![handle is hein.journals/hrlro4 and id is 1 raw text is: COMMISSION ON UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
AND THE EFFORT TO ERASE
REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AS HUMAN RIGHTS
Risa E. Kaufman*
What underlies the Administration's effort to examine human
rights through the State Department's newly created Commission on
Unalienable Rights? And what is at stake? The asserted purpose of the
Commission, as announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, is to examine human rights in light of foundational
documents and provide advice to the Secretary on the development of
human rights principles to guide U.S. foreign policy.' Advocates have
raised concern that the Commission, which includes a chair and
members with well-known and extreme positions opposing
reproductive rights and LGBTQI rights, is subterfuge for rolling back
rights protections for women, LGBTQI people, and other marginalized
and vulnerable communities. These concerns are well-founded,
* Director of U.S. Human Rights at the Center for Reproductive Rights, and
Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School. The author is grateful to colleagues at
the Center for Reproductive Rights, including Susan Inman and Rebecca Brown for
their helpful comments on earlier drafts on this essay, and Carolina van der
Mensbrugghe for her expert research.
1. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo Remarks to the Press (July 8, 2019),
https://www.state.gov/secretary-of-state -michael-r-pompeo -remarks-to -the-press-3/
[https://perma.cc/779L-2AM4]. The Federal Register notice of intent to establish the
Commission states that the Commission will provide fresh thinking about human
rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation's founding
principles or natural law and natural rights. Department of State Commission on
Unalienable Rights, 84 Fed. Reg. 25,109 (May 30, 2019),
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2o19/o5/3o/2019-ii3oo/department-of-
state-commission-on-unalienable-rights [https://perma.cc/W84H-C53D].
2. See, e.g., Coalition Letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the
Commission on Unalienable Rights (July 23, 2019),
https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Unalienable-Rights-
Commission-NGO-Ltr.pdf [https://perma.cc/YN8B-WCMP] (noting that the
Commission's stated purpose is harmful to the global effort to protect the rights of
all people and a waste of resources and further than the Commission's makeup
lacks ideological diversity and appears to reflect a clear interest in limiting human
rights); Jayne Huckerby et al., Trump's Unalienable Rights Commission Likely to](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/hrlro4&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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