The United States rejoined the Geneva Consensus Declaration on Jan. 24. What’s that, you ask?  The declaration is a statement, originally sponsored by the United States in 2020, that was eventually endorsed by 35-plus countries. Its signatories declare that they support protection and advancement of “women’s health,” but that women’s health does not include abortion.

Why is that important?  Because there is a hardcore community of activists worldwide that works to seize every opportunity the United Nations or any international assembly of countries discusses “women’s health” to force that term to mean abortion. These activists’ goal: to pretend that a “consensus” exists that abortion is a “right” under international human rights law.

It has never been, but just like the gaseous “penumbrae” nebulously gathering around the Ninth and 14th amendments were conjured by Harry Blackmun into a “right” to abortion on demand throughout pregnancy in Roe v. Wade, so international counterparts want to engage in similar hocus-pocus to invent an international abortion “right.”

They generally won’t come out and say that in a black-and-white text.  No, they’ll weave that “interpretation” into the documents, then claim a “consensus” exists globally and that countries not promoting abortion are somehow backward in their “human rights commitments.”

This game has been going on for decades, but it especially gathered steam in 1995 when first lady Hillary Clinton made her way to Beijing and told the Fourth World Conference on Women that “women’s rights are human rights.” Notice the slick sloganeering: Don’t say the “a” word, but smuggle it in under “women’s rights.” She continued this agitation as secretary of state.

Many countries in the Third World not committed to killing their children balked.  They were clearly told by the European Union, Canada, and the United States (under Democratic administrations) to submit to the ideological imperialism of abortion ideology or lose support.  That troika then also funded nongovernmental organizations (most of which would collapse without governments propping up their budgets) to undermine pro-life laws.

The first Trump administration broke this strong-arming when it joined with those countries in insisting there is no right to abortion in international law.  Countries might decide whether or not to legalize abortion, but it was none of the international community’s business. And the cachet of the global community could not be used to twist pro-life countries’ arms.

Former President Joe Biden, of course, renounced the Geneva Consensus Declaration on day one but, with the second Trump administration, it’s back. And even that very difference, going back and forth, proves there is no consensus even in the United States that abortion is a “right.”

Restoration of the declaration is a good thing.  Now let’s build on it. We need a Global Consensus Declaration on surrogacy.

Surrogacy is trafficking in human babies. It often involves taking somebody else’s gametes to produce a child. It always involves hiring another woman’s body for nine months to bear a child she is then supposed to give away (often for money).

Surrogacy is inherently a class issue: Did you ever see a wealthy white liberal lady from the D.C. suburbs carrying a baby for a poor woman in Mexico?  No.  The relationship always goes one way.  Even in America, when Big Fertility (to borrow Jennifer Lahl’s term) wants to obtain eggs, it pays top dollar to blonde, Ivy League 4.0 GPA coeds.  When it needs a surrogate, wives of E-2 deployed enlisted men are great candidates for supplemental “wages.”

Surrogacy is also an international issue.  See, “labor” costs overseas are a lot cheaper than they are in America. International surrogacy moves around the world — India, Thailand, etc. — where costs are cheap until the local government decides to protect its women from exploitation. After south Asia, Big Fertility moved to Ukraine and Moldova, but Russian President Vladimir Putin messed that deal up.  Right now, Mexico is a preferred destination of choice.

Nor is international surrogacy absent from America.  Particularly when Chinese President Xi Jinping was still enforcing his “one-child” diktat, wealthy Chinese were finding Americans to bear kids or at least sending surrogates to give birth in surrogacy-friendly jurisdictions such as California and New York.

Surrogacy benefits wealthy women. It also benefits homosexual couples who want to pretend to “parenthood” from which nature bars them.  So, yes, the economic clout of its advocates is strong. And another dirty little secret is that Democratic states have been very receptive to legalizing surrogacy. It’s not by accident that the amendments to state constitutions to ensconce abortion are written to defend “reproductive rights.” That’s code language to protect surrogacy.

There’s still a strong and healthy international consensus that baby-making and baby-selling are barbaric deeds. Just as the first Trump administration led an international consensus against establishing an “right to abortion,” the second Trump administration should forge such a consensus document to ban surrogacy. Not regulate it. Ban it.

It’s likely such an effort would gain broader support than even the Geneva Consensus Declaration on abortion. Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni almost certainly would get on board, as would likely many Central and Eastern European countries. Countries in the Third World that were targets of Big Fertility would get on board. We might even see if President Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico stands up to protect her women — or to protect Big Fertility.