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Monday October 18, 2010


Planned Parenthood Admits Defeat: No Abortion as a Human Right in UN Summit Document

By Hilary White

ROME, October 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pro-life and pro-family advocates have scored two major political victories in the same month in two different international organizations. Following the defeat of the McCafferty Report – which attempted to abolish the rights of European doctors to refuse to commit abortions – at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, pro-life advocates are now declaring a victory over the International Planned Parenthood Federation at the UN.

Carmen Barroso, regional director of International Planned Parenthood Federation for the Western Hemisphere Region, recently complained to pro-abortion lobbyists that a UN Summit Outcome Document “neglects any reference to safe abortion, comprehensive sexuality education … indicating that there is still much work to be done.”

The Outcome Document was officially adopted by the General Assembly on the 22nd of September.

Pro-abortion NGOs had been pushing during the September Summit for the adoption of a report that was described by pro-life advocates as an “extreme” and “ideologically driven” effort to establish abortion as a “universal human right” for the purposes of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The report by Navanethem Pillay, the UN’s High Commissioner on Human Rights, and endorsed by the Secretary General, proposed that the MDGs should include abortion as a human right under MDG number five, which calls on governments to “improve maternal health.” The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, (SPUC) issued a worldwide alert in June urging pro-life people around the world to contact their relevant government officials to stop the adoption of the report at the UN’s Summit in September.

Pat Buckley, SPUC’s chief lobbyist at the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) in Geneva, said at that time that the report’s promoters were “blatantly ignoring any evidence which disputes its conclusions and deliberately avoiding debate.” SPUC described the progress of the report through the debate process as “carefully stage-managed” in which the Holy See and SPUC, the only pro-life NGO present at the June Session, “were excluded from making an intervention,” despite a call from the High Commissioner for submissions from interested parties.

In its presentation prepared for the Geneva meeting, SPUC denounced the report as promoting an agenda “advocated by groups with a history of the racist and eugenic ideology, which is inconsistent with genuine human rights.” While promoting the liberalization of abortion laws, the report “largely ignored” means of improving maternal mortality rates such as improving access to antibiotics, drugs to prevent hemorrhage, blood transfusions, clean facilities and properly trained health professionals.

SPUC challenged the assertion by the abortion lobby that liberalization of abortion law improves maternal survival rates. They cited the experience of Poland, where legal restrictions were placed on abortion in 1993 and maternal mortality has dropped by 82 per cent in the last 20 years.

See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:

Breakthrough: Pro-life Lobby Soundly Defeats EU Attack on Conscience in Dramatic Reversal

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/oct/10100709.html

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