UN This Week: Feb 12-15
UN Women
The Executive Board of UN Women held several plenary meetings and informal consultations at the UN headquarters throughout the week. They went over reports, assessed organizational progress, and offered member states the chance to make statements and ask questions related to women's empowerment and gender equality.
It may not come as a surprise, but UN Women is incredibly progressive, including on the issue of abortion. It often refers to those who oppose abortion on moral or religious grounds as “backward” and as “threatening” the realization of women’s rights.
Much of UN Women’s work is normative. It seeks to transform our understanding of gender roles, both within the broader society and at the household level. On repeated occasions, UN Women shared that it wishes to dismantle “harmful” stereotypes, such as that women are better suited as caregivers and nurturers and that men should be the heads of households.
Although they may not say it out loud, at the heart of their agenda lies this conviction that there are no significant differences between men and women. To them, the two sexes are completely interchangeable- women can and should do anything men do. Men and women are no longer complementary. They are the same.
At the second plenary meeting of the week, Denmark, on behalf of Nordic states, said:
Achieving gender equality requires eliminating biased gender social norms. UN Women’s advocacy and communications work is essential to achieving transformative shifts in gender social norms and attitudes to enable the full achievement of SDG5 as a catalyzer for the 2030 Agenda.
You will often hear UN Women and progressive feminists at large use the term “respectfully disruptive” by which they mean challenging the “patriarchal” status quo. They also encourage men to challenge other men who say things that are contradictory to the progressive understanding of gender equality.
According to Sarah E. Hendriks, PPID Direct at UN Women, the engagement of men and boys is necessary for the achievement of gender equality.
“Transforming patriarchal masculinity is at the heart of the challenge to address the systems an institutions that stand in the way of gender equality”
-Sarah E. Hendriks
The Unstereotype Alliance Summit
The Unstereotype Alliance is a progressive platform that seeks to eradicate stereotypes in media and advertising. Convened by UN Women, the Alliance held a two-day Summit at the UN headquarters, where it invited panelists and keynote speakers to address how the advertising and media industry can accelerate “positive social norms” and drive momentum toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Except for the opening plenary, all the other sessions were held behind closed doors.
During the open plenary, on several occasions, the speakers reiterated the need to push back against “gender equality” pushback. For reference, if you do not support abortion, you qualify as a gender equality pushbacker.
They also attacked conservatives at large. In her statement, Naomi Campbell said
“The rise of conservative ideologies and the regression attitudes towards gender equality threatens to undermine the progress that we have made”
Youth Panel on Reproductive Loss & Mental Health
Fortunately, not all events at the UN this week were overly progressive. Concepts of Truth International and the Permanent Mission of Uganda to the UN held an informative youth panel discussion on Wednesday on the consequences of reproductive loss on mental health and social development.
Michael H. Howell, an avid reader and sophomore at Wynne High School in Arkansas, talked about the need to close gaps in mental health reporting, research, and treatment. Howell said that according to the WHO, as of 2016, more than 50% of the general population in middle and high‐income countries was expected to suffer from at least one mental disorder at some point in their lives.
Howell said that to reform mental health services, we need to address the root causes of mental health disorders, and reproductive loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, and abortion), is oftentimes one of them.
Rebecca Tavit, a 12th-grade homeschool student living in New Jersey, discussed the link between reproductive loss and mental health disorders. She shared some truly disrupting statistics, such as that one-half of all pregnancies worldwide end in loss and that one in three pregnancies end in abortion.
“There are shocking statistics but what is even less talked about than these rate of pregnancy loss are the mental health disorders that follow…While issues of reproductive loss are hotly debated and politically exploited, grieving women and their loved ones silently suffer.”
-Rebecca Tavit
Tavit, quoting the WHO, said many women who undergo abortion or experience miscarriage and stillbirths end up developing mental health disorders that can last from several months to years. Tavit also talked about how the effects of abortion on mental health are even more traumatic and lasting and referenced research studies conducted by David Fergusson and Dr. Priscilla Coleman, among others, to back her claims.
“There is a complete lack of standardized, reliable reporting on mental health harms of abortion. In the US, only 28 states require providers to report abortion complications. [In those states where it is required] many providers claimed that they did not know they have to report those adverse effects to the FDA”
-Rebecca Tavit, quoting the Guttamcher Institute
To better assist women who face pregnancy loss, Tavit said that we need to address the lack of standardized reporting for mental health harms of abortion, miscarriage, and stillbirths and the lack of mental health screenings for post-abortive women.
In her talk, Melanie Berns, a 16-year-old homeschool student from New Jersey, urged that people rethink the narrative around miscarriage.
“Imagine if you fractured a bone and you could not cry. Imagine if you lost a loved one and you were not allowed to have a funeral. This kind of disenfranchised grief is exactly what many women and their loved ones face after pregnancy loss.”
Berns said that in many cases, healthcare providers are not properly trained to assist women facing pregnancy loss and that sometimes, especially in developing countries, they do not even bother to tell women their baby has died. Berns talked about the many cases of healthcare providers mishandling cases of miscarriage or stillbirths, including a case in Nigeria where a provider left the deceased baby in a plastic bag next to the mother’s hospital bed. She also referenced a case where a grieving mother was told by healthcare providers to search on the internet for how to cope with the loss.
The attitude that early pregnancy loss does not matter is pushing women into darkness and that is not helping anyone. We need to talk about it. It is the only way to heal.
- Melanie Berns
Berns called for a complete rethink of the narrative around miscarriage and associated mental health disorders.
When it comes to abortion,
“the social and medical responses are no better. After abortion, many women feel an immediate sense of relief…but that relief often ends up in shame and sorrow. The process can take days, weeks, and even years to surface. Society tells women that there is nothing to grief, while politics tells them their sorrow is misguided.”
Berns said that we need to counter the narrative that abortion does not take away anything of value from women.
“The policy underlying abortion is a lie. First and foremost it denies the essential benefit of motherhood. It tells us that we are not forfeiting anything of value for ourselves. We are told we lost nothing, nothing of value. The truth is that the loss is massive. Massive and life-altering.
- Testimony of a woman undergoing abortion without being properly informed about its consequences
Berns ended her intervention by urging member states to recognize how pregnancy loss leads to mental health disorders and to advance mental health services that share the truth about the harms of abortion. Berns also asked that members support the pillars of the Geneva Consensus Declaration to promote life and the wellbeing of women and families.
Below you can find a picture I took with the three youth panelists.
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Editor’s Note:
This article has been updated from its original publication to clarify the attribution of quotes and include a more specific and accurate citation of the WHO statistics on mental health. We strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information to our readers. If you have any questions or concerns about the changes made to this article, please don't hesitate to contact us at iyc@c-fam.org.
