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HOW U.N. CONVENTIONS ON WOMEN'S AND CHILDREN'S RIGHTS UNDERMINE FAMILY, RELIGION, AND SOVEREIGNTY

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By Patrick F. Fagan, William L. Saunders, and Michael A. Fragoso

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

U.N. committees charged with offering guidance on the obligations incumbent upon nations that have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women ("CEDAW") and the Convention on the Rights of the Child ("CRC") are, instead, advancing a radical agenda harmful to the best interests of societies and states, under the cover of providing review and recommendations. In doing so, these U.N. committees are decisively undermining the sovereignty of state parties to the treaties in matters that have always been within the domestic jurisdiction of individual states to decide. These committees have recommended -

• Legalizing prostitution and elevating it to the status of a profession
• Diminishing the legal protection of freedom of conscience
• Diminishing parental guidance for teenagers' emerging sexuality
• Promoting access to abortion, contraception, and other "medical" services for children without parental consent
• Promoting contraceptive use without regard to its social consequences
• Promoting abortion under the fiction of an international law mandate
• Demeaning traditional motherhood and those who support it
• Promoting professional child care for newborns
• Equating mild spanking of children by their parents with serious physical abuse
• Objecting to the influence of religion on society
• Objecting to the protection of rights of religious minorities

If these recommendations were followed, marriage and family would be further undermined, as would religious freedom.