This op-ed originally appeared in the Washington Examiner
Here in the United States, we like to pride ourselves on our status as a leader on the global stage. For decades, we’ve played a key, sometimes even the principal, role in setting and propelling priorities among the international community.
Here in the United States, we like to pride ourselves on our status as a leader on the global stage. For decades, we’ve played a key, sometimes even the principal, role in setting and propelling priorities among the international community.
What few realize, however, is that liberal administrations have leveraged that leadership to wage a campaign against pro-life and pro-family nations from all over the world. When it comes to these particular campaigns, we haven’t been leaders; we’ve been bullies. Our bullying has resulted in vulnerable women losing out on healthcare, caught in the crosshairs of this fierce debate.
But that can change. In fact, it already has. Just last year, dozens of very diverse nations stood up in defense of their sovereign right to make their own decisions about the dignity of the unborn and the health of the family. With the help and leadership of the Trump administration, they came together to sign the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a document outlining their freedom from coercion and bullying when it comes to promoting women’s health, pro-life legislation, and family policy.
It was a declaration of independence, an assertion of sovereignty. And it’s still alive and well today. These countries can and should continue to assert their right to decide for themselves how to craft domestic policy around life and the family.
You might not know that, of course, if you asked the Biden administration. President Joe Biden has followed firmly in the footsteps of Barack Obama in twisting the cause of women’s health to serve a pro-abortion agenda. And part of his administration’s effort to put the screws on the world’s pro-life nations was his day-one decision to withdraw from the Geneva Consensus Declaration.
The Biden administration wants the world to think that the GCD is dead. It seems to want to return to taxpayer-funded pro-abortion activism around the world. When I served in the Trump administration, I was horrified to hear foreign diplomats and officials describe to me how the Obama administration had fought, often indirectly, to sabotage their efforts to uphold pro-life and pro-family laws and policies.
But here’s the thing: The GCD doesn’t stand or fall with U.S. involvement. We have the opportunityto be leaders, but our leadership isn’t necessary. Now, Brazil leads the coalition of 36 countries, with two new countries, Guatemala and Russia, added this year. Other leaders from around the world are ready and able to take charge of this important work. We shouldn’t believe even for one minute that when the U.S. leaves a coalition, suddenly it becomes powerless and immobilized.
And what’s more, the Biden administration doesn’t represent the whole of the U.S. government. Numerous leaders in Congress are more than willing to fight any efforts by the Biden administration to violate the right of foreign nations to decide their own life and family policy.
That’s a message they recently sent loud and clear when they cosponsored a congressional resolution celebrating the GCD on its first-year anniversary. Led by Sens. Steve Daines and James Lankford and Rep. Jim Banks, this resolution declared the support of dozens of lawmakers for the work of the GCD coalition. It’s a testament to how firmly the GCD has the support of voices in the U.S., even if the Biden administration would rather it didn’t.
But these members of Congress didn’t just celebrate the GCD and the resulting coalition. They also pledged to hold the Biden administration accountable should anyone in that administration attempt to corral and curtail the exercise of national sovereignty on these issues by members of the GCD.
Ultimately, it is unlawful for any U.S. administration to use taxpayer money to subvert the rights of other nations in the name of a narrow-minded ideological abortion agenda. And there are plenty of fighters in the U.S. government who will make sure that illegal activity does not occur.
Today, over one year after the GCD was first signed, I continue to feel nothing but respect and admiration for the courage and tenacity of its signatories. When I served in the Trump administration, it was my honor to be part of the process of helping the GCD come to fruition.
While the U.S. may no longer officially be a part of this generation-defining international movement, the Biden administration’s liberal politics can’t and won’t stop what we started. Defending the dignity of life and the family matters. Insisting that women’s health not be held hostage to liberal politics is essential. And under the GCD, we will continue fighting on the international stage.
Valerie Huber is the founder and CEO of the Institute for Women’s Health.
