“The human rights of women”

As declared, or addressed, by the 56th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Particularly, Norway’s Ambassador.

Morten Wetland made an extremely strong statement condemning any religion, morality or tradition that stands in the way of the human rights of women.

For Norway, this essentially means that any group that does not consider abortion (or “sexual and reproductive rights”) to be a human right, is getting in the way of the human rights of women.

Hold on. Human rights cover human beings. One gender doesn’t trump another. And human beings young enough to be pre-born are not only not covered at all (sorry for the double negative, but it is), they’re actually the casualty, the collateral damage, of this trumped up “reproductive right” at the core of “the human rights of women.” As oddly dehumanized as all this sounds.

What is most striking however, is not their verbal attack on the values that cultures “hold most dear” but their irresponsible use of the term “moral hazard”.

After the financial crisis, many of us became frightfully aware of what the term “moral hazard” describes. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, “moral hazard” is the “tendency to take undue risks because the costs are not borne by the party taking the risk”. For example, if you know that the government is going to bail you out even if the risks you take in the financial market would be too risky otherwise, you are more likely to take those risks anyway, especially when you are using someone else’s money.

Good explanation. Who else would notice this but the folks at Turtle Bay?

So, from Norway’s perspective…

…those countries that refused to allow for language supportive of an international right to abortion into the final outcome document or “agreed conclusions”, were compromising a woman’s right to abortion and her well being merely for the defense of their own ignorant beliefs.

Norway would also claim that standing up for such backward values is an easy thing to do, especially when those who defend them have less to lose than the women  kept from a “right” to abortion. But again, that is what they claim.

Sometimes I’m just struck by the inanity of these words, dressed up as official-sounding declarations.

Unfortunately for them, this year it was undeniable that the only countries worried about women and their health at CSW were the countries that fought adamantly for woman’s health care over an invented “right” to abortion.

Okay, now we’re talking.

This past week, it was the United States, Norway, and the European Union that were unwilling to compromise on ideology and to support language that would benefit the health of mothers and rural women, not people of faith. For people of faith, the family is sacred and the mother’s role invaluable. Thus it goes without saying that the health of the woman, and the health care she deserves to receive when she is pregnant, is a priority for countries that support traditional values. Unfortunately, for the EU, US, and Nordic countries, the right to abortion was of even greater importance than these values.

And these are supposedly the most highly developed, intellectually steeped regions on earth, right? Don’t answer that.