Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Human Life International, an organization of Catholic priests with worldwide reach (which was denied official recognition in the UN due to its attacks on Islam and hostility towards UN goals) created C-Fam along with a think tank, Population Research International, led by Steve Mosher.

C-Fam issues UN-related faxes every Friday. These faxes are Ruse's attempt to expose the "dirty laundry" of the UN while bragging about C-Fam's ability to disrupt UN activity. C-Fam and similar organizations with ties to the Vatican/Holy See, Ruse says, consider countries such as Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and other moderate and hard-line governments as "allies" in the battle against abortion, homosexuality, and the general expansion of sexual and political rights.

Despite anti-UN sentiment among anti-choice groups, their efforts to influence UN declarations have served ironically to legitimize the institution's influence in conservative eyes. NGOs have an increasing role in the United Nations with over 2000 groups registered with consultative status on economic and social issues alone.9 Although the largest NGO presence is progressive, socially conservative forces, often originating in the United States, are growing in power. The ratio of pro-choice to anti-choice NGOs is now 3:2. Their agenda includes removing any mention of abortion and reproductive health in UN documents, opposing any recognition of gay rights, and disputing the value of comprehensive sex education.

Their battles focus on the language of the UN's resolutions and policy recommendations. For instance, progressive women's groups successfully established "reproductive rights" instead of "population control" in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, signaling a shift in emphasis from demographics to women's rights. This prompted a backlash from conservative forces who saw the language as a slippery slope towards increased access to abortion worldwide.

Conservative NGOs, like the evangelical Concerned Women for America and the Family Research Council, take their cues from their older brother at the UN, the Vatican/Holy See. The Vatican has been, at least until recently, the single most influential abortion opponent at the UN. This may be because of its special "permanent observer" status, held by no other NGO, which gives it more access and influence, and because of its lengthier history of participating in NGO activities there. In fact, the Vatican already mobilized opposition to the gains of the 1994 Cairo conference in time for the UN's women's conference in Beijing the very next year.

...groups like the Mormon-supported World Family Policy Center, Concerned Women for America, and the National Right to Life Committee intensively monitor the planning schedule of international gatherings sponsored by the UN, prepare lobbying strategies for each event, and participate, sometimes with large contingents. Such anti-choice NGOs largely attend events on women's issues, but by their mere presence they also have an impact on gatherings concerning children, families, population, the environment, and human rights.

Chamberlain also details how international mission operations underlie antiabortion politics in targeted countries that in turn seek to affect electoral outcomes, which in turnm can affect international aid and the policies of individual governements in the UN system, over the long run.

In line with their missionary orientation, Christian Right groups directly support grassroots efforts that promote a "culture of life" in other countries. These groups include: the American Life League, Concerned Women for America and its LaHaye Institute, Focus on the Family, Heartbeat International, Human Life International, the Justice Foundation, National Right to Life Committee, and United Families International.

Beyond launching overseas groups, they support foreign infrastructure and help develop their electoral strategies. For instance, the National Right to Life Committee's Wanda Franz claimed that her group, with help from the American Life League, helped launch 200 local groups and elect 12 anti-choice members of parliament in Sweden in only six years. As she put it:

"Early in the 1990s a young man named Michal Oscarson sought out NRLC's support for a study project that allowed a few volunteers to come from Sweden and spend time here in America with NRLC staff and affiliates with a view to building a strong and effective prolife movement in that country. In the six years that have followed that venture Ja til Livet has grown to 200 chapters throughout Sweden. Recently they helped to elect 12 new pro-life parliamentarians, including Michal Oscarson himself."

Read the whole article: The Globalization of an Agenda:
The Right Targets the UN with its Anti-Choice Politics

[Crossposted from Talk to Action]