Abortion “is not a human right” under international law, a U.S. diplomat emphasized Friday as he explained why the State Department human rights report doesn’t monitor “restrictions” on abortion around the world.
“We don’t report on it, because it’s not a human right,” Ambassador Michael Kozak told reporters at the State Department.
The State Department has taken criticism in recent months over the decision to remove the term “reproductive rights” from the annual report, one of the most widely-read documents produced by U.S. diplomats. The term first appeared in the human rights reports in 2010, but Kozak — who has held his current post since 2014 — said the decision to replace the term with “coerced family planning” sharpens the State Department’s focus on forced abortions, as required by law.
“[Abortion is] an issue of great policy debate, you can have a good discussion, but there’s no internationally-recognized standard as to what’s the right treatment,” he said. “But, the other, yes — it is internationally-recognized that somebody shouldn’t coerce you to have an abortion or force you to be sterilized.”
He emphasized that, by dropping the term “reproductive rights,” the State Department is returning to the language required by U.S. law.
“We’ve really gotten at it by flipping back to the original U.S. statutory language,” he said. “It’s in places like China where in order to enforce their — now — two-child policy that there are reports of coerced abortion and involuntary sterilization [or] in North Korea, where the government also coerces [or] forces abortion — although sometimes that’s for political punishment rather than family planning.”
Amnesty International has accused the Trump administration of devaluing women’s rights.
“Reproductive rights are human rights, and omitting the issue signals the Trump administration’s latest retreat from global leadership on human rights,” Joanne Lin, national director of advocacy and governmental relations at Amnesty International USA, “Human rights defenders should view the reports with a critical eye, and fight against any effort to obscure or diminish violations of human rights wherever they may occur.”
Kozak argued that the Obama administration had not intended the term “reproductive rights” in past human rights reports to refer to abortion access; the term has only acquired that meaning in domestic political debates. And so, he maintained that the Trump administration’s position is a continuation of the policy carried out under the previous two presidencies.
“We have never taken the position that abortion was a human right under international law,” he told reporters. “This is supposed to be [a report on] internationally recognized human rights. And, it’s an issue on which some countries prohibit abortion, some countries like our own, have pretty much no restriction on it, and we don’t say one of those is right, one of those is wrong.”
