January 23, 2012 (HLIWorldWatch.org) - Many people in the West have an image of Africans as either starving, huddled masses, or as perpetually warring tribesmen. To be sure, we have had many problems with war and oppressive dictators who create subhuman conditions for those they are supposed to serve. But in fact, Africa is a continent where love, life, marriage and family are totally interwoven – so much so that one cannot stand without the others. If you trample on one of these, you harm all others.
African fathers and mothers love life, love their children and stand strongly for the family. For us, life is sacred and the family is the only institution where life is passed on from generation to generation. Every child is precious, and having children - that is, having a strong generation following our own - is how we care for our elders during moments of sickness or when one member of the family becomes handicapped. Children are the pride of the society, for it is through children that society is sustained.
So imagine our dismay when we read that International Planned Parenthood (IPPF) has a “strategic plan” for Africa that seeks to intrude and destroy these fundamental and basic African tenets of life. Apparently these people we have never met are planning an 82 percent increase in “safe abortion” services, of which they seem to think we are in dire need.
Since IPPF came to Africa some 50 years ago, abortion has been their number one agenda. They initially came with concerns of “helping” us with our population “problems” – problems that we did not know that we had since most African nations are less densely populated than the countries of those who were telling us there were too many of us. This was before they changed their description of their “population control services” to “reproductive health services.”
Frankly, sometimes I wonder where those who used to clamour about American imperialism are now that this imperialism has been repackaged in language of “empowerment” and “health.” Thanks to the strong pro-life roots of most African cultures, it has taken IPPF many years to infiltrate the African mind with its abortion ideology. But sadly, they are finally seeing some success, and apparently, as with the release of this strategic plan, they no longer see the need to hide their true intentions. What is also very sad is that Western political pressure, including economic assistance tied to population control conditions, and capitalizing on the greed of some African government leaders, is helping the abortion agenda to finally gain traction in some regions.
Already several African governments have legalized abortion-on-demand, and others are in the last stages of doing so. In my home country of Tanzania, the IPPF affiliate group, The Family Planning Association of Tanzania, has been fighting tooth and nail since 1969 to have completely unrestricted abortion legalized in Tanzania. But due to the efforts of the Catholic Church, the Muslim community and pro-life organizations, the fight to keep unrestricted abortions out of the country has so far been successful. Our friends in neighbouring countries have not been so lucky.
We must not stand idly by watching well-funded Western efforts to legalize abortion take place in Africa where the citizens are pro-life and pro-family. We must resist false claims that abortion can be made “safe.” No matter the conditions of the facility, abortion always kills a child and harms women, and the same people who now do illegal abortions around Africa are the ones who will do it legally. This has always been the case.
Abortion is neither part of our African culture, nor a priority need of the African people; and to be honest, it is deeply insulting when Westerners try to tell us and the world what we need.
In the English-speaking region of Africa where I coordinate pro-life activities, we are attempting to dismantle the infrastructure being built by organizations like IPPF and the United Nations Population Fund. We are educating our brothers and sisters through collaborative information sharing and regional conferences about the fact that IPPF is not concerned with our health, but with the fact that we still have children, and that makes them very uncomfortable.
What we need in Africa is better education for our children based on sound intellectual and moral values; good roads to transport our agricultural products; reliable electrical power to accelerate development; clean water; and above all, Africans need respect from people in the West, not condescension and demands that we stop having more children. We do not want our continent to be a dumping ground for contraceptives and condoms; we do not need to be sterilized; we do not need abortion.
IPPF’s plans are deplorable, and I pray that Western governments will stop funding their efforts to eliminate more and more of the African people.
Emil Hagamu is Human Life International’s regional coordinator for English-Speaking Africa, and he writes from Tanzania. This article reprinted with permission from HLIWorldWatch.org