The Fight Over Abortion in the UN

Parsing the New International Development Agenda

by Elyssa Koren
MercatorNet


This past fall, world leaders gathered at the United Nations to adopt the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a sweeping global agenda that will guide all international development initiatives until the year 2030. Now that the ceremonial celebrations have subsided and the much-anticipated visit of Pope Francis has come and gone, the UN must determine what it means actually to implement the sprawling agenda, consisting of seventeen Goals and 169 Targets across the globe.

The next step is to create a comprehensive set of “indicators” by March 2016 that will be used to track countries’ progress in meeting the Goals. Rather than fostering true development, it is highly probable that the UN will attempt to use these “indicators” to advance abortion and “sexual rights”—unless countries are prepared to check these efforts to encroach on their sovereign laws.

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Elyssa Koren is UN Counsel for ADF International, working with UN delegates to refine outcome documents to promote human dignity.