COP29 & Other Stories

COP29

The United Nations Climate Conference (COP29) is underway in Azerbaijan, an opportunity for some feminists to make the case that climate change and access to abortion are intertwined issues, and thus tap into some of the big $$ climate funding. 

I wish I could report on the actual pro-abortion talks from COP29 but they did not broadcast them- perhaps a coincidence, perhaps not! But the push to include abortion in the climate agenda is nothing new and we can safely speculate it found its way in some of the COP29 talks. Women Deliver, a global ‘women’s rights’ advocacy group pushing for widespread access to abortion, said that they are “RAGED” that President Trump won the election but that they are now all the more “energized” to fulfill their mission.

             Image of an anonymous RAGED woman

Women Deliver also said COP29 will be an opportunity to “make sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) and the needs of adolescent girls central to every climate discussion and policy decision.” 

Remember they use SRHR to include (and perhaps emphasize) abortion services. When they talk about the “needs of adolescent girls” they focus on their “bodily autonomy” to have abortions. And this is just one example of such a pro-abortion group working to influence the climate change agenda at COP29. Not great news.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) held a side event on interfaith dialogue for climate change emphasizing the “critical moral voice and unique perspective that faith communities bring to global climate negotiations.” One speaker referred to the need to respect “Mother Earth” while another said, “Faith-based communities need to push for a methodology that recognizes non-economical loss and damages.” Is that not a strange expectation from churches? Is it not a form of entitlement to believe you can tell a church they must push for a given methodology? Churches do not respond to globalists. They respond to God. 

Christianity asks for good stewardship of our resources, including the natural environment, but the choice of how to best share that message and to what extent it should be prioritized over other issues lies with the faith community itself.

Few Other Things

The UN said on X that we ought to celebrate same-sex families. This outrightly subverts many people’s right to freedom of speech, religious expression and conscience. People should be allowed not to celebrate same-sex unions. All three Abrahamic religions oppose sexual unions other than between a man and a woman. Accepting other people’s freedom of sexuality in the Western world is a right but requiring other people to celebrate is not.

The UN’s aggressive insistence on “acceptance” by tethering it to “celebration” asks all of us to rejoice in other people's behavior as long as it doesn't directly affect us. But that is a very individualist perspective. In reality, if we love our neighbor, we cannot celebrate what we know will hurt them in the end which for many is a deep religious conviction.