U.N. Delegate Reveals Strategy to Advance Abortions     6/30/2004
By Elaine McGinnis

The regional conference in Puerto Rico provides another opportunity for the leftist agenda.

During an interview with Revista Mujer Salud (Women's Health Magazine), Ximena Machicao, Bolivia's official U.N. delegate and executive director of Centro de Informacion y Desarrollo de la Mujer (Women's Information and Development Center), spoke on the recent accomplishment in promoting abortion-on-demand at a regional U.N. conference in Santiago, Chile.

Machicao explained how she and her allies fervently labored to include phrases such as "sexual and reproductive rights" and "reproductive health care services" in prior U.N documents. She said that these words signal a major triumph in the effort to establish a right to abortion-on-demand, and they hope to insert the same language into the document to be negotiated at the meeting in Puerto Rico.

She rejoiced, saying, "For the first time, all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean were united on an issue of transcendent importance, isolating the hard-line, conservative position presented by the United States." Machicao's goal is to pressure the United States to buckle in its stance against promoting abortion at the Puerto Rico conference, thereby advancing abortion-on-demand.

The current conference in Puerto Rico is the last in a series of regional U.N. conferences dealing with population and development in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Many of the attending delegates in Puerto Rico and previous regional meetings represent nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that promote abortion. They include Planned Parenthood Federation, Center for Reproductive Rights, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and Catholics for a Free Choice. NGOs, specifically desire to see abortion-on-demand implemented in all countries, and they actively work to add language in U.N. documents that requires governmental sanction and subsidies for it.

In Santiago, delegates drafted a document that promotes abortion, ignores abstinence and omits language linking parent's roles and responsibilities to their adolescents having abortions. The United States refused to sign with this language. That principled stand drew accusations of conservatism and isolation from the U.N.

The goal at the Puerto Rico conference remains the same: successfully pressure the United States into signing a document promoting abortion-on-demand.

Wendy Wright, senior policy director at Concerned Women for America, is attending the Puerto Rico conference and is working to educate delegates on the implications of phrases such as "reproductive health care" and "reproductive rights," in an effort to prevent abortion-on-demand.

Wendy Wright is Concerned Women for America's non-government organization (NGO) representative to the United Nations. Miss Wright is Senior Policy Director responsible for international and life issues.

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