Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) sounded the alarm on the World Health Organization’s “pandemic treaty,” including what he described as its “infringement” on national sovereignty and the WHO’s view that “abortion on demand” is a human right.
Smith held a press briefing Monday afternoon with Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) and several issue experts detailing a move from the WHO to solidify a “pandemic treaty” they say poses a threat to American independence, intellectual property rights, free speech, and funding for late-term abortion. The deal is set for a vote by the World Health Assembly on May 27.
The WHO Pandemic Agreement is purported to “strengthen pandemic prevention, preparedness and response” by creating a “binding” agreement among countries dictating how to respond to a global pandemic, according to the organization.
The New Jersey Republican brought attention to several problems with the pending agreement, including its provision, per the October 2023 draft proposal, that member countries maintain access to “essential health services” during pandemics, which the WHO says includes abortion.
“The Pandemic Agreement affirms the need to prioritize ‘equity and respect for human rights,’ yet on Nov. 25, 2021, the WHO made clear that it construes the killing of unborn children by abortion — dismemberment, child beheading, and starvation, and that’s how the abortion pill works — to be a human right,” said Smith, chairman of the Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, referencing the WHO’s web page on the procedure.
That page claims that “lack of access to safe, timely, affordable and respectful abortion care is a critical public health and human rights issue.”
Smith, who also co-leads the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, said the international agreement would force its global members to support “abortion on demand,” something the WHO appears prepared to deliver.
Last summer, the WHO turned up the heat on supporting legal abortion with a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at pushing abortion access in Europe. It also gave the International Planned Parenthood Federation, an organization that advocates access to late-term abortion, “official relations” status, and it will vote in May to allow the Center for Reproductive Rights, another legal abortion advocacy group, the same status.
“This is an organization that, like the WHO itself, lobbies for changes in law and uses case law to promote abortion on demand for all nine months,” Smith said.
He noted that a coalition of 33 anti-abortion organizations sent a Jan. 22 letter to the WHO urging it not to enter a relationship with the center, which states, in part, “the Center for Reproductive Rights has been at the forefront of attempts to manipulate international cooperation to promote abortion as a human right. Their efforts to undermine the laws of Sovereign States protecting children in the womb and subvert human rights law are extensive and well-documented.”
A spokesperson for WHO said “false claims” about the agreement had been “debunked” on its website.
“There has been a strong disinformation campaign about the pandemic treaty or accord that the WHO Member States are currently negotiating,” the spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
Tax dollars are heavily implicated in the agreement, as member countries will be required to provide funds for it, though Smith said it remains unclear to what extent because the “sustainable funding mechanism” for “annual monetary contributions” will not be established until the end of 2026, after the agreement is adopted, according to the October draft.
“If approved, it remains unclear whether the Biden administration intends to submit this treaty/agreement to the Senate for its constitutionally required advice and consent as a prerequisite for ratification,” he added, calling a Senate bypass an “egregious mistake.”
The agreement also calls for efforts to “combat false, misleading, misinformation or disinformation” — something the WHO itself has been heavily criticized by Republicans and medical professionals for its projection of talking points from China about COVID-19.
“We witnessed firsthand that the WHO didn’t equally serve all of its members, or even all of mankind. Rather, it became beholden to and caved to political pressure,” said Wenstrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. “When the WHO needed to step up and help the world navigate this unprecedented event of a novel coronavirus and a global pandemic, they instead ignored facts.”
“They parroted back some of the narrative the Chinese Communist Party told them, and that’s what we got,” Wenstrup continued. “So, instead of conducting their own independent investigation into the origins of COVID and helping everyone keep safe as best we can, they listened to Chinese propaganda and produced a pandemic origins report with the CCP.”
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The WHO’s handling of the pandemic calls into question whether the new agreement and its clause on “disinformation” would silence dissent from scientists and doctors who do not agree with the conclusions drawn by the organization, Smith added.
The WHO did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
