Trump rejects WHO amendments that threaten pro-life laws

On July 18, the Trump administration officially rejected amendments to the World Health Organization’s International Health Regulations (IHR) agreed upon by member nations at the World Health Assembly in June 2024, which could have threatened local pro-life legal protections.

The decision was announced in a joint statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Secretary Kennedy posted a video detailing the reasons behind the decision on X; Secretary Rubio also posted a brief comment on the same platform.

Key Takeaways:

• Though presented as a means to deal with “the international spread of disease,” the IHR makes demands of countries that have nothing to do with disease, and promotes ambiguous ideas that could promulgate pro-abortion and gender ideologies.
• Secretary Kennedy and the State Department warned that the IHR contains threats to national sovereignty, free speech, civil liberties, and more.
• The WHO has long declared abortion to be “essential” and “healthcare,” and the IHR has the potential to override a country’s (or state’s) pro-life laws, ending abortion regulations and even forcing healthcare workers to participate in procedures against their consciences.

The Backstory:

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the IHR as “a legal framework to prevent, protect against, control and provide a public health response to the international spread of disease[.]” The IHR have been modified repeatedly since their initial adoption in 1969; in 2005, they were radically expanded “to take into account almost all public health risks (biological, chemical, radiological or nuclear in origin) that might affect human health, irrespective of the source.”

Additional changes were deemed necessary following the global spread of the COVID-19 virus. These amendments were finalized in June 2024.

A Pandemic Agreement designed to “complement“ the IHR amendments was drafted over the same timeframe, but it was not adopted until May 2025. The United States withdrew from the WHO in January and therefore did not enter into this agreement.

However, the United States was still an active member of the WHO when the IHR amendments were agreed upon in 2024, making it necessary to issue a formal rejection before the July 19 deadline, after which the newly amended IHR would have been binding.

The Details:

Numerous individuals and organizations from around the globe in addition to both state- and federal-level lawmakers and government officials have been openly critical of the proposed Pandemic Agreement and IHR amendments.

The proposed amendments to the International Health Regulations open the door to the kind of narrative management, propaganda, and censorship that we saw during the COVID pandemic. The United States can cooperate with other nations without jeopardizing our civil liberties,… pic.twitter.com/k9IWRavu9D

— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) July 18, 2025

Cited concerns

• Threats to national sovereignty. Secretary Kennedy elaborated on this subject on X, stating: “Nations who accept these new regulations are signing over their power in health emergencies to an unelected international organization that could order lockdowns, travel restrictions, or any other measures it sees fit,” even in the absence of an actual health emergency.
• Endangerment of free speech. Secretary Kennedy stated: “The new regulations require countries to establish systems of ‘risk communications’ so the WHO can implement unified public messaging globally. That opens the door to the kind of narrative management, and propaganda, and censorship that we saw during the COVID pandemic.”
• Threats to civil liberties, including privacy. According to Secretary Kennedy: “The agreement also contains provisions about global systems of health IDs, vaccine passports, and a centralized medical database. It lays the groundwork for global medical surveillance of every human being.”
• Emphasis on ideology over effectiveness. The joint State Department/HHS statement issued July 18 notes: “Terminology throughout the 2024 amendments is vague and broad, risking WHO-coordinated international responses that focus on political issues like solidarity, rather than rapid and effective actions.”
  
  Similarly, C-Fam has objected to the documents’ emphasis on “equity,” which “is inherently ambiguous and is expected to give the international health agency and western donors wide latitude for mischief, including promoting abortion and gender ideology” (emphasis added).

For pro-lifers, the most alarming aspect of the Pandemic Agreement and IHR amendments is the threat they pose to innocent life. Although the word “abortion” never appears in the documents, they do contain language that could jeopardize national and local pro-life legal protections.

Specifically, they require participating nations to provide access to “routine and essential health care services” — which, according to the WHO, includes abortion.

The hidden threat of WHO’s language

• The WHO is openly and explicitly pro-abortion. It asserts that abortion is a human right that is fundamental to “gender equality.” It has a track record of promoting abortion during international health emergencies, declaring it to be “essential.” To make this ‘essential service’ more readily available, it has encouraged the expansion of telemedicine-based DIY abortion and has recommended lowering safety standards to maximize access.
• The WHO has also advocated limiting individual healthcare workers’ rights to conscientiously object to participating in abortion. In the case of healthcare institutions, it has prescribed the total elimination of conscience objections — which would mean that even faith-based healthcare agencies would be forced to commit abortions.
• The WHO wants an end to abortion regulations. It has stated that “laws and policies that cause barriers to quality abortion care (including criminalization of abortion, mandatory waiting periods and third-party authorization requirements)” should be “removed.”
  

Reality Check:

A future presidential administration could easily reverse course with regard to WHO membership and everything that goes with it; in fact, this already happened when the U.S. rejoined the WHO under the Biden administration following its withdrawal under the first Trump administration.

What’s more, the U.S. could still adopt the Pandemic Agreement and the IHR amendments under a future administration through a process known as “accession.” According to the WHO, accession is “an international act by which a State or an international organization, which have [sic] not signed a treaty, establish [sic] on the international plane their consent to be bound by it.” The document adds that the “WHO Pandemic Agreement shall, in accordance with its Article 32, be opened for accession from the day after the date on which it is closed for signature.”

The Bottom Line:

Nonetheless, the U.S. withdrawal from the WHO and its rejection of both the Pandemic Agreement and the IHR amendments is a clear, though potentially fleeting, victory for the American pro-life cause.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]