Today, May 28th, pro-abortion activists
around the world are calling for universal access to abortion and rallying
against laws that ban or restrict abortion calling such laws “institutional
violence” against women. May 28 is not only a day but a campaign designated by a
coalition of NGOs as International Day for Women’s Health with its main message
calling for the removal of laws limiting or banning access to abortion.
According to the May 28 campaign: “The systematic denial of women’s right to access safe and legal
abortion services, and/or the criminalization of abortion, is one of the most
severe examples of institutional violence in regards of sexual and reproductive
health and rights”.
Coalition members include Amnesty International, ARROW,
ASTRA Youth, Center for Reproductive Rights, Ipas, IPPF, Pathfinder, Women’s
Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR) and World YWCA which claim, using
standard pro-abortion arguments, that governments need to “be held accountable”
when pro-life laws block access to abortion:
“Women’s right to comprehensive reproductive
health services, including abortion, is rooted
in international human rights standards, which guarantee the rights to life, health, privacy and non-discrimination.
These rights are seriously violated when governments
make abortion services inaccessible to women who need them. According to international legislation,
governments can be held accountable for highly
restrictive abortion laws and for failure to ensure access to abortion when it
is legal. When women are forced
to resort to unsafe abortions, governments are responsible
for the high death rates and the dangerous health consequences.”
The May 28 campaign makes
no mention of the negative consequences of abortion on women’s physical,
emotional and spiritual health. It makes no mention of holding governments
accountable for the harmful effects abortion can have on a woman or for the
violence and death imposed upon the vulnerable and marginalized unborn child.
There is no mention of the life-saving impact of pro-life laws in countries
with low maternal mortality such as Chile and Ireland.
The campaign does acknowledge that “a significant
number of countries in the world” restrict access to abortion; it equates
carrying an unplanned pregnancy with “cruel and inhumane and degrading
treatment, as stated by various Human Rights Bodies”. In reality, no U.N. treaty
declares a right to abortion but members of treaty monitoring bodies distort
the meaning of universally recognized human rights to advance access to abortion.
Social
media is featured in the campaign. Throughout the day tweets are being sent
using #May28 and #WomensHealthMatters. The campaign has also
posted ‘10 Reasons Why You Should Be Taking Action On The International Day Of
Action For Women’s Health!’ on Buzzfeed.
This year, the day takes on addition motivation as
negotiations continue at the United Nations on the Post-2015
Development Agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will
guide development policies, funding and priorities from January 2016 to January
2031. The campaign prepared a model letter
for its supporters —
Ensuring Women and Girls’ Sexual and Reproductive Health and Reproductive
Rights in the Post-2015 Agenda—that
they hope will be sent to government officials as the final negotiations on the
SDGs take place during June and July. It includes:
“Yet one form of violence,
particularly experienced by women and girls if they are young, unmarried, poor, HIV affected, of diverse sexual
orientations or gender identities,
living with a disability, or in other vulnerable situations, remains rampant and unaddressed: namely, the institutional
violence they experience when they are denied
their right to health and are unable to access sexual and reproductive health services.”
Examples of “institutional violence” cited in the
letter are: “The denial of the right to
access and/or the criminalization of safe abortion services;” and “The denial of access to contraceptives and
emergency contraception.”
The letter ends with a plea for governments to “support over the remaining Post-2015
processes, as well implement at national level, a comprehensive approach to
women’s health, accounting for the full spectrum of women and girls’ sexual and
reproductive health issues, needs, and rights.”
The “significant number of countries in the world” that
restrict abortion, and whose laws are targeted by the campaign, recognize that
abortion is a reproductive wrong. They ought to be commended for their policies
that seek to protect women and children from the violence of abortion and
supported in their actions at the United Nations to maintain their sovereign
right to determine national laws on abortion, especially during debate over the
Post 2015 development agenda and the SDGs.