The Biden State Department this month kept its promise to promote legalized abortion around the world when it updated its annual Human Rights Report to also include a section on each country about "reproductive rights."
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had released in March the 2020 version of the Congressionally-mandated Human Rights Report, which details violations of religious and human rights in countries around the world.
On Nov. 4, the report was updated to include a section about "reproductive rights" for each country. "Reproductive rights" is a phrase commonly used by the pro-choice community to reference abortion.
It is a reversal in practice from the Trump administration, which had removed the section on reproductive rights.
"We reaffirm our full commitment to promote and protect the sexual and reproductive health of all individuals, recognizing the essential and transformative role they play in gender equality and women and girls' empowerment around the world," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, according to the Washington Post.
For example, a report on Ireland notes that "couples and individuals have the right to decide the number, spacing, and timing of their children; to manage their reproductive health; and to have the information and means to do so, free from discrimination, coercion, and violence."
"Women's rights – including sexual and reproductive rights – are human rights," Blinken said in March.
Theologian Albert Mohler calls the new report a "propagandist misuse of the category of human rights." Mohler is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
"It is a morally grotesque corruption of the idea of human rights, but this is increasingly the notion of human rights that is being driven by a secularized society," Mohler said on his podcast The Briefing. "... And it's unhinged from any kind of understanding of the origin of rights coming from outside human beings ourselves."
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Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
