Trump administration officials committed to “protect unborn life at all stages” at the five-year anniversary event of a 40-nation coalition of countries that declare that there is no international right to abortion.
The Geneva Consensus Declaration “seeks to expand health and thriving for women, and protect the sovereign right of nations to support health, life, and family through national policy and legislation.” The Institute of Women’s Health hosted members of Congress, Trump administration officials, and global leaders to celebrate the anniversary.
President Donald Trump penned a letter, which was read at the celebration, promising to “never waiver in protecting the sanctity of every human life.”
“My administration is steadfastly devoted to restoring a culture that values the inherent dignity of every child and to upholding the eternal truth that every person is created in the holy image and likeness of God, with infinite worth and boundless potential,” he wrote.
Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of health and human services, said the Trump administration was “eager and proud” to rejoin the Geneva Consensus Declaration in January after the Biden administration left the coalition of pro-life countries.
“The denial of fundamental truths can destroy nations from within,” he said. “At the root of the evils we face—murder in the womb, the blurring of lines between sexes, and radical social agendas—is a hatred of nature as it was designed for life, the way it was meant to be lived,” O’Neill said. “This ideology does not just denying biology. It declares war against it.”
He said the administration is happy to put the Geneva Consensus Declaration’s principles in action to protect life at all stages.
“President Trump reinstituted the Mexico City Policy. Taxpayers will not be forced to fund entities that provide or promote abortion as foreign family planning,” he said. “We’ve removed transgender flags from all federal buildings. Only one flag flies above our embassies, and that is the American flag.”
“We’ve ended taxpayer funding for the mutilation of children and radical indoctrination,” he added. “Children should not be subjected to the life-altering, irreversible damage and sex-trait modification.”
O’Neill promised the Trump administration will continue advancing the Geneva Consensus Declaration’s principles globally.
“Taxpayer-funded organizations and bureaucrats have sadly long undermined sovereign nations by imposing radical social agendas around the world,” O’Neill said. “The era of taxpayer-funded neocolonialist promotion of leftist ideologies has come to an end, and our work is just beginning.”
The top priority for the Trump State Department is recognizing the sovereignty of each nation, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau said.
“I think it’s so important for us all to recognize that the international community has no right to tell anyone of our country what our policy should be on these issues of family and women’s health,” Landau said.
“Each nation state has the right to determine, within its own borders, the policy that it decides to pursue on social and cultural issues, like those affecting the family,” he continued.
Landau expressed his “solidarity” with the Geneva Consensus Declaration’s “focus on women’s health and its commitment to families as the core of our communities and our countries.”
“We’re created in the image of God. We have families. Families build out into communities, into nations, and ultimately the world. And so, the family is ultimately the manifestation of God’s grace,” he said. “And I think it’s so important that we are all recognizing the importance of the family. I think this is something, frankly, that declining birth rates in so many parts of the world are a huge problem facing humankind, and so I respect and welcome focus on these issues.”
The Trump administration is committed to restoring the principle of national sovereignty as the key to international relations, Landau said.
“Just as President Trump says he wants to make America great again, he expects the leaders of your countries to want to make your countries great again,” he told the gathering, “whether it be Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Cameroon, Egypt, or Paraguay.”
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., said he thanks God the Trump administration has respect for life in the womb.
“The Geneva Consensus Declaration, in my opinion, is an engraved invitation to each and every one of us to seriously recommit and rededicate ourselves to the best of our ability in our home countries, as well as in the international forum,” he said.
Smith, a staunch pro-life advocate, said he is asking the Trump administration to do more to investigate the abortion pill and the negative side effects many women experience.
“In the developing world, when a woman starts hemorrhaging, it’s often a death sentence, and she’ll die quietly and horribly in her town or in her hamlet, and nobody will know,” he said. “There’ll be no statistical gathering for these horrible effects and that woman will die. I’m very concerned about how everyone looks the other way on the international stage about the abortion pill.”
Smith asked António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, if he is aware of the dangers of the abortion pill.
“Do you know how the pill works?” he asked Guterres. “It starves the baby to death. You and I, Mr. Secretary-General, worked on global hunger … . I believe deeply in mitigating world hunger, and yet we have a situation where we’re causing hunger to the point of starvation.”
