World Congress of Families Outraged by UN Committee's Pro-Abortion Bullying

MEDIA ADVISORY, Aug. 3 /Christian Newswire/ -- The World Congress of Families is outraged by recent attempts of The United Nations Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to intimidate nations that protect the unborn.

At its meeting in New York this week, CEDAW Committee members browbeat diplomats from pro- life countries.

Honduras, which has a right-to-life provision in its constitution, was practically ordered to legalize abortion.

Committee member Heisoo Shin told the Honduran delegation that their government must "create a momentum, a social force that stops the crime that allows a woman to die, to risk unsafe abortion and not to have self-determination."

When the Hondurans responded that their government emphasizes preventing early and unwanted pregnancies, Silvia Pimentel, a committee member from Brazil, insisted: "Women have their reasons to seek an abortion, which should be respected."

Larry Jacobs, global coordinator of the World Congress of Families, called this hectoring "intolerable."

"The CEDAW Treaty - adopted by the General Assembly in 1979 - doesn't even mention the word 'abortion,'" Jacobs noted. "These pressure tactics are based on the personal agendas of committee members. As such, they do not carry the weight of international law."

Jacobs charged that the CEDAW Committee "clearly has been co-opted by radical feminists and their allies" and called on the UN to "rein-in the CEDAW Committee, which is blatantly exceeding its mandate."

"Nations that acknowledge the humanity of the unborn child and offer it legal protection should not be subjected to these obscene pressure tactics," Jacobs commented.

World Congress of Families IV, held in Warsaw, Poland (May 11-13, 2007), was attended by over 3,400 delegates from 64 nations. The Warsaw Declaration, adopted by delegates on the last day of the Congress, demands, "Respect for the life of every human being from conception to natural death" and opposes "discrimination against and extermination of the weakest." To read The Warsaw Declaration in its entirety, click here: www.worldcongress.org/WCF4/wcf4.dec.htm.

To schedule an interview with Larry Jacobs, contact the Howard Center at 1-800-461-3113 or e-mail media@profam.org. For more information on the World Congress of Families, visit www.worldcongress.org.

The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families - Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).