New York—This week, the 30th Anniversary session of the Commission on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) began at UN headquarters in New York. The theme of the session is women’s political participation, but many CEDAW experts are quick to turn the discussion towards their abortion agenda.

Ms. Michelle Bachelet, the director of UN Women (the UN organization for gender equality and the empowerment of women), framed her comments in the context of sexual and reproductive rights language. Women, she said, “should also be able to define if, when, and how many children they want to have.” She bemoaned the recent defeats of abortion advocates at the Rio+20 and CSW conferences who tried to “recognize explicitly the importance of sexual and reproductive health for sustainable development.”

Ms. Bachelet also scoffed at women holding public office who do not share her pro-abortion views: “Neither does the fact that a woman is elected to office guarantee that she will be gender sensitive.” She blames pro-life women, in part, for the fact that the “reproductive rights of women still questioned on daily basis.”