NEW YORK (C-fam.org/CWNews.com) – The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) repeatedly insists it does not support or promote abortion, but critics point to the very close relationship between UNFPA and pro-abortion groups as proof that UNFPA does support and promote abortion.
The UN agency's assertion is a key part of their case to receive funding from the US and other governments. UNFPA's relationship to the International Women's Health Coalition (IWHC) gives credence to the claims of UNFPA critics.
IWHC, described by UNFPA as one of its “major civil society partners,” has advanced a plan to legalize abortion worldwide through the radical reinterpretation of UN human rights documents. In a report entitled “Expanding Access to Safe Abortion: Strategies for Action,” IWHC admits that no UN documents “explicitly assert a woman's right to abortion, nor do they legally require safe abortion services.” But, according to IWHC, “Despite these qualifications … the conference documents and human rights instruments– if broadly interpreted and skillfully argued– can be very useful tools in efforts to expand access to safe abortion.”
For example, IWHC says the right to life, the first right enumerated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, can be interpreted to include a right to legal abortion, since illegal abortion poses a threat to women's lives. Also, “the right to security of person can be interpreted to mean that women must not be coerced … to carry a pregnancy to term.”
The IWHC report provides instructions on how to skirt restrictive national abortion laws and suggests as a basis the fact that abortion is “legal virtually everywhere” for at least some reasons, like rape and incest. IWHC urges the expansion of these legal reasons even if legislators did not intend the expansion. For instance, “providers can adopt a broader definition of what constitutes a threat to a woman's life by considering the risk of death if she seeks a clandestine procedure or tries to abort herself. They could also consider marital rape as justifiable grounds for terminating pregnancies under the rape clause.”
IWHC advocates for “menstrual regulation,” what it describes as the evacuation of the uterus through the use of a manual vacuum aspirator. Menstrual regulation is one of the “loopholes under which safe abortion can be provided even in settings where laws are restrictive.” It is a loophole because some nations do not seem to know that menstrual regulation is a form of abortion.
On its web site IWHC describes its close association with UNFPA. IWHC says, “UN agencies, notably the United Nations Population Fund … have come to rely on us to provide gender-sensitive technical and policy assistance.” IWHC also participates in UNFPA's “adolescent sexuality education.”
The Bush Administration is currently deciding whether to continue funding UNFPA.
(This article courtesy of Catholic World News. To subscribe or for further information, contact subs@cwnews.com or visit www.cwnews.com.)
