| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
__________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
UNITED NATIONS
Population Fund report
Focuses on abortion, birth control
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) released a report on “gender inequality” around the world, causing pro-life groups to ask why an organization concerned with reducing population growth through abortion and contraception was issuing a report on the topic.
“This year, instead of addressing real issues, UNFPA pushes its anti-natal agenda under the guise of ‘gender inequality,’” said Mark DeYoung, director of the World Life League. UNFPA’s annual report, this year titled “Lives Together, Worlds Apart: Men and Women in a Time of Change,” claims that “inequality between women and men limits the potential of individuals, families, communities, and nations.” The group adds that violence and discrimination against women and girls “remain firmly rooted in cultures around the world.”
“The newly-issued report on the state of world population and its comments on the status of women is so biased that it fairly breathes racism and cultural imperialism,” said Father Matthew Habiger, president of Human Life International. “What normal, intelligent, reasonable person, when considering the poverty and injustice that so many women in this world face, would decide that these problems could be solved if women could only get more birth control and abortions?”
While many lauded the goals of reducing violence against women and girls who suffer rape, “honor” killings, female infanticide, and the sex trade, critics said the report focuses primarily on “family planning” and “reproductive health,” euphemisms for contraception and abortion.
“The UN treats abortion access like a magic spell that can be used to cure society’s ills,” said Father Habiger. “In truth, abortion and contraceptive programs have only worsened the condition of women.”
He added, “The women of the world need better economic opportunities, more complete health care, and a culture that respects them. And we give them abortions and condoms. Could there be a worse example of cultural imperialism masquerading as aid?”
“The UNFPA has a dim view of marriage and the family and believes the only way for women to achieve freedom and equality is through the broadest acceptance of reproductive rights including unfettered access to abortion,” according to the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-fam). The group said the ideological nature of UNFPA’s annual report comes through in a constant promotion of “reproductive health and rights,” a euphemism for unfettered access to abortion and contraception.
UNFPA’s report mentions reproductive health, reproductive rights, or abortion 186 times. “Clean water, arguably the single most crucial problem facing women in the developing world, is mentioned only once,” C-fam said. “Safe sanitation, another pressing problem for poor women, is mentioned eleven times. Malaria, perhaps the leading killer of African women, gets only a single mention.”
The group adds that marriage is mentioned only thirty-three times and almost always in a negative light, such as being coerced or promoting violations of women’s rights. Marriage is never mentioned as a way to happiness or fulfillment, which is the experience of most married women. While “family” is mentioned 137 times, this is mostly related only to “family planning.”
C-fam warned that the UNFPA report will be used by other UN bodies to advance their agendas, including UNICEF which will undertake a review of the Convention on the Rights of the Child next year. The UNFPA report makes no mention of abstinence, denigrates parental involvement in sexual decisions, and advocates peer counseling where young people talk to each other about sex.
Ratzinger criticizes New World Order
UN activity against population cited
Writing in the Italian newspaper Avvenire, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger slammed the UN’s proposals for a “New World Order,” targeting for special criticism the UN’s goal of depopulation.
The cardinal, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, noted that the philosophy coming from recent UN conferences and the recent Millennium Summit “proposes strategies to reduce the number of guests at the table of humanity, so that the presumed happiness [we] have attained will not be affected.” He criticized this philosophy for “not being concerned with the care of those who are no longer productive or who can no longer hope for a determined quality of life.”
Cardinal Ratzinger noted that “at the base of this New World Order” is the ideology of “women’s empowerment,” which erroneously sees “the principal obstacles to [a woman’s] fulfillment [as] the family and maternity.” The cardinal advised that “at this stage of the development of the new image of the new world, Christians—and not just they, but in any case they even more than others—have the duty to protest.”
Back to Catholic World Report November 2000 Table of Contents