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European Nations Demand World Bank Continue Forcing Abortion on Developing Nations

Stephen Mosher asserts that forcing population control on poor nations via financial pressure is "economic assassination"

By John-Henry Westen
WASHINGTON, April 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For decades the World Bank has been pressuring developing nations into implementing population control in order to qualify for receipt of loans. That program accelerated during the Clinton era in the 1990s as the Bank, which is controlled by the United States, more openly insisted countries wishing to receive funding permit abortion, and institute 'family planning' programs.

The current Administration has attempted to alter this abortion-pushing stance with the guidance of Juan Jose Daboub, a former El Salvador finance minister, who was last year appointed as a managing director of the bank under President Paul Wolfowitz.  The new health strategy sought to relax requirements that recipient countries implement population control 'family planning' policies as a condition of receiving loans.

However the World Bank Board of Directors deferred a decision on accepting the new health strategy on Tuesday after receiving complaints from European World Bank Directors.  In an April 19 letter, a copy of which was obtained by LifeSiteNews.com, Bank Directors from Belgium, Switzerland, France, Germany and Norway demanded that the bank continue its coercive population control policy.

Reuters and AFP are quoting sources from the Tuesday meeting who say that talks broke down as the US tried to insert language in the health policy update which would distance it from forcing abortion on recipient countries.  The language would have asked countries to provide "age appropriate access to sexual and reproductive healthcare" rather than the currently worded "reproductive health services" which include abortion.

LifeSiteNews.com spoke with Population Control expert Stephen Mosher, the founder and director of the Population Research Institute about the developments.  Mosher who was the first to expose to the West the barbarity of China's one-child policy, said, "as former finance minister in El Salvador, Mr. Daboub, has personally experienced the pressure to legalize abortion by the World Bank and other international institutions."

Mosher explained that the World Bank is controlled by the US since the US is by far the largest contributor to the Bank.  "If we are about promoting democracy how can we allow the World Bank to run roughshod over the democratic values of small nations like Nicaragua and El Salvador?," asked Mosher.

Mosher noted that the mass media campaigns attempting to influence Nicaragua's Supreme Court judges to rule that the new law giving full legal protection to unborn children is unconstitutional were financed in part by the Inter-American Development Bank, a division of the World Bank.

Mosher wondered whether the pro-abortion pressure would result in Mr. Daboub's ouster from the World Bank. But, "the U.S. will decide", rather than Europe, he concluded.

Rather than accepting the pro-abortion rhetoric that population control is key to development, Mosher asserts that forcing population control via financial pressure is "economic assassination."

"Taking poor countries and deliberately eliminating their primary resource - young people," he said, "is criminal".  He explained that developing nations with higher infant mortality rates require higher birth rates to sustain their populations.  Without social security systems in place elderly parents rely on children to sustain them in old age.  For all their talk of women's rights, he said, the population controllers are doing women in developing nations no favours by forcing depopulation.

** See a copy of the letter from the European Bank Directors urging the World Bank to continue its coercive population control policy: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007_docs/worldbankmemo.pdf

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