Guatemala President Keynotes DC Pro-Life Reception After Biden Excludes Him from Democracy Summit

President-elect Alejandro Giammattei speaks during a interview with AFP in Guatemala City
JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images
Dr. Susan Berry

The pro-life president of Guatemala gave the keynote address Tuesday at a gathering focused on the dignity of all human life after having been excluded from President Joe Biden’s Summit for Democracy this week.

President Alejandro Giammattei offered keynote remarks at a reception in Washington, DC, hosted by the Institute for Women’s Health International Human Rights Group.

Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus, and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), co-chairman of the House Pro-Life Caucus, also spoke at the event at the Willard Hotel, both thanking Giammattei for signing his country on to the international pro-life Geneva Consensus Declaration.

The Declaration is a pro-life effort initiated by the Trump administration but rejected earlier this year by the pro-abortion rights Biden administration. It serves as a rebuke to the U.N. and World Health Organization (W.H.O.), both of which promote global abortion rights.

Nations that participate in the Declaration seek to promote women’s health as well as the “strength of the family and of a successful and flourishing society.” The governments also affirm “the essential priority of protecting the right to life.”

Giammattei affirmed his defense of all human life during his remarks:

Doing one’s duty should go without thanks. And all I have done has been my duty… Every individual deserves to have their lives protected, from conception to natural death… It is totally false that abortion is a human right. Any effort to try to impose abortion in a country is undue interference in international affairs… We seek to protect life and to prevent interference. We do not approve of abortion because of my faith but also my profession as a medical doctor. Life should be protected from conception.

Though Guatemala is a democracy, the country was not invited to Biden’s Democracy Summit at the White House.

“I have heard of a presidential Summit happening here, but that’s not what I’ve come for,” Giammattei said. “We should not be demanded to adopt ideas that go against our beliefs, our faith, and our ideas, even if it costs not getting invited to the White House.”

In an interview with Fox News’s John Roberts Wednesday, Giammattei also said he has not spoken with the White House since he met Vice President Kamala Harris, the Biden administration’s border czar, during the summer in Guatemala City.

Regarding the illegal immigration crisis, Giammattei said it “needs to be stopped on the basis of structural causes,” such as the drug cartels in Mexico that also smuggle Guatemalans and others into the United States.

“It’s a big business to run trafficking-person schemes,” he added. “It’s a $4 billion business for these criminals. And therefore, we need to address structural causes.”

Giammattei, a member of the conservative Vamos Party, also noted he is “not the same ideology” as the Biden administration, noting Biden officials have “expressed great happiness with the change that recently occurred in the election inside Honduras with the new president-elect.”

Fox News reported:

In Honduras, the left-wing Liberty & Refoundation Party candidate Xiomara Castro won that country’s election earlier this year, defeating Nasry Asfura, a member of the Christian-Humanist “National” Party of incumbent Juan Orlando Hernandez, signaling a leftward political shift in Tegucigalpa.

During the pro-life reception in Washington, Giammattei announced Guatemala would be declared the pro-life capital of IberoAmerica on March 9, 2022.

“We recently learned that our own United States Government funded a video project promoting medical abortion in an area of Latin America where abortion is not legal,” said Valerie Huber, President of the Institute for Women’s Health and architect of the Geneva Consensus Declaration. “And in another country, I heard we are supporting pro-abortion candidates for that nation’s Congress. That’s meddling… or worse.”

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