More pro-abortioin campaigning by the UN

Briefing.

From C-Fam: A new global initiative was launched by various UN
agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in New York last week that
includes a call for legal abortion. Among the sponsors of the initiative called
"Deliver Now for Women and Children" is the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), a UN
agency that persistently denies they support abortion in any way, shape, or
form.

Marketed as a campaign to raise awareness of the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) on maternal and child health, the agenda of "Deliver Now" includes
a call for “safe abortion" which is synonymous with legal abortion. The
campaign is coordinated by The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child
Health, chaired by Kul Gautam, the deputy executive director of UNICEF and
assistant secretary-general of the UN, and whose members include among others:
the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, International Planned Parenthood
Federation, government development agencies from the US, UK, Canada, and
Bangladesh, as well as WHO and UNFPA.

The campaign lists a number of severe maladies that effect maternal health
and concludes “most maternal deaths could be prevented if women had access to
and could use professional care.” "Deliver Now" defines “quality care” as
including “services before and during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum
period, as well as safe abortion.”

The "Deliver Now" website features the stark tagline, “More than 10,000,000
deaths per year. Too many to ignore.” This enormous number is the conflation
of two numbers; the total number of childhood deaths per year from all causes,
said to be 10 million, and the number of deaths women suffer from maternal
causes, a highly suspect number claimed by some UN agencies to total 500,000
per year.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the child mortality
numbers are calculated from official sources including birth and death data
derived from vital registration, census, and/or household surveys. On the other
hand, the maternal mortality statistics are questionable estimations at best.
According to the WHO, the primary source for maternal mortality statistics,
“data on maternal mortality and other causes of death are often unavailable or,
where available, are unreliable due to deficiencies in vital statistics
registration systems.” Dr. Joseph Chamie, the former head of the UN Population
Division, official statisticians of the UN, states the 500,000 number used for
maternal deaths cannot substantiated and he refused to use it.

Pro-family UN watchers are concerned that the disproportionate focus on
unsafe abortion based upon questionable maternal mortality figures detracts
from addressing the major health risks to pregnant women in the developing
world. Experts say these are severe bleeding, eclampsia and obstructed labor.
By UNFPA’s own admission in a 2004 report, the most important means of reducing
maternal mortality is not access to contraceptives and legal abortion but the
presence of skilled birth attendants and access to emergency obstetric care.

Abortion proponents often link unsafe abortion and maternal mortality to
push for legal, so-called “safe” abortion. Critics of this argument are quick
to point out that in Poland, when abortion was severely restricted in 1993, the
country showed a sharp decline in the abortion rate and a decline in maternal
deaths. In Ireland, where abortion remains illegal, the country reports one of
the lowest maternal mortality rates in the world. By contrast, while the United
States has had abortion on demand since 1973, this year the US reported a rise
in maternal deaths.

The next scheduled event in the "Deliver Now" campaign is the Women Deliver
Conference in London from October 18-20 which also focuses heavily on abortion
rights.