G7 Rejects Radical Abortion Push

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BIARRITZ, France (ChurchMilitant.com) - World leaders at the G7 summit in France have rejected calls to include "abortion language" in its final communiqués, which would have included supporting abortion without limits and censoring online pro-life content deemed "misleading."

The Gender Equality Advisory Council (GEAC) told the elite body in Biarritz on August 25 to remove all legal safeguards and allow abortion up to birth, taking as a model Canada's extreme abortion law that allows "abortion by law without specific legal specifications on gestational limits."

GEAC urged the leaders of the world's seven largest advanced economies to enact a French-style law prohibiting so-called "misinformation on abortion when it aims to intentionally mislead women on abortion."

The French law of 2017 punishes pro-lifers with a two-year prison sentence and a fine of 30,000 euros for attempting to prevent an abortion by providing electronic or online information or "by exerting moral and psychological pressure," making it "a crime of obstruction to the voluntary termination of pregnancy."

Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right to Life UK, told Church Militant:

Such a law is a clear and insidious attack on freedom of expression in general and pro-lifers in particular. The law is worded so broadly that it could be used to prevent almost any form of communication, online or offline, that might dissuade a woman from having an abortion.

She added, "The GEAC to the G7 — as an example of good practice to promote gender equality — explicitly and approvingly invoked a French law which appears to criminalize expression of moral disapproval of abortion in an attempt to dissuade someone from having an abortion."

The GEAC, created in 2018 by Canada's über-progressive Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to promote gender equality, pressed the G7 for "access to safe abortion" as "a fundamental right, as it falls within the right of every person to have the freedom of decision over, and respect for, their own body."

Canada has been labeled a "haven" for sex-selective abortions where girls are aborted because they are girls.

"It is not at all clear how promoting extreme abortion legislation (or any abortion legislation for that matter) advances the empowerment of women," said Robinson. "As is well known by now, sex-selective abortion is responsible for 63 million 'missing' women in India alone and likely millions more across the globe."

In its Recommendations for advancing Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Girls and Women and Call to Action, the GEAC also lists "girls and women within the LGBTQIA+ spectrum such as trans women, queer women, lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual women" as those who are "further subjected to violence and discrimination."

Commending the work of "multiple feminist organisations," the radical feminist body underlined the contribution of campaigns like #BringBackOurGirls, Ni Una Menos, #FeministsCount, #Metoo, TIME'S UP and others in challenging "historic power imbalances and a male dominated culture."

Katja Iversen, president of Women Deliver, and a two-time member of both G7 GEAC meetings, asked the G7 leaders to "ditch the gender discriminatory laws you have on your books" and "push progressive ones."

"Let's look to Ireland where women-focused organisations led the year-long campaign that finally legalised abortion," she said. "That is real fundamental change."

The G7 summit is an annual gathering comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. It accounts for more than 58% of the world's net wealth.

For the second year running, the G7 has made gender equality one of the five central themes of the summit. However, for the second year in a row, G7 leaders have rejected abortion language from the G7 Gender Advisory Council.

In 2018, when the G7 released its final declaration, it removed all language about "reproductive rights." Instead, it committed the G7 countries to "promoting and protecting adolescent health and well-being, through evidence-based health care and health information."

The U.S. delegation was reportedly responsible for expunging the language of abortion from the final draft, observers said.

Commentators have expressed doubts whether the United States will go along with the new emphasis on gender ideology when it assumes the G7 presidency next year, led by President Donald Trump.

"As we look ahead to next year, we can anticipate that many of these issues will be non-starters for the United States presidency," remarked Lyric Thompson of the International Center for Research on Women and a U.S. delegate to the Women 7, a gender equality-focused civil society group affiliated with the G7.

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