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Five Biggest Pro-Life and Pro-Family Losses of 2015

United Nations flags [1]Despite many positive events [2], there is always bad news coming out of the UN. 2015 was no exception. These are the worst moments of 2015.

  1. UN Bureaucrats Create New Avenues for Abortion and LGBT Rights

The new UN Sustainable Development Goals were an overall loss for abortion groups that spent billions of dollars trying to get an international right to abortion over the past two decades. Nonetheless, UN bureaucrats will find ways to promote such a right even without a mandate to do so and the fight is already unfolding in what are called the “statistical indicators” of the new goals.

Statistical indicators are what amount to a score-card of success in the implementation of the new goals. Even though none of this appears in the new goals, the first proposed [3] statistical indicators include LGBT rights, and comprehensive sexuality education. More bad things [4] are sure to come, including abortion.

What this shows is that pro-life and pro-family delegations can win the debate but tend to lose when the implementation is turned over to the uniformly leftist bureaucrats.

  1. UN Committee Tries to Exclude Unborn Children from Right to Life

A UN treaty monitoring body decided they had to define who was included in the “right to life” that appears in various UN human rights treaties. After months of “deliberations” the group of unaccountable experts decided to codify [5] that the unborn child is not included in the definition of the right to life, despite strong opposition [6] from pro-life groups. Their legal opinions are not binding [7] and cannot be used to impose any obligations on countries.

  1. The Sustainable Development Goals Fail to Mention the Natural Family

Perhaps the only area where the pro-life and pro-family cause lost ground in the new UN development goals is language on the family. No major UN agreement involving social policy has failed to include a substantive mention of the family beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Right, which refers to the family as the “natural and fundamental group unit of society.”

The new UN goals are a first [8]. Despite the best efforts [9] of pro-family groups from around the world, EU diplomats were able to have this understanding excluded. The only silver lining is that the agreement does distinguish between “the household” and “the family,” implying that not all households (i.e. same-sex) need be recognized internationally as equivalent to “the family.” Moreover, the agreement gives a blanket endorsement to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, therefore continuing to uphold, at least implicitly, the natural family. Few countries at the UN are willing to give same-sex living arrangements international recognition as families. And that is not likely to change anytime soon.

  1. 12 UN Agencies Declare War on the Family With Statement on LGBT

The UN bureaucracy has been promoting homosexual rights for over a decade, mostly in invisible ways, in policies and position papers no one actually reads.

But now they are being synchronized to speak openly on homosexual rights. In September, 12 agencies, oddly including the World Food Program and the UN Children’s Fund issued a joint statement of intent promising to promote homosexual rights even though there is no agreement in the General Assembly, and there is no applicable international law on the subject. Not only that, they promise to do so regardless of the consequences [10] to world security, and the tension it introduces in the international community.

  1. Secretary General Campaigns for Abortion in War Torn Areas

There is no basis [11] in international law or any UN resolution for the Secretary General to promote abortion in war-torn areas. But, he is doing just that. Sadly, rape as a tool of war is widely used. The Secretary General and his personnel are using this sad fact as a wedge to promote abortion even in countries where abortion is against the law. The Secretary General [12] himself has made his intentions known and he is joined by UN Women [13] and the UN bureaucracy [14] more widely.