The United States rejected language about reproductive healthcare and intellectual property rights in a World Health Organization resolution on the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump threatened to quit the body.
The United States rejected language about reproductive healthcare and intellectual property rights in a World Health Organization resolution on the coronavirus pandemic on Tuesday, hours after President Donald Trump threatened to quit the body.
Washington did not block the consensus adoption of the text, which calls for a review into the global response to the crisis and which diplomats had striven to pass without a vote.
But in a statement it said it “dissociates” from paragraphs guaranteeing the rights of poor countries to waive intellectual property rules to obtain medicines in an emergency, and guaranteeing reproductive and sexual healthcare in the pandemic.
“The United States believes in legal protections for the unborn, and rejects any interpretation of international human rights… to require any State Party to provide access to abortion,” it said in an “explanation of position”.
