Susan Roylance: A horribly radical agenda

—Establishing abortion as a human right.—Eliminating the need for parental consent for abortion.—Promoting, and protecting, "non-traditional" sexual behavior, and denigrating religion's role in teaching what is "right or wrong."wrong in regard to sexual health.Those items are among many on the agenda next week at the Global NGO Forum for ICPD+15 in Berlin.I'll be writing from that conference, which, despite the confusing title, will offer (as you can see) straight-forward — and terribly misguided — ideas.You probably think I'm making all this up — or I am over-reacting — or the people who support these ideas are just a radical fringe element. But it is true, and the above issues are promoted by the Chairman and Co-Chairman of the international conference.The ICPD was the U.N. International Conference on Population and Development held in Cairo in 1994. Delegates from all nations of the U.N. gathered to create a document on health and population, which is called the Programme of Action (sometimes referred to as the Cairo Consensus).Delegations were sent to Cairo from 179 countries. More than 11,000 people participated.According to the official report, the conference addressed issues related to "population, the environment and consumption patterns; the family; internal and international migration; prevention and control of HIV/AIDS; technology, research and development; and partnership with the non-governmental sector." NGOs are the non-governmental groups concerned with these issues.The Global NGO Forum in Berlin will focus on progress made since 1994 and the challenges toward achieving ICPD goals by 2015.Background papers for the Berlin conference acknowledge that "conservative forces" oppose some of their objectives, but they have carefully selected the 400 participants to help secure a "call to action" that will promote the specific goals of the conference organizers.While I did not attend the original Cairo conference, I did attend the five-year review in 1999 at UN headquarters in New York City. And I have attended 21 other U.N. conferences dealing with international public policy.At the upcoming Berlin conference, those younger than 30 will make up at least 25 percent of the registered participants. More than half of all participants will be from developing countries in the southern part of the hemisphere.Some of the stated goals in the background papers for the forum are:-Establishing abortion as a human right and focusing on achievement of safe abortions throughout the world.-Protecting "non-traditional" sexual orientations and behaviors.—Including the words "sexual rights" or "sexual orientation" in the final Call to Action. These words have not been used in previous U.N. conference documents or international treaties.-Eliminating parental consent for abortions for young women.-Evaluating, and possibly eliminating, the role of religion in determining what is "right and wrong" as it relates to "sexual and reproductive health and rights."It will be an interesting week. I hope you will join me on my deseretnews.com blog, and enter your comments, as I report the activities of the conference.