than in the push for women's sexual and reproductive rights (abortion), which pervades the entire UN system. As a result, not one human rights body of the UN has given any serious consideration to the fact that an estimated one hundred million baby girls are 'missing' due to sex selective abortion and female infanticide.
Member states at the UN have been just as guilty in sweeping this issue under the rug, some for reasons more obvious than others. China, for instance, is always quick to defend this extreme method of 'family planning'. But this year China was anxious about the issue and was able to prove it has taken measures to shut down abortion clinics performing sex selective abortions. Why? Because China is experiencing the same problem that most countries worldwide are experiencing to some degree...a shortage of baby girls. India has reason to object to a real discussion on the issue of sex selective abortion since it is experiencing real problems in this regard as well. Thus, it was willing to work with the US proposal because of the acknowledged serious societal problems resulting from the decline of female births in India. If the world's greatest perpetrators of sex selective abortions were willing to examine their own practices in order to repair the demographic damage inflicted on their populations, then this obviously was the time to take action on a global level.
But for many, admitting that there is an 'unethical' side to abortion is opening the proverbial can of worms. If aborting baby girls because they are girls is wrong, then aborting baby boys because they are boys must also be wrong. Objections to gender based abortions affirm that there is no justification for taking any unwanted child’s life.
This is why the delegations of the European Union and New Zealand objected strenuously to the US proposal. They are a part of a group of nations that have been unceasing in their attempts to create a human right to abortion and are unwilling to discuss anything that could shed a negative light on legalization. But the imperative question for us is, where does Canada stand on the issue of sex selective abortion? Like the US, we are a conservative-led country in which abortion is legal. And, like most of the world, we are a country with a shrinking population. Further, according to Statistics Canada, the male and female births were almost even in the 1950's, but now there is a striking gap in the number of male births compared to the number of female births. In 2006, male children under the age of 4 years made up 5.4% of the population, while female children made up only 5.1%. That works out to approximately 42,000 fewer baby girls in Canada. So this is not just a problem in developing countries that are notorious for the preferential treatment of male children. This is also a problem in the developed world, where abortion is legal and easily accessible, and people are choosing to have fewer children.
Unfortunately, the only response Canada made to the US proposal at this meeting was to stammer that maybe they could agree to it, but first they would have to make sure women's 'reproductive rights' were not compromised in any way. Canada then proceeded to work against the resolution by loading up the draft document with language that the US could not support. Canada was concerned about a 'balance'. In so saying, the Canadian delegates neatly summed up in a few words what the abortion debate is all about: the indisputable human right to life versus the debatable right to reproductive autonomy. Can these things be brought to a “balance”, or are they on separate planes?
Evidence was shown at the conference that sex selection is increasingly linked to organized crime, rape kidnapping and trafficking in women and girls. Yet the Canadian delegation to deal with the subject of sex selective abortion reflected our government's reluctance to discuss abortion at all. In turn, this reflects a reluctance shared by most Canadians to re-open an issue that would force them to come out on one side or the other. Will we continue to shake our heads at China and India for their horrendous treatment of baby girls, while our own baby girls continue to go 'missing'?
At this session of the UN commission, the typical 'sexual rights' agenda lost some of its momentum as more pressing issues captured the delegates' attention. All language that could be interpreted to grant a right to abortion was removed from the document, but so was the US proposal on sex selective abortion. There is a vague, watered down paragraph that remains in the document that addresses the problems of sex selection and infanticide. This was a disappointment to many who were hoping that the issue would finally be given due consideration. But at least the nations of the world were engaged in a discussion that no one thought possible, so it is a step forward.
Now that the ill effects of legalized abortion can no longer be glossed over, it is up to concerned activists to begin a real discussion on sex selective abortion. Either there is a human right to life, which we are duty bound to protect, or there is not. And since both the UN Charter of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms declare that there is an inalienable right to life, we had better start talking seriously about how we are going to honor that right. And that means engaging in an honest and inclusive discussion about abortion, not just in the UN, but in this country as well. |
