Corporate Investments May Be New Conduit for Abortion in Developing World

By Austin Ruse

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM)  Transnational corporations have long been seen by the left as exploiters of the poor in the developing world. Increasingly, though, with the rise of globalization, the left is coming to see big business as a very powerful engine for liberal social change. And not just in the industrialized world, but where ever corporate money goes, especially in poor countries.

     In a relatively new development, the Washington DC-based Institute for International Finance reports that private investment in the developing world has come to dwarf loans and credits once given by governments or multilateral lending institutions like the World Bank. As reported in the International Herald Tribune, "as recently as 1990, governments provided half the loans and credits to 29 major developing countries." By 1999, however, private money totaled $139 billion compared with only $22 billion from governments.

     These new development raise the specter of radical NGOs pressuring already liberal corporate chiefs into attaching "reproductive rights" to corporate investment. Conservatives are further concerned that corporate strings may be harder to break than governmental ones.

     Although some corporate social policy efforts are met with broad approval, like trying to curtail child labor, others are more controversial. Conservatives note that corporations give millions of dollars to organizations that promote abortion rights. Some corporations even spend their money in ways that run counter to shareholder interests. Manufacturers that rely upon an increasing population of children, for instance, frequently give their money to groups that support and promote population control. Bristol Meyers Squibb, American Home Products, and Kimberly Clark are just a few.

     It has long been understood that strings have been attached to governmental financial aid going to the developing world. The United States Agency for International Development has offered aid based on the lowering of fertility rates in various poor countries. And as recently as two months ago, the World Bank was requesting that certain Latin American countries change their laws on gender to include acceptance of homosexuality.

     Radical feminists have made their wishes plain for years. They want any and all pressure placed on governments to change their laws on abortion. Radical feminist NGOs connected to the UN even went to the World Trade Organization talks in Seattle to pressure governments to include a "gender perspective" in new trade rules. "Gender perspective" is understood to mean the broadest kind of feminist rights, including access to abortion.

     It is reported that many agencies of the UN are getting closer to transnational corporations. While some UN agencies, like UNICEF, have successfully sought corporate sponsors, others have actually gone into business with corporations. BP Amoco, for instance, has done joint ventures with the UN Development Program (UNDP) in Angola. Both Citibank and Chevron contributed to a business center to be run by UNDP in Kazakhstan. And UN Population Fund has offered to assist condom manufacturers in Egypt and India with lowering trade barriers.

     Pro-lifers fear an expanded battlefield over the abortion question in the years to come.

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