Austin Cherry at the UN

The young man sitting next to me is Austin Cherry , I know his Great  Uncle Wayne Cockfield, a real pro-life champion at the UN Disability Convention negotiations. What follows is Austin's view of his week at the  UN .

Having the opportunity to work at the United Nations with Jeanne Head and Peter Smith for the first week of the 59th Commission on the Status of Women was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I must say, I had low expectations regarding the UN supporting actual women’s rights, and the UN lived up to my expectations. It seems that at the United Nations, sexual “rights” (abortion, contraception, LGBT education in schools, etc.…) takes precedence over the chaos engulfing our world. Instead of focusing on ways to defeat Boko Haram, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations preying on women, the UN invited a representative from International Planned Parenthood Federation to decry the teaching of abstinence in schools! That representative continued to blame abstinence for teaching children that sex outside of marriage is wrong; that it leads to “binary sexual practices”, and that is deprives adolescents of learning about their bodies. Surely abstinence is worse than forced marriage, or sexual slavery, right!?

The majority of the CSW59 meetings I attended focused on advancing sexual rights in the developing world, not protecting women endangered by terrorism, or supplying clean drinking water or providing better medical care. Even the hordes of angry feminists teeming through the halls of the General Assembly building believed sexual rights and abortion trump everything else. If only they realized abortion does not empower women, it kills them!

The United Nations was not all pro-abortion, though. Pro-Life groups held several fantastic side events (which were shockingly not publicized by the UN). The Holy See, Qatar, and Family Watch International organized a meeting entitled, “The family as Agent of Women's Equality and Human Rights: Fulfilling the promises of Beijing”. The room was filled well over capacity, and it was like a breath of fresh air. This meeting was the first time during CSW that the traditional family structure was credited with advancing women’s rights!

There is a remnant of Christian values at the United Nations. I will be praying for the delegates, staff and NGOs at the UN daily. The work being done at the UN directly affects poorer, weaker and smaller nations, and it influences every other nation on Earth. The UN needs prayer. Please pray that a culture of life overtakes the culture of death at the UN, the future of the world literally hangs in the balance.