WASHINGTON—The nominee to serve as United Nations Secretary General is a pro-abortion extremist who is unfit to serve in the role, Republicans told Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a letter first obtained by The Daily Wire.
The bicameral group of lawmakers, led by Republican Congressman Chris Smith of New Jersey, told Rubio on Thursday that former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet “does not match the qualifications” President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking in the next secretary general, given her record of pro-abortion advocacy and the support she has from abortion proponents around the world.
As one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the United States has the power to veto Bachelet’s selection to be the next Secretary General. The lawmakers urge Rubio to instruct U.N. Ambassador Michael Waltz to exercise that veto.
“Dr. Bachelet’s resume reveals a pro-abortion zealot intent on using political authority to override state sovereignty in favor of extreme agendas,” the lawmakers write. “She has both overtly attacked pro-life laws — including those of the United States — and sought to weaken them through intimidation and coercion.”
Bachelet served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as Executive Director of United Nations Women, and as the president of Chile. In each of these roles, the Republicans stressed, she has pushed for abortions of unborn babies as a woman’s right. President Donald Trump actually pulled the United States out of U.N. Women in January 2026, saying that participation in U.N. Women is contrary to U.S. interests.
“Dr. Bachelet has repeatedly prioritized an extreme abortion agenda at the expense of state sovereignty,” the lawmakers told Rubio. “She is an unsuitable candidate, and the United States, as a permanent member of the Security Council, should veto Dr. Bachelet’s selection.”
Chile’s former president (2006-2010 and 2014-2018) Michelle Bachelet speaks to the press after casting her ballot during the presidential runoff election in Santiago on December 14, 2025. (Photo by Raul BRAVO / AFP via Getty Images)
The United States has previously emphasized that it wants a Secretary General who shares the American vision of “returning the UN to its founding purpose of maintaining international peace and security,” as Ambassador Dorothy Shea argued in October 2025, during remarks at a United Nations Security Council Briefing. “The next Secretary-General should reject initiatives that fall outside the Charter’s founding purpose, prioritize accountability and transparency, and respect state sovereignty.”
The lawmakers argue that Bachelet would not match such a vision, and that she would instead promote “divisive ideologies.”
“However, Dr. Bachelet’s previous promotion of an extreme abortion agenda suggests that, if selected as the next UNSG, she would
continue the UN practice of engaging in ‘the propagation of divisive ideologies that undermine national sovereignty and stir controversy rather than bring member states together to address issues of common concern.’ Her demonstrated ambitions and priorities, outlined below, conflict with the United States determination to bring the UN ‘back to the basics.'”
They note that Bachelet, when she served as the High Commissioner for Human Rights, deplored the United States Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June 2022, calling the decision a “major setback,” a “huge blow to women’s human rights,” and a decision that “strips autonomy” from women. They note that she described abortion as “firmly rooted in international human rights law,” saying that the procedure, which brutally ends the life of a human baby, “is at the core of women and girls’ autonomy.”
Since Bachelet has set the precedent of “using her office to attack United States pro-life law,” she cannot be trusted to respect the United States’ “right to enforce pro-life laws and policies, include the Protecting Life in Foreign Assistance policy and the executive order Enforcing the Hyde Amendment,” the Republicans argue.
Bachelet has spent her career arguing for more abortions and fewer pro-life laws: in 2022, as the lawmakers point out, she said that “restrictive abortion laws and practical barriers pose a threat to human rights” and praised the weakening of pro-life laws in Colombia, Argentina, and Mexico.
“The truth is that killing an unborn child by abortion can never be construed to be a human right,” the Republicans wrote. “Every person — born and unborn—deserves to have his or her human rights secured and protected.”
They also point to a 2020 fact sheet from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, published under Bachelet’s purview, that claims “treaty body jurisprudence has indicated that denying women access to abortion can amount to violations of the rights to health, privacy and, in certain cases, the right to be free from cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.”
Failure to abort babies is “a form of gender based violence against women, which can amount to torture and/or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” the fact sheet asserts. The Republicans argue that these claims are in contradiction to the Geneva Consensus Declaration, a document signed by the United States and 30 other nations affirming there is no international right to abortion.
Bachelet has also failed to oppose coerced abortion in China, traveling to the nation at the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party in order to investigate reports of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the lawmakers tell Rubio.
“She should have honestly identified the atrocities committed by the CCP against the Uyghurs as a genocide,” they wrote. “Instead, she released a watered-down report literally minutes before her term expired. She allowed the CCP to blatantly shield itself from an honest assessment and to sidestep responsibility for its horrific human rights abuses. In an appalling failure of leadership, Dr. Bachelet crumbled under pressure and enabled the CCP to manipulate the visit for its own advantage.”
As she campaigned for the Chilean presidency, Bachelet promised to weaken the country’s pro-life law that protected all unborn babies. She followed through by authoring a bill legalizing abortion and sending it to Chile’s Congress. The bill was approved and established into law, allowing abortions when the baby was a risk to the mother’s life, had fatal fetal abnormalities, or was the result of a rape.
While the change in law might seem minimal or even standard for Americans, for Chileans, the law change was a cultural shift and a door opened to future pro-abortion laws.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.
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