Like most Canadians, REAL Women is heartily sick of being told that any program to reduce maternal mortality must include abortion.
The Liberal Opposition party, feminists, and most of the media have been relentless in demanding this. However, they are wrong!
The demand that abortion be included in programs to reduce maternal mortality stems from the UN, which has stated repeatedly that there has been no reduction in maternal mortality in the past 20 years, and that these statistics can only be changed if women are provided with safe, legal abortions. This is not true.
A comprehensive study of maternal mortality was carried out at the University of Washington from 1980 – 2008, and its results were published in April 2010 in the prestigious British Medical Journal, Lancet. This study determined that the UN figures on maternal mortality by the UN are wrong and that maternal mortality has decreased by 35% in 20 years. This revelation sent the UN into disarray, as the new study did not even mention abortion. Instead, it stated that the remarkable decrease in maternal mortality was due to:
lower pregnancy rates in some countries;
higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care;
more education for women; and
the increasing availability of a “skilled attendant”, people with some medical training to help women give birth.
This study appears to be confirmed by the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada (SOGC), which stated, in a press release dated June 2, 2010, that 80% of maternal deaths in low resource countries take place during delivery, caused by post-partum hemorrhage, eclampsia, dystocia (prolonged childbirth) and sepsis (infection). The press release stated:
… complications during labour and birth are the main reason mothers are dying, it seems clear that this should be the primary focus of any Maternal and Child Health Initiative.
The press release went on to say:
Low-resource countries also suffer from a severe shortage of trained health professionals who are able to address pregnancy complications and to appropriately use available resources to save a mother and her baby. More health-care professionals and community workers must be trained and be provided with the tools they need to address the main causes of maternal mortality.
Dr. Dorothy Shaw, past president of SOGC was quoted in the press release as stating:
To ensure the health of a child, you must save the mother. To save the mother, you must have skilled attendants able to provide emergency obstetric care during childbirth.
Dr. Richard Horton, editor of Lancet, disclosed in his editorial in April 2010, that he had been requested to “delay” or “hold” publication in order to avoid “potential political damage” to maternal advocacy campaigns by the UN. This attempt to silence the true facts on this issue also occurred at a meeting on maternal and child health research, hosted by the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics in June 2010. At that meeting, UN staff and abortion advocates told scientists that they should “harmonize” their findings with the UN so as to have a consensus on the numbers. Dr. Horton, however, stated that “consensus” or “harmonizing” was not acceptable. Rather, there should be a scientific summary of the totality of available evidence referenced. Further, he stated:
Unless we subject numbers to that peer-review process, I think we are accepting second-class data, and that applies wherever the numbers come from.
This was a major embarrassment and set back for UN officials. The incorrect figures repeatedly provided by the UN on maternal mortality also created problems for over 3000 delegates at an expensive conference on maternal health, called “Women Deliver”, held in Washington in early June 2010. This conference drew international UN staff and political leaders for a three-day marathon on topics, which included a reduction of maternal mortality, the promotion of contraception, and the dismantling of pro-life laws around the world.
The conference, however, was forced to down play its pro-abortion slant because it could no longer give credible claim that abortion would reduce maternal mortality. Instead, the conference proposed that a new strategy be applied on the choice of abortion: it was to pretend that abortion was actually “value-neutral”, and that it was by ending “unsafe” abortions, by means of changing the social and political climate in favour of abortion that maternal health would be improved. This “harm reduction” strategy, was copied directly from the drug strategy used by those wishing to liberalize drug laws. These advocates claim that providing drug injections sites, free needle exchanges, free drugs, etc. will “reduce the harm” caused by drug addiction. That is, the women’s conference on abortion argued that to effect legal change on abortion and reduce resistance to it, it should be stated that no one should be judgmental about the “behaviour” of having an abortion. So, the strategy is to promote only the reduction of harm to such women by ensuring that abortions are “safely” carried out. In short, harm reduction is only a façade to accomplish the goal of pro-abortion changes in the law.
UN Refuses to Accept the Truth
The black eye the UN received on its figures on maternal health, unfortunately, hasn’t led to its acceptance of the facts. Instead, in the middle of June the following occurred:
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon released the UN’s plan on maternal health, which included access to safe abortion services.
The executive director of the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which controls billions in development aid from hundreds of countries, including a $130 million-a-year donation from Canada, made a pilgrimage to Ottawa at the same time as the UN Report was released, to pressure Prime Minister Harper to include safe abortions in maternal and child health.
Significantly, former NDP MP Svend Robinson, a self-acknowledged homosexual, is employed by the Global Fund in Geneva. His job is to coordinate the fund’s outreach to Parliamentarians worldwide.
The UN Council on Human Rights in Geneva stage-managed a debate in June 2010 on maternal health, by limiting the time available for debate, preventing both the Holy See and the pro-life UK organization, Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), from speaking on the issue. Two pro abortion NGO’s, Amnesty International, and the New York based Centre for Reproductive Rights, the latter representing a large group of pro-abortion organizations, including International Planned Parenthood (IPPF), were permitted to speak. The High Commissioner’s report supported the proposition of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on maternal health care: that abortion is a proposed solution to the improvement of maternal health.
These events form a part of the UN political maneuvers to declare abortion a human right, something that has eluded the pro-abortion lobby at the UN for 16 years.
Fortunately, however, the UN’s last-ditch attempt to influence Mr. Harper failed.
The UN continues to be ruthless, left wing and anti-life. Yet, Canada continues to support it.
Listed below are examples of just a few of the grants Canada gives to UN agencies through CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency which distributes 80% of Canada’s foreign aid).
1. UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
2007 - $250,000 for integrating gender and human rights in Nigeria and a further $2,500,000 for institutional support;
2008 - $475,000 for gender mainstreaming in Pakistan;
2009 - $2,200,000 for “Women as Decision Makers”;
2010 - $2,950,000 to establish the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN) Commission on Women and Children;
2010 - $2,500,000 for institutional support;
2010 - $1,000,000 for the Legal Empowerment of Women in the Context of HIV/AIDS.
2. The UN Development Program (UNDP)
2007 - $1,200,000 for the empowerment of Palestinian women; and
2009 - $150,000,000 for institutional support.
3. UN Population Fund (UNFPA)
2007 - $113,000,000 for institutional support
2008 - $18,984,000 to improve “Reproductive Health” (which includes abortion);
2009 - $17,350,000 for Institutional Support.
In the year 2008-2009, Canada contributed $499.4 million to the UN through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This sum does not include the Canadian contribution to the Global Peace initiative, which promotes gender rights ($16 million), nor does it include the Canadian contribution to the UN Peacekeeping Operation ($203.3 million), or the $16.3 million contribution to the UN office on drugs.
Our money can be put to better use.
|
