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NEW YORK, NY – Yesterday afternoon, Arina Grossu, Director of the Center for Human Dignity at the Family Research Council, spoke at the UN’s 61st Commission on the Status of Women parallel event titled “Femicide, Trafficking, and Reproductive Violence Against Women and Children.” Her talk focused on sex trafficking and its relation to pornography, violence, and abortion. Others on the panel included Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, who discussed forced abortion and gendercide in China as the real “war on women.” Since China’s installment of the one-child policy, millions of women have suffered at the hands of government violence and 400 million babies (a great majority of them being baby girls) have been aborted. Rebecca Oas, Associate Director of Research at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), discussed how to ensure that women’s true needs and priorities are being met instead of priorities imposed on them by international groups.
Grossu stated, “It’s a privilege to bring to the table an international conversation about policies that protect women worldwide from femicide, reproductive violence, and trafficking. If we want to truly serve women globally, we must guard their dignity by not allowing them to become victims of forced or coerced abortion and sterilizations, trafficking, and international family planning agendas. Women desire better health care, education, and support for themselves and their children, not more family planning initiatives.”
“The United Nations has a responsibility to stand up for the dignity and rights of women to be free from policies that endanger and enslave them to reproductive violence. No matter where one stands on the life issue, we can agree that forced or coerced abortions and sterilizations are not a choice. Further, pornography and sex trafficking aid in the sexual exploitation of women and threaten their health and safety. Last, international groups must not impose their family planning agendas on women globally but must listen to women’s actual needs,” Grossu concluded.
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