It’s a familiar ritual. The media response to the latest UN population projections splits between casual interest and panic with a heaping side dish of policy recommendations. To the alarmists, the prospect that population growth may stabilize after the year 2100 instead of before represents a call to action. At a press conference, UN official […]
The Guttmacher Institute recently announced a study saying that as of 2012, 40% of pregnancies worldwide are unintended, and that this is not much different from 2008. Predictably, they also say that these “findings highlight [the] need for increased investment in contraceptive services.” Let’s break this down point by point: 1) What is “unintended,” exactly? The paper helpfully provides […]
The international abortion lobby has experienced twenty years of stalled progress at the UN, but an article by one of its leaders reveals their ongoing efforts to promote their agenda in the upcoming plan for global development. Françoise Girard, president of the International Women’s Health Coalition, describes efforts to advance the concept of “sexual and […]
“We do not mostly provide preventative medical care [or] cure diseases or prevent them. What we do is social change.” So writes Daniel E. Pellegrom of Pathfinder International in a recent scholarly book marketed to educators, policymakers, and advocates for abortion and other aspects of “reproductive health.” Pathfinder boasts helping the Communist government in Beijing […]
A partnership among abortion backers is showing cracks as feminists in the Global South are pushing back against environmentalists promoting population control measures. During the inaugural meeting of a new U.N. endeavor on the environment, one group took to social media to refute the “dubious linking” between population and climate change, arguing that “population control […]
Ever since reducing maternal mortality was established as one of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), abortion advocacy groups have been working hard to affix their own goals inextricably to the global effort to reduce the incidence of death of mothers in childbirth. As the MDGs near their expiration, some the most outspoken activists in […]
“This is unacceptable,” said Zimbabwe’s delegate. Her voice broke from frustration and regret. A resolution on HIV/AIDS, championed by the poorest African countries most affected by the deadly disease, was changed after negotiations had finished. The Netherlands demanded protections for children be removed, subtly giving a nod to sexualizing children and putting people at greater […]
Global health advocates agree the rate of women dying in childbirth worldwide is unacceptably high. Usually, getting help from experienced advocates with political clout would be a boon to any campaign. But a new study finds family planning and abortion advocates have diverted resources and hindered progress in helping women from dying in childbirth. A […]
Late Friday night, the last day of the final meeting in a series of UN conferences, African officials rejected attempts by UN and sexual rights activists to promote homosexuality and abortion. The UN conference to draft a development agenda for Africa concluded in a fierce clash between regional values and the “progressive” norms pushed by […]
A recent congressional briefing examined the lethal side effects of the long-acting contraceptive injectable Depo Provera and the targeting of Black and Latina women to receive it. Congressman William Lacy Clay and the Congressional Black Caucus held a briefing to examine a comprehensive report released by the Rebecca Project which details severe health problems from […]
A growing sense of urgency surrounds the UN development agenda as major milestones approach and long-term goals are set to expire. Of particular concern to some is the fate of sexual and reproductive health and rights. Indeed many governments are expressing increasing exasperation with abortion advocates. In the closing minutes of a recent conference, delegates […]
An 11-year old rape victim has unexpectedly turned the tables on the international abortion lobby as it seeks to use her plight to overturn Chile’s pro-life laws. The girl, known as Belén, is pregnant after several years of sexual abuse by her mother’s boyfriend who threatened her to keep silent. Unlike other “hard cases” where […]
The World Health Organization ignored it. Medical journals downplayed it. Now researchers admit – backhandedly – a link between abortion and preterm births. Authors of a new study hypothesize that modernizing abortion methods reduces the risk of premature births. Yet most notably, it admits that the link to abortion existed in the first place. Abortion […]
Michelle Riestra also contributed to this article. The UN Security Council rebuffed suggestions that victims of wartime rape have a right to abortion in a landmark resolution on women in peace and security last week. Actress Angelina Jolie urged the United Nations to help victims and punish perpetrators as part of the effort to garner […]
From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.” Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. […]
In November, the United Nations Population Fund released their “State of World Population 2012: By Choice, Not By Chance – Family Planning, Human Rights and Development,” which stated: “Recent statistics show that 867 million women of childbearing age in developing countries have a need for modern contraceptives. Of that total, 645 million have access to […]
While debates over abortion laws and international norms continue, a stealthy campaign is underway to gain universal acceptance for the tools and training to do abortions, whether legal or not. One recent example comes from the Kigoma Region of Tanzania. Pro-abortion feminists boast that they have established a clinic dispensing the abortion-inducing drug misoprostol in […]
As the UN Human Rights Council considers whether to endorse a report praising comprehensive sex education programs, a new review of the disputed curricula finds they can do more harm than good. The report released in December by the increasingly-controversial High Commissioner for Human Rights states that adolescent health depends on “comprehensive sexuality education and […]
Therapy to help people change unwanted same sex attraction should be banned and labeled a human rights violation, according to a panel of advocates at the Church Center, a gathering place of left-wing groups near the UN. Although the event was advertised as “the first ever UN discussion on the legalities, ethics, and science behind […]
The Guttmacher Institute released a brief report titled Unintended Pregnancy and Abortion in Uganda in which they make their case for why increased contraception and access to “safe” abortion will reduce maternal mortality. Briefly, their argument is that unintended pregnancy in Uganda is high, and this is because women don’t have access to contraceptives. Because […]
A just-released global study demonstrates that the diseases causing most of the world’s untimely deaths and illness, especially among children, are not receiving proportionate attention within international policy-making institutions. According to the 2010 Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD 2010) published in The Lancet medical journal in December, over 1.4 million people died from diarrhea […]
Advocates for legal abortion in all circumstances continue to make their case in terms of reducing maternal mortality, despite a growing body of evidence showing that dramatic improvements in maternal health worldwide have been achieved without the liberalization of laws restricting abortion. In the November issue of the UK-based journal Reproductive Health Matters, two reports […]
As the twentieth anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) approaches, abortion activists are marking out their priorities for governments to adopt for the next 20 years. To that end, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), along with various non-governmental organizations hosted, ICPD Global Youth Forum in Bali last week, touted by sponsors […]
The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) drew international headlines this past week for claiming a new human right to contraception. Contraception as a human right is a centerpiece of UNFPA’s annual state of world population report “By Choice, Not By Chance: Family Planning, Human Rights, and Development”. Borrowing from the language of natural law, the executive summary […]
