While Eyes Were on the Election — Women’s Rights Were Eroded
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo signed the “Geneva Consensus Declaration” an anti-abortion declaration with many authoritarian regimes
Just two weeks before the election, while the country focused on the coronavirus, and whether voting would be safe, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was busy. He was doing some dirty work on the down-low. The stuff he knew wouldn’t be popular with most Americans but that the GOP base would love.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has defended the dignity of human life everywhere and always. He’s done it like no other President in history,” Pompeo said at the signing of the declaration.
“Like no other President in history,” that’s for sure. He’s putting it mildly. Although I’m facetious, like no other President in history, Trump has treated women and LGBTQ people with such disrespect — like no other.
Trample on LGBTQ and women’s rights. In a week where even the Vatican was coming around to gay marriage, there’s this. No other European countries participated except, of course, Hungary, Belarus, and Poland, natch. We don’t have to look far in either of those three countries to find human rights and women’s rights abuses.
According to Forbes:
The Trump Administration signed an anti-abortion declaration with 32 member states in the United Nations on Thursday, many of which are authoritarian regimes or seen as flawed democracies, a move which drastically reframes U.S. foreign policy ahead of the presidential election.
Here’s what The Guardian reports:
The “Geneva Consensus Declaration” calls on states to promote women’s rights and health — but without access to abortion — and is part of a campaign by the Trump administration, led by secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to reorient U.S. foreign policy in a more socially conservative direction, even at the expense of alienating traditional western allies.
This move is part of an overall direction to move our country in a more “socially conservative direction.” But, it is not in step with the rest of the world — or the majority of Americans.
What does this mean? This declaration is a step back for women’s rights globally.
And The Washington Post’s headline, U.S. Signs International Declaration Challenging Right to Abortion and Upholding ‘Role of the Family,’ pretty much sums up the issue.
Look at the signatories of this declaration. According to The Guardian,
The “core supporters” of the declaration are Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Indonesia and Uganda, and the 27 other signatories include Belarus (where security forces are currently trying to suppress a women-led protest movement), Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Sudan, South Sudan, Libya.
Most of the signatories are among the 20 worst countries to be a woman according to the Women, Peace and Security Index established by Georgetown University.
Later on, The Guardian reports about how counter to U.S. allies this policy is:
A virtual signature ceremony was co-hosted by Pompeo and U.S. health and human services secretary, Alex Azar. They portrayed the declaration as a historic moment in a movement to stop abortion being supported as part of reproductive health care, and credited Donald Trump.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the United States has defended the dignity of human life everywhere and always,” Pompeo said. “He has done it like no other president in history. We have mounted an unprecedented defense of the unborn abroad.”
In the declaration, the signatories: “Reaffirm that there is no international right to abortion, nor any international obligation on the part of states to finance or facilitate abortion.”
This attempt to change the conversation on LGBTQ, abortion, and women’s rights — which does not align with most Americans, feels sneaky. No, it doesn’t feel sneaky. It is sneaky because they did it with the national attention being so focused elsewhere.
According to an article in The Washington Post on this move,
Though the document does not directly address same-sex marriage, the only co-sponsors to have legalized it are Brazil and the United States, while the text’s language affirming the family as “the natural and fundamental group unit of society” has clear meaning for countries that restrict LGBT rights. Among the co-sponsors, the Egyptian government targets LGBT people in a “systematic fashion,” according to a recent Human Rights Watch report, and in Uganda, gay sex is punishable by death.
The Washington Post goes on further,
The ceremony stood in contrast to Wednesday’s news that Pope Francis had expressed support for laws to protect same-sex unions.
Critics said Thursday’s declaration, less than two weeks ahead of the presidential election, marked the latest move by the Trump administration to build alliances with leaders accused of human rights abuses while working to promote abortion restrictions worldwide.
Both articles sourced here agree that this is harmful toward LGBTQ groups already at risk in many countries. They also call out how out of touch the Trump administration is with women’s reproductive needs and rights.
As always, it’s the GOP base that’s winning here. They are pushing to have their plan put forth wherever possible, even forcing their ideology into a declaration used as a weapon against women and LGBTQ people in autocracies. Unreal.
For example, The Washington Post states,
One of President Trump’s first moves in office was to reinstate a policy known as the global gag rule, which bans U.S.-funded health-care providers from providing or discussing abortions. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has pledged to overturn it if elected, as President Barack Obama did shortly after taking office in 2009.
A 2019 study published in The Lancet found a global “pattern of more frequent abortions and lower contraceptive use” during periods when such U.S. restrictions have been in place.
The declaration could create “unnecessary legal, policy and service delivery hurdles that will obstruct interventions by Uganda to address the persistently high numbers of women and girls dying due to pregnancy-related complications,” a coalition of Ugandan civil society groups said Thursday in a statement opposing their government’s participation.
The silver lining is that participation in this agreement is non-binding and not permanent — despite the horrendous example that it currently sets. It is a reversal of the Obama administration policy previously in place — that was more aligned with our European allies.
Luckily the U.S. elected Joe Biden, and Trump’s participation in this disgusting “declaration” will soon be nothing but history.
It will take many years for women and LGBTQ people to recover the losses from the four years of destructive policies of the Trump administration.
At least there’s a light at the end of a tunnel, and it’s not a train.
Jennifer Friebely is a New York-based content writer covering stories from personal development, marketing, and productivity to politics and music to whatever idea strikes. She has a 30+ year background in marketing and advertising and holds a BA in Political Science. Email her at [email protected].