WHO Annual Report Exposes Extent of Global Abortion Advocacy

By | July 14, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 14 (C-Fam) The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released their annual budget for its program on reproduction and sexual health.  The report and budget contain a detailed accounting of how the WHO spends millions of dollars on a variety of abortion programs around the world.

The Human Reproduction Programme (HRP), started in 1972, is run by the WHO, but is a joint project with other UN agencies, including the UN Development Programme, the UN Population Fund, UNICEF, and the World Bank.

Eleven percent of the program’s $72 million budget for 2022-2023 was allocated to what is euphemistically called “safe abortion”—the same percentage that was described as being directed toward “prevention of unsafe abortion.”

According to the budget report, “[p]reventing unsafe abortion has been a strategic objective of HRP since its inception.”  The HRP’s mandate is based on a 2004 strategy adopted by the World Health Assembly, which in turn is based on the agreed outcome from the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development. At Cairo, UN member states agreed to language about the prevention of unsafe abortion, but they also stipulated that women must be provided with alternatives to abortion, and that abortion should be provided “safely” and within legal limits.

The HRP’s budget does not mention providing alternatives to abortion, and suggests that the only alternative to “unsafe” abortion they acknowledge is “safe” abortion.  More was spent on abortion ($7.6 million) than on family planning ($6 million).  Abortion funding increased by four percent since the previous funding period, while maternal and child health and family planning increased by only two percent and zero percent, respectively.

Last year, the WHO released an updated “safe abortion” guideline calling for the removal of all legal and policy restrictions on abortion, including limits to health care providers’ conscience rights.

Other activities listed in the “abortion” section of the HRP budget include lobbying governments to implement WHO normative guidance, reviewing strategies to reduce abortion stigma, and efforts to scale up the availability and quality of abortion drugs.  One area of research listed is “early menstrual induction,” which WHO describes elsewhere as a “post-fertilization fertility regulation method,” or an early abortion.

HRP also listed the development and implementation of strategies for “policy, advocacy, and communication initiatives related to comprehensive abortion care,” and showed examples of social media graphics proclaiming that “abortion is health care” and that self-induced abortion is “acceptable, cost-effective, and improves autonomy.”

The HRP’s annual report noted the “heightened global interest in the topic of abortion” and responded by using various media channels to “expand the reach of messaging to the general public on abortion as essential health care, especially around the occasion of International Safe Abortion Day.”

The HRP receives nearly all of its funding from voluntary contributions, including by national governments, including the United States, through its Agency for International Development (USAID).

According to U.S. law, funding for family planning and reproductive health must not be used for lobbying for or against abortion.  During the previous Trump administration, this law—the Siljander Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act—was used to withdraw funding from specific entities within the Organization of American States (OAS) that were deemed to have engaged in abortion lobbying in countries where they operate.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released their annual budget for its program on reproduction and sexual health.

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