By TOM CIESIELKA
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Organization of American States is like the European Union for the Western Hemisphere, an international organization promoting cooperation among member states within the Americas. It also helps formulate abortion policies.
The OAS’s General Assembly just wrapped up an annual meeting, held this year in Washington, D.C. Luis Martinez with Human Life International heads the pro-life delegation at the OAS. He shares highlights on the positive achievements they were able to effect at this year’s OAS General Assembly. Details below.
Human Life International’s involvement at the Organization of American States (OAS) 53rd General Assembly has delivered a victory for pro-life at the first post-Dobbs gathering of the Western Hemisphere’s 75-year-old governmental policy forum. Leading a coalition of life-affirming organizations, the global Human Life International neutralized multiple attempts to include abortion as a right in policy resolutions, most prominently, the Declaration on the Protection and Integration of Migrant and Refugee Children.
Luis Martinez, Human Life International’s Director of the Mission to the Organization of American States, called the attempt to insert abortion into this move, which was intended to protect displaced children, “a serious example of bad faith and the operation of dishonest strategies.”
He shared how it was presented at the last minute as a procedural document without discussion, “when in reality it contained the most serious threat of the entire assembly to the lives of the preborn.”
In addition to the elimination of abortion from the resolution addressing migrant and refugee children, Martinez listed the following positive achievements by the pro-life delegation at the 53rd OAS General Assembly:
The Resolution Strengthening Democracy now clearly defines hate speech so that it cannot be misinterpreted to include pro-life or pro-family speech.
Comprehensive Sexual Education (which contained abortion) was not included in the Declaration of Human Rights, and the attempt to introduce it in the Resolution on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights was neutralized.
The dialogue presented by the Civil Society Organizations at the assembly was predominantly pro-life and pro-family, and obtained explicit support from the El Salvador, Guatemala, and Paraguay delegations. It was also noted that Santa Lucia favored pro-life initiatives.
Pro-life commissioner Stuardo Ralon of Ecuador was re-elected to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, while a Chilean candidate advocating abortion was defeated.
“It is safe to say,” noted Martinez, “that there was not a single significant advance of the liberal abortion agenda at this assembly.”
“In the same week that marked the first anniversary of the United States Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade,” Martinez declared, “The Gospel of Life has triumphed at the Organization of American States.”
Martinez leads the Coalition for Human Development, a Human Life International led group composed of 36 pro-life organizations from throughout the Americas, which holds membership in the assembly as a Civil Society Organization.
Along with Human Life International’s Martinez, representatives of Coalition for Human Development organizations from the United States that attended the OAS 53rd General Assembly included And Then There Were None, Terri Schiavo Life and Hope Network, Heartbeat International, Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), Vitae Foundation, Sacred Heart Institute, and Missionary Image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
The OAS is composed of the 35 independent nations of North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean. Learn more about the Organization of American States here [https://www.oas.org/en/].
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