Catholic World News carries a story (in a follow-up to an earlier piece) concerning a troubling new way of doing business at the United Nations. In preparation for the upcoming Millenium Development Circus Summit, a series of "informal " hearings is being held to give non-governmental groups (NGOs) an opportunity to address the General Assembly and perhaps influence the proceedings.
Thing is, though, all those conflicting points of view can be confusing (especially if you have already made up your mind) so in order to streamline things a bit, the organizers of the hearings (a special task force appointed by GA president Jean Ping of Gabon) decided to invite only those NGOs that will tell them what they want to hear: that abortion is a basic human right. The task force chose a number of radical pro-abortion groups to address the GA, but not one pro-life/pro-family group was allowed to speak. There was, therefore, simply no rebuttal at all to the pro-abortion groups repeated calls for universal abortion-on-demand.
Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. Amabassador to the U.N., has now made a formal complaint (thank God) on behalf of the conservative NGOs that were excluded from the hearings. Will it make much difference? I’m afraid that the fact of their exclusion in the first place says all we need to know about the agenda of the U.N..
The U.S. should withhold payment of our dues to the U.N. (we are by far their biggest contributor) until such time as the pro-life and pro-family NGOs are allowed to address the General Assembly, the GA president is replaced, and a new task force appointed for future hearings.
The US also needs, at a minimum, to confirm John Bolton, ASAP.
Plus it would not hurt my feelings if the US withdrew from the UN.