Planned Parenthood and the UNFPA: two peas in a pod

November 30, 2012 (STOPP) - Reading a recent blurb in the Minnesota Planned Parenthood Advocate, one can see clearly that Planned Parenthood is writing the core of the playbook for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). “For the first time, the U.N. Population Fund’s annual report, released November 14, explicitly declares family planning, including access to contraception, a universal human right,” Planned Parenthood reports.

The abortion giant then quotes the UNFPA mission that eerily mirrors Planned Parenthood’s “every child a wanted child” mission: “In keeping with the UNFPA’s mission to create ‘a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled,’ this report examines both the financial and social repercussions of decreased access to contraception.”

The UNFPA 2011 annual report, released this month, opens with fear-mongering tactics, sounding a false alarm that our world population of seven billion puts us in a perilous position.

“Seven billion people are looking to the United Nations for solutions that address fundamental issues of security, equity, and sustainable development,” the report says. “We must respond with compassion, courage and conviction. We must connect the dots between global health, food security, women’s empowerment and the rights of young people.” Indeed, what is more courageous, in Planned Parenthood’s view, than enshrining abortion and contraception as basic human rights, in the name of women’s empowerment and the rights of young people?

After citing the fact that some countries like those in Europe and Japan are experiencing a population dearth that threatens their economy, the report goes on to offer a non-solution: “First, we need to educate and empower girls and women to participate fully in society and ensure they have the power to make informed reproductive decisions. . . . In addition, we need to bridge the gap in access to family planning, to make sure that the 215 million women in developing countries who want to use contraceptives have access to them.”

Looking for things to be happy about, the report celebrates the fact that the worldwide fertility rate has dropped since the 1960s by more than one-half—from about 5.0 to 2.5. It goes on to explain that the world’s population will continue to grow because of areas that still have high fertility rates. It then names those areas which are the very regions that International Planned Parenthood Federation and UNFPA have targeted for population reduction: Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Latin America.

The report emphasizes the urgency of reaching the goals of the Programme of Action of the United Nations’ 1994 International Conference on Population and Development, upon which UNFPA’s mandate is based, expressing grave concern that “many of those goals have not yet been achieved, even though the target for completion is only about two years away.”

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To facilitate accomplishing its goals, UNFPA says it has narrowed its vision and reduced its number of goals, and has created two “clusters” that will focus on (1) adolescents and youth and (2) women’s reproductive health.

The report also boasts that UNFPA made substantial progress in “developing a new communications strategy to reinforce organizational and programmatic changes and position UNFPA as a thought leader [emphasis added] and catalyst for action in core areas in line with the revised Strategic Plan and the new Business Plan.”

A graphic on page five of the annual report shows that UNFPA’s goal begins with a focus on achieving universal access to sexual and reproductive health and promoting reproductive rights, improving the lives of women and young people, including adolescents, and enabling, by human rights, population dynamics and gender equality.

After devoting several pages to its apparently laudable efforts to reduce maternal and infant mortality rates by increasing the number of midwives and doctors, the report launches into an obsession with increasing the availability of “family planning.” This section opens with the story of a young family planning worker who walks from hamlet to hamlet in Ethiopia, supposedly bringing “family planning to women so eager for her help that they waylay her on her rounds, pleading discreetly for contraceptives.” More than 37,000 such “family planning” workers have been positioned around Ethiopia in recent years, it says, lunging the contraceptive prevalence rate from eight percent in 2000 to 29 percent today. The program is touted by UNFPA as a model for other developing nations.

It then quotes a joint report by UNFPA and the radical Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR) entitled “The Right to Contraceptive Information and Services for Women and Adolescents.” As its mission, the CRR says it “uses the law to advance reproductive freedom as a fundamental human right that all governments are legally obligated to protect, respect, and fulfill.”

The UNFPA/CRR joint report claims that “the unmet need for safe and effective contraceptive services throughout the world is staggering.” It cites—in the tradition of Planned Parenthood—wild claims that are unverifiable, based purely on speculation: “Addressing the unmet need for contraceptive information and services ‘would result in roughly 22 million fewer unplanned births, 25 million fewer induced abortions, and 150,000 fewer maternal deaths each year.’”

While $3.1 billion is currently being invested in “family planning,” the UNFPA annual report claims an additional $3.6 billion is needed. It then claims that it is the responsibility of governments to protect “their citizens’ reproductive health and rights,” and that “donor governments also have a responsibility to uphold these rights.”

Then more wild claims from the UNFPA executive director ensue: “The latest data available in 2011 showed that this investment would actually lower the cost of maternal and newborn health services by $5.1 billion, resulting in a net total savings of $1.5 billion.” So much for the previous section on improving maternal and newborn health. Eliminating maternal and newborn health services via contraception and abortion is much more cost effective in the imaginary world of UNFPA and Planned Parenthood than helping families bring children into the world who will support them in their old age.

UNFPA is mimicking Planned Parenthood’s youth peer educator programs in such places as Gori, Georgia, as well, where it is targeting college students who are away from home for the first time.

The UNFPA annual report pushes for Planned Parenthood-style “comprehensive sex education” in targeted countries and falsely claims, “There is sufficient evidence that comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education is essential for the health of young people and does not lead to negative impacts, such as earlier sexual debut or increased sexual activity in young people.” None of that so-called evidence is actually cited.

“In 2011, national partners in 70 countries received support from UNFPA in designing, implementing and evaluating comprehensive, culturally sensitive and age-appropriate sexuality education programmes,” the report says.

Underscoring the agency’s targeting of sub-Saharan Africa for depopulation, the report shows that two-fifths of UNFPA’s expenditures from regular resources in 2011 supported programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

A whopping 44 percent of regular resources were directed toward “initiatives that improve, strengthen, or increase access to reproductive health.”

Planned Parenthood’s morbid influence is permeating the globe, as it uses its alliances with UNFPA and other global agencies to push its deadly agenda on governments and populations in every nook and cranny of planet Earth.

As we begin to grasp the extent of Planned Parenthood’s sphere of influence, we call on almighty God to raise up saints who will bring the abortion giant and its allies down. Opposition must begin at the local grassroots level. Visit our STOPP website today to learn more about Planned Parenthood and what can be done to stop it.

Reprinted with permission from STOPP.org