The reality is quite different.

Those who look carefully will find that OAS is paying little attention to the implementation of “mechanisms to deal with threats, traditional and new, that affect the region.” On the contrary, when we at PRI attended the meeting, we witnessed political lobbies working to focus public attention on fabricated “crises,” while neglecting real emergency economic and social development.

The “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity” Lobby

The attempt to make the concept of “sexual orientation” binding through the OAS, one of the Clintons’ big initiatives, has little or no support in Latin America. In fact, such a move has already been proven to have no roots in popular demand in any of our countries. For example, the 2008 Ibero-American Summit for “Youth and Development” in El Salvador, was expressly rejected by the host country, as well as Nicaragua, Panama and Mexico. This was because subscription and ratification of the Iberoamerican Youth Convention included questionable content related to sexual orientation. From that date the ratification of this document by the other countries ground to a halt.

The 40th OAS General Assembly seemed certain to go better for them. Its promoters were empowered by the participation of Hillary Clinton, a champion of so-called reproductive and sexual rights (read: abortion). Even in private dialogue sessions held on Monday into the event, “sexual orientation and gender identity” was discussed as needing urgent approval.

One of the participants of the event, a production sector representative, complained that the event members showed clear preferences for non-traditional sexual orientations (i.e., lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual tendencies). “In a region plagued by extreme poverty, economic crisis and unemployment, industries threatened by giants such as China, instability and insecurity about the arms race or border issues, drug trafficking, assaults on democracy everyday, etc, we had to use the limited time to listen to a woman claiming her right to lesbianism,” he lamented.

The key play of the LGBT lobby was the draft resolution, pre-approved in the OAS Permanent Council. That resolution was actually part of a comprehensive package of resolutions to be discussed in a very short time, a package that came to a whopping 105 items.

Seeing as it wasn’t humanly possible to have time to seriously pose each of these matters, the adoption of a comprehensive package of draft resolutions by the General Assembly became a mere formality, a with no possibility of debate. The General Committee met in private and worked it all out before lunch on June 8, the last day of the event. On the same afternoon, the General Committee informed the General Assembly of the three statements and eighty-six resolutions proposed to it, and that they were limited to simply approving them.

Despite the heavy-handed way that the resolution was pushed forward, many of those present expressed their fundamental disagreement with it. Several participants, among them Peruvian congresswoman Fabiola Moralis, spoke to the Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde. They pointed out that following the resolution meant using internal channels of the OEA to violate local laws and supersede the functions of legislative powers. To which the Peruvian diplomat said, almost casually, that these resolutions were “not of great importance.” But he then immediately corrected himself, saying that while they are “not binding, we should follow them.”

If the host of the General Assembly himself has this to say about the proceedings, the question remains: is the OEA even important at all? Or is it simply the modus operandi of a bureaucratic elite who use meetings like this to extend beyond their actual competence

In Latin America, this campaign is already well underway.  Over the past four months, abortion-minded groups in Ecuador, Chile and Argentina have set up such abortion hot-lines.

The lines are advertised as offering "free information services for women with unwanted pregnancies," but what you hear when you call is an advertisement for misoprostol-induced abortions.

There is no question that these groups know that by promoting misoprostol abortions, they are violating the law.  For example, Maria Teresa Urbina, who is the president of the Venezuelan branch of IPPF, acknowledges that "abortion is illegal in Venezuela,” and admits “we are not giving information about that."  Her excuse:  "These women will abort anyway."  The information provided on the abortion hot line is a "strategy so women do not die by clandestine abortions and inadequate methods.”

Unfortunately for Urbina and her partners in crime, her actions cannot be so glibly explained away.  Some of the women who call the hot line may be considering adoption, or simply looking for help in a crisis pregnancy.  What they receive is a tutorial on how to perform a self-abortion.  From a legal standpoint, providing information on how to commit a crime is punishable as criminal advocacy.  If  an organization set up a hot line to advise people on how to rob banks or commit murders, do you think it could avoid prosecution by claiming that the people who called were bound to “rob banks or commit murders anyway” and that the hot-line was just intended to ensure that they used “adequate methods”?

The foreign group immediately behind the creation of these hot lines is the Dutch NGO “Women on Waves,” according to Veronica Marzano, a spokeswoman for various feminist and lesbian organizations in Argentina.  In announcing the establishment of the hot line in Argentina, Marzano recounted that this regional initiative "arose after the Women on Waves recommended lines in an assortment of other countries in the region, like Ecuador and Chile."  Recall that Women on Waves ran the infamous floating abortuary—the so-called “Ship of Death”—until it was recently grounded by order of the Netherlands government.  That even the government of the Netherlands, not known for its respect for life, could not stomach the group’s activities demonstrates how radical it really is.

The misoprostol protocol did not originate with Women on Waves, however, but has a long history.  We at PRI have traced its beginning to 2003, when Dr. Beverly Winikoff created NGO “Gynuity,” dedicated exclusively to developing and promoting such chemical abortions all over the world under the guise of promoting “safe abortion.” Winikoff worked 25 years for the Population Council as Reproductive Health Director.  The next step occurred in 2005, when the governments of the United Kingdom, Denmark, Norway and Sweden created the Safe Abortion Action Fund, or SAAF, to finance “safe abortion” projects for underdeveloped countries. The management of this fund was entrusted to the IPPF.

Now things began to happen quickly.  On May 18, 2007, the IPPF announced that the SAAF decided to allocate 11 million dollars for financing 45 projects in 32 countries. Three months later, Gynuity issued a study called “Options to introduce medical abortion in Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Peru, revealing the Latin American countries they had decided to concentrate their efforts on.

The World Health Organization has also gotten into the act, issuing a booklet in December 2007 sponsored by Rockefeller Foundation and IPAS called “Frequently Asked Questions about Medical Abortions.”  This validates the use of misoprostol to perform abortions.

October 2007 saw several conferences in London, the headquarters of IPPF, devoted to promoting misoprostol abortion under the guise of “safe abortion.”  There was the “Women Deliver: A Global Conference” from October 18-20, http://www.womendeliver.org , followed almost immediately by the “Global Safe Abortion Conference 2007” on October 23-4, www.globalsafeabortion.org .  The titles left no doubt that this was a global initiative to promote misoprostol abortion.

After a number of clinical trials of misoprostol in the past few years, IPPF and its partners are moving quickly to implement a so-called “counseling” system in which women with “unwanted pregnancies” are told about misoprostol and its use.  Such programs were begun in 2007 in one major hospital in the countries of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina.  Last year, Cuba, announced that it was implementing such “counseling services” in all of its public hospitals.  Such is the efficiency of dictatorship.

The difficulty we have had in fighting this global promotion of misoprostol abortions is twofold.  First, the drug does have a legitimate medical use in treating ulcers and post-partum hemorrhage.  Second, most developing countries do not regulate drugs, so that misoprostol can be obtained without a prescription from any drugstore that can be convinced to carry it.  One of the goals of IPPF and its partners is to ensure that pharmacies throughout the world do in fact stock misoprostol in the doses required to effect a chemical abortion.  That’s why in Peru, for example, they recently launched the Prostokos brand of misoprostol, which is available in various doses including that which causes an abortion.

The abortion hot-lines are another matter entirely.  Advocating an abortion is a crime.  PRI is working with local pro-life groups in a number of countries to alert the public and the authorities to this criminal offense, and also to undertake legal action against their sponsors.

We are going to put these abortion hot-lines in the deep freeze.

Both UNICEF and OPS, it turned out, sang from the same hymnal. Both proposed a “strategic alliance” with the Catholic Church. Both spoke of “re-launching” of a “promising” joint partnership between their Church and their organizations. This “tripod” of “strategic partners”–UNICEF, OPS, and the Catholic Church–could do much good, they averred.

Few of those present in the audience objected. Some of those attending, I knew, were aware of the involvement of these organizations in abortion and birth control around the world, but most were ignorant. How could the priests and religious in attendance, who live and work with poor children in their communities, be expected to know about the great difficulties that would arise if they agreed to work with these organizations? How could they be aware of the dangers of taking money from organizations that would then expect them to compromise on key moral issues?

The UNICEF and OPS representatives, for their part, were careful not to tip their hands. There were a couple of offhanded references to “reproductive health” in their proposed “partnerships” with the Church, but nothing that would arouse suspicion in the uninitiated Church leaders present. The speakers carefully avoided subjects like abortion, the morning-after pill, and feminist ideologies where the policies of their organizations run counter to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

In order to help the Latin American Bishops Conferences make an informed decision on the proposed “strategic alliance”, I decided to interview both speakers: Dr. Oscar Suriel, the International Consultant on Family Health and Community of OPS, and Dr. Manuel Manrique Castro, who introduced himself as an officer of long experience with UNICEF. Both agreed to be interviewed on camera. I summarize the sometimes startling results below:

Interview with Dr. Oscar Suriel, representative of OPS/WHO:

When I asked Dr. Suriel about OPS/WHO ‘s blatant promotion of abortion, he at first flatly denied that his organization was involved in these activities.

Unfortunately for him, I had OPS documents proving otherwise. According to OPS, it had been one of the players to pressure the Nicaraguan government to reinstate so-called “therapeutic abortion.”

At this point, he changed his story. “OPS supports therapeutic abortion,” he claimed, “but not abortion ‘per se’.”

This is a distinction without a difference, I told him. It is by now widely known, and not just inside the Church, that “therapeutic abortion” is a contradiction in terms. It is nothing more than a semantic dodge used to slip abortion past existing laws proscribing it.

I also pointed out that his answer was disingenuous. “OPS supported Mexico City’s abortion law, which legalizes the practice for pregnancies up to 12 weeks gestation.”

I then asked if OPS/WHO would be willing to relinquish its promotion of abortion in order to partner with the Church.

Suriel indicated that it would not revise or revoke any of its anti-life activities or positions. Instead, he told me that I was the one with a problem. “If you actually had to walk the road,” he said, “you would perceive these matters differently.” In the end, he said, “What matters is to save lives.”

I repeated my question: Would OPS/WHO be willing to abandon its abortion agenda in order to facilitate an alliance with the Catholic Church?

“You’re talking to me about dissent,” he responded, “and I am talking about consensus. On no issues do we disagree with the Catholic Church.”

Since we obviously disagree with OPS on a whole host of issues, beginning with abortion, it is obvious that it was Suriel who was retreating to a position of knee-jerk denial.

Interview with Dr. Manuel Manrique, Representative of UNICEF:

In the interview with Dr. Manrique, I asked him what he thought about the Holy See’s inquiry into UNICEF for its involvement with the abortion and reproductive health.

Manrique tried to downplay the issue, saying that “These were small contingencies that are of little importance” and that they were “not deep issues.”

I disagreed, noting that UNICEF’s official web site contains an order form for suction abortion machines.

Manrique’s response was to say that he didn’t believe it. He explained that he had heard about UNICEF be involvement in the purchase of abortion machines, but had dismissed it as an unsubstantiated rumor.

If you want access to this information, just click on the link and see the section marked “HOSPITAL EQUIPMENT”.

• 0760640 Pump, Suction, foot-operated / EA 3750 Oct-07 units
• 0760605 Pump, Suction, portable, 220V, w / access 2100 Oct-07 units

That is, UNICEF made an estimate of purchase, in October 2007, of 5850 units of both pumps and pedal powered machines! It is worth noting the estimates for the next 24 months as well.

When I brought up UNICEF’s support of “therapeutic abortion” in Nicaragua and Mexico, Manrique told me that while individuals associated with UNICEF supported this move, UNICEF as an organization had not. This is not a credible defense, since the signature of the UNICEF representative, as well as the organization’s logo, is available on public documents concerning the matter.

Even more incredible was his distortion of the Church’s teaching on condoms. UNICEF ceaselessly promotes condoms among teens, supposedly for AIDS prevention. Manrique claimed that the Catholic Church was not officially opposed to the use of condoms, and gave examples of bishops who support their use in such cases. He referred specifically to the Secretary of the Episcopal Conference of Colombia and to a number of Brazilian Bishops.

I asked whether Pope Benedict XVI, who has unswervingly stated the Church’s official opposition to condoms, was not the official voice of the Church.

“That’s what you say,” Manrique responded.

Threats?

No sooner had the cameras stopped rolling than both Manique and Suriel began harshly criticizing me, and demanding that I not publish these interviews.

This only strengthened my resolve to publish the damaging information that I had discovered on their official websites, as well as their denials and equivocations about the hard facts of their organizations’ support of abortion and other evils.

“Don’t you know how much money would be lost if this collaboration is not carried out?” Suriel demanded. For him, it all came down to the power of money.

Neither really understood the nature of the Church’s work, I believe. They believe that they are simply recruiting social workers–who work cheaply or simply for free–into the service of a secular health organization. As far as the Church’s position on abortion is concerned, they apparently believe that if they co-opt enough of the Church’s workers, priests, and bishops, that they can use it as an instrument for their own ends.

It is clear that UNICEF and OPS know exactly what they are doing: trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the naïve. Let us not be deceived.