Europe & US Clash on Anti-Abortion Push at UN Meeting

At the 49th session of the United Nation's Commission on the Status of Women (UNCSW), an international dispute over women's rights on abortion has been renewed after a move by the US.

The US will now lobby the UN to make a final declaration stating that women are not guaranteed the right to have an abortion. However, many European countries are opposed to the US’s attempted amendment and insist that the declaration "should be accepted as it is".

About 100 government delegations, including 80 ministers, and 6,000 activists, are involved the conference running from 28th February until 11th March. They are reviewing the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action, which lists twelve specific areas that need to be improved if the status of women will rise. This includes poverty, education, health, violence and the environment.

The platform had backed abortion and claimed that it was a way to gain women's rights. The US accused advocacy groups of trying to define the term "reproductive health services" in the Beijing declaration as guaranteeing a right to abortion.

Nicole Ameline, France's minister for parity and equality, told Reuters today that while the 1995 Beijing platform did not advocate abortion, changing the 2005 declaration would send the wrong signal.

"It is a question of perception," she said. "It is very important not to give the impression to the world that there is a step back or a reinterpretation of this issue."

Ameline added that other EU countries shared this position.

EU delegates said conference organisers were negotiating with the US, asking it to issue a separate statement regarding their concerns over abortion rather than touch the main closing document.

Britain's U.N. ambassador, Emyr Jones Parry, told the ministers and officials from 135 nations that the EU would be working "for an unequivocal reaffirmation of Beijing without reservation." Luxembourg, which holds the EU presidency, made a similar but less direct statement.

On Monday, Ellen Sauerbrey, the US delegate to the UNCSW said, "There is no fundamental right to abortion... And yet it keeps coming up largely driven by NGOs (non-governmental groups) trying to hijack the term and trying to make it into a definition."

In addition, it is said that the US would accept the platform only "while reaffirming that they do not create any new international human rights, and that they do not include the right to abortion".