| The package came to Austin Ruse's office in Washington, D.C., about a month ago, anonymously. Austin runs a small think tank, The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, whose mission, he says, is to be "a U.N. watchdog on social policy." No doubt that is why the document ended up on his desk. The thing sat on his desk for several days before he realized what a time-bomb someone had sent to him: a secret plan to create an international right to abortion.
The Center for Reproductive Rights apparently realized how damaging the memo is, too. I have in my hand a copy of the letter CRR sent to Austin Ruse, in which CRR (a group of "brilliant, focused, sophisticated lawyers who can fight and win," according to the document) "demands" that he "immediately cease and desist from copying, describing, disseminating, quoting, or in any way using or conveying the information contained in those documents." CRR's hotshot lawyers seem to be under the delusion they can rewrite not only international law, but the First Amendment too. Disclosure of their "proprietary information and trade secrets," the bullies acknowledge, will cause "CRR irreparable harm."
One certainly hopes so.
The document is dripping with contempt for democracy and decency. For example, speaking of the recently enacted partial-birth abortion ban (which passed both the House and Senate with strong majorities), CRR ponders: "What good is all our work if the Bush administration can simply take it all away with the stroke of a pen?"
Deceit is a core part of their strategy. They acknowledge there is no international norm that regards abortion as a basic human right. Even in this country, there is no such social consensus, and the document acknowledges that a growing number of young people appear to reject the idea of abortion as a right.
But who cares about truth or what the signers meant? The goal is to quietly get quasi-judicial tribunals, aka human rights commissions, to start to create an international right to abortion that can then be imposed on vulnerable poor countries dependent on international aid.
You doubt me? Read it for yourself: Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., introduced the entire document into the Dec. 8 Congressional Record (which you can access at www.c-fam.org). He called the plan a "Trojan Horse of deceit," demonstrating "how abortion promotion groups are planning to push abortion here and abroad, not by direct argument, but by twisting words and definition." CRR's document itself concedes, "There is a stealth quality to the work" of creating new international legal norms "without a huge amount of scrutiny ..."
And abortion is just the beginning of CRR's expansive version of "reproductive rights." The CRR's hit list includes schools that do not hand out condoms, and abstinence education programs. They are committed to "staving off efforts to require parental involvement" in abortion. Most hideous of all (and I do not use the word lightly), CRR aims to undo "child abuse reporting requirements" with respect to what it calls "nonabusive" sexual relations with minors. An international right to have sex with young people? No doubt CRR is reacting to the public embarrassment Planned Parenthood faced when journalists discovered that many of its personnel were unwilling to abide by child sex abuse reporting requirements.
The document notes that such sex rights for minors have "always been one of our priority areas," and that "this is a topic about which we can coordinate efforts with our international program." Downsides include: "We will likely have to confront the politically difficult issue of whether minors have a right to have sex."
No wonder so many people around the world hate us. No wonder so many Americans have protested the Supreme Court's recent unconstitutional efforts to base its decisions for us Americans in part on "international law and norms" -- laws and norms that are created by the good folks at places like CRR. Coming soon to a school, home and community near you.
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