A grainy ultrasound image. A tearful, “Can you help me?” A whispered “thank you” as a tired mom accepts a bag full of onesies and diapers.
The work of pregnancy help is filled with these intimate moments. Across the United States and around the world, our affiliates and others serve in humble, hidden ways that don’t usually garner public–let alone international–attention. So, it may be counterintuitive to claim that the ministry of pregnancy help would benefit from a multinational consensus declaration of 43 governments from around the world. But it can.
Earlier this month, I had the privilege of representing Heartbeat International at a luncheon celebrating the sixth anniversary of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD). Similar to the other annual celebrations before it, the stage was crowded with flags and the room with over one hundred ambassadors and policy makers from across the globe.
The GCD is a nonbinding document that seeks “to expand health and thriving for women, and protect the sovereign right of nations to support health, life, and family through national policy and legislation.” It is not a United Nations document, but throughout its pages, the declaration directly quotes numerous phrases from the UN and other international agreements and–significantly–clarifies that abortion is not an international human right.
So, why does this effort matter for pregnancy help? Most fundamentally, because the declaration speaks truth about the dignity of the unborn in an environment marked by lies.
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Multinational organizations—especially the United Nations—have long been under conservative scrutiny for their progressive bias and affronts to national sovereignty. But whether critics prefer to abolish or reform it they must acknowledge that, for the foreseeable future, the UN, and similar multilateral systems, wield immense power.
In his 2021 essay for Public Discourse, Stefano Gennarini, vice president for Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), wrote that,
…the multilateral system, made up of a constellation of international organizations like the United Nations and NATO, is no longer a tool for international cooperation among sovereign states. It has become a vehicle for the world’s progressive elite to impose social and economic uniformity on the world without regard for sovereignty or political legitimacy.
Gennarini explained that progressives have used “a complex network of binding and nonbinding resolutions and agreements like the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the Human Rights Council, and the Paris Accord on climate change… to impose common policy targets…”
Tragically, that has been especially true regarding the human dignity of the unborn. The Heritage Foundation’s Grace Melton writes,
Consider abortion. Even though protections of the right to life are enshrined in international human rights law, U.N. treaty bodies and human rights officials routinely reinterpret the rights to health, gender equality, and even the right to life itself to include a woman’s right to abortion. U.N. entities such as the United Nations Population Fund, the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Development Programme, and U.N. Women promote access to “safe” abortion and include abortion as a component of “sexual and reproductive health” for women and girls.
In this dark context that mere assertion that abortion is not a human right, is a small but powerful ray of truth and light. According to Valerie Huber, a former member of the Trump Administration and the primary architect of the declaration, that is its genius. In a May opinion piece for The Hill, Huber wrote that the GCD “remains a rare example of a values based international coalition formed not through pressure, but through shared conviction.”
She elaborated,
These countries did not join because they were forced to. They joined because they share foundational commitments to better health for women, national sovereignty, family centered policy, and the right to determine their own domestic course without external ideological pressure. Many had grown frustrated with decades of foreign aid models that tied partnership to policy conformity. They are now watching to see whether the U.S. is prepared to offer something different.
In the wake of the second Trump Administration’s sweeping changes to global aid programs, Huber argued that her Protego framework (the method to operationalize the GCD) emphasizes “local ownership” and “alignment with each nation’s values and priorities.”
Tweet This: The Geneva Consensus Declaration speaks truth about the dignity of the unborn in an environment marked by lies.
It’s little surprise, then, that the declaration has faced furious opposition from entrenched progressives, including Amnesty International, Ipas, Planned Parenthood, and members of the Democratic party.
But advocacy for real women’s health continues at all levels. The peer counselor often reaches one vulnerable woman at a time. And the foreign diplomat seeks to convey a sweeping respect for life-affirming policies that may affect millions. Those efforts may seem detached from each other–until the multinational ones help turn off the spigot of funding to incentivize abortion. There is clearly more room for reform and global engagement is vital.
The counselor and the diplomat fill different roles but in their own spheres, but both can confidently carry the message that women are inherently valuable and can thrive without relying on the abortion of their children. That message is as true in the flag-filled halls of power as it is in the ultrasound room.
Editor's note: Jessica Prol Smith is Director of Government Relations for Heartbeat International. Heartbeat International manages Pregnancy Help News.
