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NEW YORK, May 21, 2004 (c-fam.org/LifeSiteNews.com) – The Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) Friday Fax reported today on an international conference held last week in Washington, D.C., where population control advocates met to plan strategy to keep fertility rates tumbling. An official from the World Health Organization (WHO) made an admission that undermines one of the most common arguments for the worldwide legalization of abortion on demand. Dr. Gunta Lazdane, European Regional Advisor to the WHO on Reproductive Health and Research, said that,  “up to 20% of maternal deaths are due to abortion, even in those situations were abortion is legal, there is a question whether ‘safe’ abortion is safe.”  International pro-abortion advocates often claim that only illegal abortions are unsafe. Thus, to address maternal deaths due to unsafe abortions, they argue that nations should recognize a broad right to abortion.

The 1997 WHO document Unsafe Abortion: Global and Regional Estimates of Incidence of Mortality Due to Unsafe Abortion, asserts that laws against abortion result in a massive increase in maternal deaths. Based upon this information, WHO seems to call for the worldwide legalization of abortion, stating that nations should “frame abortion laws and policies on the basis of a commitment to women’s health and well-being rather than on criminal codes and punitive measures.” If Lazdane is correct, however, and legal abortions are also unsafe for women, then these arguments would appear to lose much of their weight.  Lazdane was speaking at the Global Population Forum 2004, organized by the Population Institute and Population 2005, an alliance of reproductive rights groups. The Board of Directors of Population 2005 includes former high-ranking officials of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), and UN Under Secretary General H.E. Anwarul Chowdhury.  Other speakers at the conference included the former head of the Mexican Family Planning Association, Alfonso Lopez Juarez, who called the Catholic Church and the “religious right”“fanatics.” He also said that, “Nothing is sinful about sexuality if you avoid pregnancy and STD’s [sexually transmitted diseases].”  The meeting included some unsavory characters like Werner Fornos who has spoken favorably in the past of testing a drug called quinicrine that burns the fallopian tubes of poor women rendering them sterile.  See also LifeSite’s Special document explaining the surprising history and broad racism and massive influence of the international de-population movement:  Document reveals the why of attacks against life and family over past decades https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/may/040518a.html