Indeed, in recommending abortion public policies for all the world’s nations to adopt, the WHO not only assumes abortion is a fundamental human right, but also demands that access to terminations be guaranteed universally without any restrictions whatsoever.
Reflecting the WHO’s culturally imperialistic intent, the guideline oozes with the lexicon of Western political progressivism. It begins by stating: “In this guideline ... we also recognize that cisgender women, transgender men, nonbinary, gender-fluid and intersex individuals with a female reproductive system and capable of becoming pregnant may require abortion care.”
To say the least, most people in the world don’t talk like that. Moreover, embracing the ideology of the transgender movement is a questionable strategy for persuading religious, tribal, and other culturally conservative societies to go quietly along with the WHO’s absolutist abortion agenda.
But then, persuasion isn’t really the point. Issuing diktats from on high is. Thus, the guideline advocates:
Why? The WHO claims that gestational limitations are associated with poor health outcomes. But this seems to be the real reason: The guideline notes that “gestational age limits delayed access to abortion.” Well, that’s the point because these limits may save the life of a viable child. At the very least, one would expect the guideline to grapple with that crucial moral question of late-term abortion, but they don’t write a word. Nor is there any requirement for providing proper medical care for a baby who survives an attempted abortion.
The WHO wants none of that! “For both medical and surgical abortion: Recommend against the use of ultrasound scanning as a prerequisite for providing abortion services.” Avoiding the visceral purpose of laws requiring such tests, the WHO merely sniffs, “Legal regulation that limits the availability of abortion by gestational age may require or result in ultrasounds being used to verify gestational age prior to abortion, even though this is not necessary from a clinical perspective.” Perhaps not, but it sure is from the moral view. Countless children are alive and thriving today—who would otherwise be dead—because their mother saw their picture before they were born.
Remarkably, for a document that claims to be science-based, the guideline ignores the crucial scientific fact that—as embryology informs us—human life begins when the embryo comes into existence after fertilization is complete. As one textbook put it, “Although life is a continuous process, fertilization ... is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is formed when the chromosomes of the male and female pronuclei blend in the oocyte.” (Ronan O’Rahilly and Fabiola Muller, “Human Embryology & Teratology,” 3rd ed.)
Thus, an unborn child is a nascent human being. That’s basic biology. And for billions of people on the planet, this scientific fact raises substantial ethical questions they want reflected in their society’s abortion public policies. Yet the guideline hubristically ignores these fundamental moral beliefs without acknowledging the views of those who either think abortion is wrong altogether, or that it should be legally constrained in some manner, say, after the first three months of gestation.
In other words, the WHO seeks to impose an alien and radical pro-abortion morality on the people it presumes to serve as the world’s supposedly premier public health organization. To these elitists, it’s not about keeping abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” but guaranteeing that every unwanted pregnancy ends in the death of the baby.
In a sense, that’s a public service. The WHO’s “Abortion Care Guideline” illustrates why the out-of-touch technocratic class should never be allowed the unfettered power to craft public policy. Instead of following the guideline’s recommendations, the world should consider the source and stuff this awful report directly into the dumpster.
