Thursday, March 19, 2015

Reggie Littlejohn Tells U.N. – 20 Years After Beijing, No Progress Ending Forced Abortion in China





Women's Rights Without Frontiers | Forced Abortion Is Not A Choice | www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org


Reggie Littlejohn stands in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York
Reggie Littlejohn Tells U.N. – 20 Years After Beijing, No Progress Ending Forced Abortion in China

NEW YORK. WRWF President Reggie Littlejohn will be a featured speaker three times at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. She spoke to a standing-room only crowd on March 13 and will speak again on March 19 and 20. The stated focus of this year’s UNCSW: “The Commission will undertake a review of progress made in the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, 20 years after its adoption at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.”

Littlejohn stated, “WRWF’s work to end forced abortion and gendercide in China hits the center of the focus of this year’s Conference. The Beijing Platform calls for an end to violence against women, including ‘Physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated by the State, wherever it occurs.’ Paragraph 113(c). Forced abortion constitutes such violence, and yet in the 20 years since the Beijing Platform, forced abortion continues in China. In addition, Paragraph 277(c) calls governments and NGOs to ‘eliminate all forms of discrimination against the girl child . . . such as prenatal sex selection and female infanticide . . .’ and yet these practices remain rampant in China and India.
“At the 1995 Beijing Women’s Conference, former First Lady Hillary Clinton boldly proclaimed, ‘If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights - and women's rights are human rights, once and for all.’ Yet, no substantial progress has been made to eliminate forced abortion or gendercide since the Beijing Conference. Much work remains to be done and the elimination of forced abortion and gendercide should be front and center in all discussions regarding progress of women's rights (or the lack thereof) in Beijing +20.
“It is ironic that the UN is discussing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action -- focusing on gender equality and empowerment of women -- while blatantly ignoring China's own intentional, governmental subjugation of women and girls as expressed through the coercive enforcement of the One Child Policy.”
Littlejohn will also speak about the link between forced abortion and breast cancer, the complicity of governmental bodies, including the United States, through funding the UNFPA, and about the need for the UNCSW to adopt an Agreed Conclusion condemning the sex-selective abortion of baby girls.
Finally, Littlejohn will discuss WRWF’s “Save a Girl” Campaign, in which fieldworkers identify women pregnant with girls and encourage them not to abort or abandon their daughters. WRWF then gives these women a monthly stipend for a year, to help support these girls. “We are saving lives and ending gendercide, one baby girl at a time,” Littlejohn stated. “It is astonishing how little it takes to save a life in China. We need support to expand this highly effective campaign.”
Read Littlejohn’s full statement to the UNCSW here:http://www.womensrightswithoutfrontiers.org/blog/?p=1924
WRWF thanks the Permanent Mission of Sierra Leone to the UN, as well as the NGOs co-sponsoring the UNCSW events at which she is speaking: Endeavour Forum, Family Research Council, C-Fam, Eagle Forum and the Population Research Institute.

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