At UN, Vatican envoy denounces 'gender ideology'
March 09, 2010
The Vatican's representative at the UN has denounced gender ideology, saying that the approach has harmed rather than helped women.
Speaking at a UN session on gender equality, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said that the gender ideology "is is proving increasingly ideologically driven, and actually delays the true advancement of women."
The gender approach, the archbishop said, seeks to "dissolve every specificity and complementarity between men and women." Moreover, the documents produced by UN conferences in recent years have often ascribed "to a notion of sexual and reproductive health and rights which is violent to unborn human life and is detrimental to the integral needs of women and men within society," he said.
Archbisop Migliore acknowleged that women "continue to suffer in many parts of the world" because of unjust discrimination and "violence in the form of female feticide, infanticide, and abandonment." The solution, however, is not to impose an artificial equality that disregards the true dignity of womanhood, he insisted.
"A solution respectful of the dignity of women does not allow us to bypass the right to motherhood," the Vatican envoy said; "but commits us to promoting motherhood by investing in and improving local health systems and providing essential obstetrical services."
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