World leaders at the G7 summit held recently in Biarritz, France have been told to pursue extremely radical abortion laws to promote gender equality.

Countries should adopt laws which permit abortion up to birth and pro-life content deemed to be ‘misleading’ should be censored as well.

The call comes as Northern Ireland is facing its most serious threat to the value of life in decades after Westminster voted to impose extreme abortion laws, despite the fact that NI's current life-affirming law has saved 100,000 lives.

These disturbing recommendations came in the Council’s Recommendations for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of girls and women report.

Ban possible pro-life content

The Advisory Council calls on the G7 to “prohibit misinformation on safe abortion” and to promote “the right to choose and right to have a safe abortion” as ways to advance gender equality.

The report cites a French law, introduced in 2017, which bans ‘misinformation on abortion when it aims to intentionally mislead women on abortion’.

This law has been strongly criticised because it is so broad, the very existence of pro-life websites has been threatened.

Allow abortion up to birth

Canada’s radical abortion law, under which abortion is available without restriction right up to birth is used as a positive example of a law which protects women.

This is the same country which has been described as a ‘haven’ for sex-selective abortion practices, where girls are aborted because they are not boys.

CARE’s Naomi Marsden points out in this powerful piece that sex-selective abortions only fuels violence against women.

Council promoting policies that will harm women

Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for the pro-life group Right to Life UK said: “It is not at all clear how promoting extreme abortion legislation, or any abortion legislation for that matter, advances the empowerment of women. As is well-known by now, sex-selective abortion is responsible for 63 million women “missing” women in India alone and likely millions more across the globe.”

“Ironically the Gender Equality Advisory Council is promoting a practice which has women as it’s primary victims.”

Find out more

The G7 summit is an annual gathering of nations made up of the world’s seven largest advanced economies: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.

The group holds to certain key values such as human rights and freedoms and the rule of law.

The G7 meets every year and the presidency is held on a rolling basis. In previous years, climate change and global security are among the many issues discussed.

At the end of each summit, a special communique is released which discloses what has been agreed.