Friday July 2, 1999
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Forcing Abortion On the World #1 Issue At UN
Report On The UN’s Special Session Of Cairo+5
NEW YORK, July 2 (LSN) – United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan addressed the opening session of the 21st special session of the UN’s General Assembly on Wednesday. The special Cairo+5 session was designed to review the success (or failure) in countries’ attempts to implement the population control agenda of the 1994 Cairo conference on population.
Setting the tone for the conference, Annan attempted to create an artificial sense of agreement over an issue which has bogged down so many subsequent UN conferences including the prepatory conferences for Cairo+5. “All States now understand that, if they are to provide adequately for the future health and education of their citizens, they need to incorporate population policies into their development strategy,” alleged the UN leader.
Apparently wanting to give the impression that he has his hand on the pulse of the world, he said, “since Cairo, the world does understand it – and understand, too, that we have to stabilize the population of this planet…. There is a limit to the pressures our global environment can stand. One form of pressure is the sheer size of the world’s population.”
Human rights is the solution to this problem, he continued, adding that “we now realize that sexual and reproductive health is an essential part of those rights.”
For Annan’s full address see:
https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990630.SGSM7056.htm…
During the opening session of the conference, the alleged acquiescence to the UN’s ideal of universal reproductive rights was exposed as the fraud it is. On one side, abortion proponents were talking about the inexcusable act of denying abortion, on the other, developing nations were demanding autonomy, especially over decisions around the legality of abortion.
Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development for the United Kingdom told the General Assembly that “it is hard to forgive those who deny women access to contraception and drive them into the arms of illegal abortionists and then claim to dislike abortion. The fact is that women regularly risk their lives for want of a safe abortion,” she said.
The radical pro-abort added that “there can be no talk about safe motherhood and commitments made at Cairo if there is a failure to recognize that abortion is a reality in the lives of tens of million of women.” Continuing to advance her extremist view that abortion is an absolute right that should trump all religious and cultural concerns, she added: “Those who want to deny women’s rights cannot hide behind culture, religion or tradition. None of the values of the great world religions or proper interpretation of any tradition calls for the oppression of women. The right to health is a fundamental human right. Reproductive health is an essential element of health.”
Countering the pro-abortion offensive Galuak Deing Garang, Chairman of the National Population Council of Sudan, argued that “a comprehensive and holistic solution to population problems is one deeply rooted in faith and a commitment to basic human values enshrined in all religions and traditions.”
“At the forefront of these values is the central role of the family as the basic unit and the foundation of society,” he continued. “Equally important,” he said, “planned parenting and population control must not be viewed as a universal social charter seeking to impose the issues of puberty, abortion and sex education on individuals and societies with their own distinctive religions, social values and traditions.”
Garang challenged the attempts by the UN and Western nations to coerce the developing world into compliance on population control. “The credibility of the whole process will be jeopardized if any group of countries [seek to] impose a certain course of action on other groups or obstruct other groups from following a chosen course of action that is compatible with generally agreed international principles and norms.”
Defining his country’s position on the issue, Garang said, “it is not for governments, non-governmental organizations and civil society to formulate a particular form of social conduct for the young generation, but for parents, notably mothers and grandmothers, who are society’s primary socializing agents.”
For a UN report on these proceedings see:
https://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990630.GA9573.html
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