{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://guest.house.gov/media/press-releases/miss-lawmakers-seek-withdrawal-who-abortion-guidelines", "Miss. Lawmakers Seek Withdrawal of WHO Abortion Guidelines", "2022-05-24", "2022", "2022-05", "Republican", "House", "MS", "Michael Guest", "G000591", "guest.house.gov", "guest", "https://guest.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senators Roger Wicker and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and U.S. Representatives Steven Palazzo and Michael Guest (R-Miss.) are among more than 50 lawmakers asking the World Health Organization (WHO) to retract its recent far-reaching guidelines on abortion.\n\nIn a letter to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the lawmakers express strong opposition to the agency\u2019s updated Abortion Care Guideline, which advocates for abortion on demand, dismisses conscious objections of healthcare providers, and puts pressure on governments to adopt the recommended policies. The updated guidelines follow years of controversy regarding the role, allegiance, and effectiveness of the WHO, an arm of the United Nations.\n\nU.S. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) and U.S. Representative Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) spearheaded the effort.\n\n\u201cWe, members of the U.S. Congress, write to you today with concerns about the World Health Organization\u2019s (W.H.O.) dangerous new abortion guidelines. These extreme new guidelines aim to remove all legal and policy safeguards on abortion, impose restrictions on the conscience rights of health workers, and ignore the right to life and the safety of the mother and child,\u201d the lawmakers wrote.\n\nThe letter criticizes the WHO for attempting to dehumanize preborn children, categorizing abortion as \u201cself-care,\u201d and demanding \u201cthe full decriminalization of abortion\u201d without any gestational age limits.\n\n\u201cTo categorize abortions as \u2018self-care\u2019 not only strips away the humanity and dignity of a preborn child but also contradicts international standards recognizing the preborn child as a rights-holding person,\u201d the lawmakers continued.\n\nThe guidance, the lawmakers assert, also dismisses the rights of individuals and institutions that oppose abortions on ethical, moral, personal, or religious grounds.\n\n\u201cThe W.H.O.\u2019s radical stance reveals that it is all too willing to cave to pressure from the abortion industry and to force health care providers to choose between committing violence against an innocent baby and her mother, or being unemployed,\u201d the lawmakers added. \u201cThis stance also inevitably threatens patient access to health care in geographic areas that are primarily served by faith-based health care providers given that those who hold conscience objections would be deemed unfit for service.\u201d\n\nThe lawmakers conclude, \u201cGiven the W.H.O.\u2019s influence, this guidance will likely cause severe, irreversible harm, not only to U.S. citizens but to women and children worldwide. Such overreach and trampling of national sovereignty also further delegitimizes the W.H.O. and U.N. in the eyes of many people around the world. For these reasons, we ask that the W.H.O. reverse course and retract the anti-life recommendations that it has promoted through the release of its 2022 abortion care guidelines.\u201d\n\nClick here to read the letter.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T02:29:07Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://guest.house.gov/media/press-releases/miss-lawmakers-seek-withdrawal-who-abortion-guidelines"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.7206398770213127, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}