The Christian Science Monitor

How US abortion wars translated into battle over 4 words at UN

For some, it’s an attack on women’s health and rights. For others, it’s a welcome and long-overdue elevation of the sanctity of unborn life on the global stage.

After a couple of years of trying, the Trump administration appears to be making headway in its efforts to take its conservative views on reproductive health policies, including a war on abortion, to the United Nations.

But for many of the United States’ closest allies, from Britain to France and Germany, the initiative signals an alarming shift away from Western values they have long promoted together, including women’s rights and gender equality. Instead, they see their traditional friend and leader moving toward the camp of socially conservative countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others that have not been at the forefront of promoting women’s issues at the U.N.

Starting early in the Trump presidency, the administration took a series of actions to strip reproductive health

Foreign policy opportunityConservative appointments‘Finding the silver lining’

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