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"In regard to global health"
News like this begs to be spread:
Last week in Geneva, Switzerland, negotiations went down
to the wire as the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) wound down its
high-level meeting on health. After a marathon negotiating session that
lasted until the wee hours of the morning, delegates adopted the
Ministerial Declaration on “implementing the internationally agreed
goals and commitments in regard to global public health” rejecting a
push by the United States (US) and most European Union (EU) countries
to include language that some interpret to include abortion.
That’s dense reading, but it’s the latest victory against the
aggressive joint forces trying to spread abortion around the globe.
Late night negotiations carried on in Geneva as
delegations continued to battle it out over the “reproductive rights”
language in the draft text. While the US delegation remained quiet on
the reproductive health provisions, the EU remained divided as Poland,
Malta and Ireland continued opposing the controversial language despite
pressure from their colleagues.
The US delegation has been emboldened by backing from the Obama team
at the UN. Which makes Obama’s appointment of Douglas Kmiec as
ambassador to Malta perhaps more tense. Kmiec declares himself
pro-life, but pro-Obama policies, including his policies on abortion.
Malta however sees it and calls it for what it is, and wants explicit
clarity in this universal declaration.
Malta’s ambassador Victor Camillari made a strongly
worded statement that stressed that “the right to life extended to the
unborn child from the moment of conception and that the use of abortion
as a means of resolving health or social problems was a denial of that
right, and therefore Malta consistently disassociated itself from, and
considered invalid, all statements or decisions that used references to
sexual and reproductive health, directly or indirectly, to impose
obligations on anyone to accept abortion as a right, a service or a
commodity that could exist outside the ambit of national legislation.”
No ambiguity there, moral or semantic. Ambassador Camillari, meet Ambassador Kmiec.
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