U.N. promotes abortion and 'gender identity' as human rights

Two experts on women's rights warn that the United Nations is on the verge of creating two new "human rights" – abortion and gender identity.

The alert comes from Emilie Kao, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at the Heritage Foundation, and Shea Garrison, vice president for international affairs for Concerned Women for America.

In a column at the Daily Signal, they explained that Ahmed Shaheed, the U.N. expert responsible for protecting religious freedom, is pushing a "progressive" agenda that includes abortion and the rights of sexual-identity groups.

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"It seems the U.N. is willing to trample the rights of the vulnerable and undermine the credibility of universal human rights to promote the values of a small number of wealthy countries – a travesty the Trump administration should oppose," they wrote.

A report by the U.N. Human Rights Council is undermining women and girls "by lumping their concerns together with novel claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity," they wrote.

"It includes a controversial interpretation of 'gender equality' that promotes acceptance of transgender ideology and the concept of multiple, fluid, 'gender identities.'"

"Gender equality" used to mean reducing the inequalities women faced.

"But the U.N. bureaucracy has begun attempting to redefine gender to include 'gender identity,' referring both to women who identify as men and men who identify as women," they write. "In some nations, the creation of new rights based on gender identity has reduced safety and privacy for women and girls in places like shelters, prisons, and public restrooms. It has also decreased their opportunities to excel in athletics by forcing them to compete against biological males."

The misplaced emphasis, they said, is diverting attention from the serious problems women face, such as human trafficking, of which the report makes no mention.

"Eighty percent of the global population faces high restrictions on religious freedom, and many of these victims are women. But the report pays only superficial attention to this issue," the commentary says. "Instead, much of the report focuses on religion as justification for human-rights violations. The report accurately describes a few instances where religion is cynically used to justify human rights abuses perpetrated against women of minority faiths, including rape, forced sterilization, and forced abortion."

The U.N. report, Kao and Garrison wrote, "shockingly conflates conservative religious beliefs about life, marriage, and biological sex with religious justifications for abhorrent human rights violations."

"Many women, as well as men, hold conservative religious beliefs, but the report treats their freedom to live according to these beliefs as secondary to abortion and new claims to rights based on sexual orientation and gender identity. No international treaty recognizes a right to abortion, but the report simply asserts that one exists and that it trumps a medical provider’s right to conscientious objection," they said.

The U.N. report even suggests "an expanded role" for government if overseers perceive a religious group holds "harmful discriminatory gender norms."

They conclude, "All people have human rights because of human dignity, including those who identify as LGBT, but this report bypasses the treaty negotiation process to simply assert that beliefs about sexual orientation and gender should trump the internationally-recognized human right of religious freedom."