A Ugandan Member of Parliament (MP) is taking the Canadian government and other Western nations to task for pressuring African nations into legalising abortion, especially through hypocritical grandstanding about “human rights” and threats to withhold aid and funding.
Lucy Akello gave her bold pro-life testimony last Tuesday before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development.
Akello has described her testimony before Canadian lawmakers as like “being in the den of lions.” She said they were urging her to accept abortion as a “universal human right” that should take precedence over Ugandan laws banning elective abortions.
“My stand is and will always be [that] Uganda is a sovereign nation, just like Canada is a sovereign nation. We have our values. Canada has its values,” she told me. “Let each of us stick to our values and not suppress the other simply because you have more money, I have less money, so you can play around with my head, play around with my rules, play around with my policies, play around with my values. And you think everything is OK? No, it can never be OK.”
“Who is defining these human rights? Is it the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Or is it the human rights definition … of today, which has completely changed, and brought on board all kinds of ‘human rights’ which I don’t even know? It’s a different definition altogether,” she added.
Describing Western pressure to acquiesce to the pro-abortion agenda, Akello said African leaders or lawmakers are sometimes threatened with “sanctions” or denied visas for speaking out in defense of pro-life laws. These threats are simultaneously accompanied by the generous funding of pro-abortion organizations working to destabilize Africa’s culture of life.
“I was able to give examples of how they are funding organizations to do everything possible to disorganize our values and traditions, our beliefs,” the Ugandan MP said. “From organizations such as Marie Stopes, organizations such as Reproductive Health Uganda being heavily and heavily funded, as opposed to going to fund the real issues that affect a common woman and a poor girl in Africa.”
Asked if she had a message for those in the West who oppose the anti-life agenda of elites, Akello urged us to “stay strong” and continue speaking “for the truth” because it helps keep the African people strong in their fight as well.
“We have so many good people in the West. People like you are there who stand with us, give us information, do research. And that, for me, matters a lot,” she said.