Pompeo taps abortion foe for fresh look on human rights

Charging that human rights advocates have deviated from core principles, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday named a staunch abortion opponent to lead a new panel to set the future direction for the United States.

Pompeo, an evangelical Christian who often speaks of his faith, announced the creation of a State Department commission on "unalienable rights" that has already drawn suspicions among gay and women's activists.

Quoting Czech anti-communist icon Vaclav Havel as saying that "words like 'rights' can be used for good or evil," Pompeo said that the panel will "revisit the most basic of questions -- what does it mean to say, or claim, that something is in fact a human right?"
Many US conservatives take issue with mainstream human rights groups, faulting their advocacy of issues such as women's reproductive health, gay rights and income equality, and instead call for an emphasis on God-given "natural law."
Eliot Engel, who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the "bizarre" panel risked "undermining many international human-rights norms that the United States helped establish."
Glendon, chair of the 10-member commission, said in brief remarks to reporters that human rights "are being misunderstood by many, manipulated by many, and ignored by the world's worst human rights violators."
The scholar represented the Vatican at the 1995 UN conference on women in Beijing -- where then US first lady Hillary Clinton, later secretary of state, gave a landmark speech in which she declared "women's rights are human rights."
Glendon later criticized the conference's push on sexual and reproductive health, accusing foundations of "forging a link between development aid and programs that pressure poor women into abortion, sterilization and use of risky contraceptive methods."