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UNITED NATIONS:
UN FEMINIST GAB-FEST GETS UP STEAM
by Denise Mountenay, April 3, 2010
This year, at the UN’s feminist gab-fest on the
Status of Women (i.e., the 54th session of the UN Commission on the Status
of Women), there were 6,500 NGO participants, long queues to get ID badges,
limited seating, confusion and changes in venues to control who went where,
chaos and disgruntled women.
Two of our team attended an International Planned Parenthood
Federation’s parallel event that included gourmet food. Their last
speaker spent her whole talk bad-mouthing our parallel event of last year
on the abortion/breast-cancer link. She tried to discredit the Babette
Francis’s Endeavour Forum and breast surgeon Dr Angela Lanfranchi.
She was clearly very nervous and repeated herself over and over for 20
minutes — then ended by promising to give a PowerPoint presentation,
but found that there was no time left!
Our team felt that she inadvertently did a lot of free advertising for
our work, and made pro-choice women question whether there really might
be a link between breast cancer and abortion.
I placed a full-page advertisement in the official NGO Handbook, providing
websites and information on the abortion/breast-cancer link, and on how
abortion damages women and kills babies.
We had many appointments with NGO leaders and with UN ambassadors and
delegates, including the UN ambassador from Ghana, UN representatives
from Sweden and Belgium, the UN ambassador of Sierra Leone, his minister
of health and social services, and women’s minister.
Irene van der Wende, a post-abortive woman from Holland, joined me for
some of these meetings as well as for an executive lunch with the UN ambassador
of Italy. We also met with the UN ambassador for India. Canadians Heather
White, Carolynn George and I met with the UN ambassador on human rights
for Canada.
Everyone listened intently as we shared our personal experiences of legal
abortion and the subsequent physical and psychological impact. I gave
them statistics and research from the mountains of studies proving that
induced abortion is harmful to women and that it killed our children.
We brought humanity to the pre-born children and left each ambassador
with a package of information on these truths with colourful brochures
and foetal models.
Concerning European nations with below-replacement-level birth-rates,
I pointed out the economic impact that their fertility rates and ageing/dying
populations will have on their nations in the decades to come, and the
social consequences of the higher birth-rates of Muslims in these nations.
All thanked us for sharing our personal experiences and asked us how to
answer the rhetoric and about hard cases. Those who were pro-life and
under pressure to legalise abortion in their countries were especially
thankful for the information.
A Swedish representative confessed she was post-abortive, but said she
was fine. I asked if she had any born children. She said she never wanted
to have any. She became agitated with our reports and tried to shut down
the meeting; but I persevered with my testimony and she listened. Irene
van der Wende focused on foetal development and stated emphatically that,
even though she herself had been raped, abortion was still wrong.
Colleen Barry, an enthusiastic pro-lifer from New York, was an incredible
help, securing a venue for our parallel event on “Reproductive health
and breast cancer prevention”. We had about 60 UN delegates/representatives,
NGOs and at least two doctors who attended.
Dr Angela Lanfranchi and Dr Joel Brind gave excellent presentations on
the abortion/ breast-cancer link, and Carolynn George (Ontario) and Elaine
Webster (Saskatchewan) shared their testimonies on the pain of legal abortion
in Canada.
Betty-Ruth Ngozi Iruloh, PhD, a psychologist from Nigeria, who treats
post-abortive women, described the psychological pain of abortion experienced
by her clients. I provided testimony on the lies I had once believed,
and on the physical and emotional damage of the abortions I underwent.
I showed a picture of my only born child, son Shawn. I declared that abortion,
whether legal or illegal, devastates women and is the greatest violent
crime against humanity in our generation. The feedback was very positive,
and I have been invited by a woman lawyer to travel to Nigeria with this
message.
There is a sign of hope from the European Union. In Brussels, following
a debate to mark the 15th anniversary of the UN’s Beijing conference
on gender equality, the European Parliament adopted an opinion resolution
that included an amendment highlighting the importance of not promoting
abortion as a method of family-planning. The resolution called for the
provision of counselling services to women suffering distress as a result
of undergoing abortions. This is welcome recognition by the European Parliament
of the very real problem of post-abortion trauma.
Mrs Denise Mountenay is founder of Silent No More (Canada) and the
Canadian NGO representative for Endeavour Forum Inc. at UN meetings.
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