Racist Population Control Polices Impede Access to Optimal Health

By | June 9, 2022

Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health

WASHINGTON, D.C. June 10 (C-Fam) The UN’s special expert on the right to health, who has generated controversy for her prior work as an abortionist and her advocacy of prostitution, has announced that her next annual report will focus on the effect of racism on health worldwide.

In response to her call for stakeholder submissions on this topic, C-Fam, the publisher of the Friday Fax, provided information detailing how the racist and eugenicist motivations behind the population control movement continue to generate harm, particularly in developing regions.

Dr. Tlaleng Mofokeng of South Africa was appointed Special Rapporteur on the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health in 2020.  From the beginning of her tenure, she used her position to promote abortion, “sex work,” and gender ideology, including in her previous annual reports presented at the General Assembly.

Her current call for submissions includes questions about both historical and current forms of racism and “coloniality,” defined as the effects of European colonialism, and their effects on health.

C-Fam’s submission examines the longstanding international efforts to reduce fertility in the global South, with an emphasis on long-acting contraceptives such as the injectable Depo Provera, which are linked to harmful side effects and used at much lower rates by women in wealthier countries.  The Gates Foundation in particular, one of the leading donors to global health projects, has specifically championed Depo Provera under the name Sayana Press in sub-Saharan Africa.

Much of the justification for spending billions of dollars on international family planning is framed as meeting an “unmet need” of poor women for contraceptives.  Eliminating “unmet need” entirely is one of the central targets of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) which frequently equates it with a lack of access to methods.  However, the vast majority of women describe as having such a “need” do not lack access to family planning, and have expressed no demand for it—in fact, many have rejected contraceptives due to concerns about side effects or for other reasons including religious beliefs.

Abortion, which remains one of the most hotly contested issues within the UN despite Mofokeng’s strident advocacy for it to be regarded as a human right, also has a racist legacy.  In the United States, unborn black babies are aborted at disproportionately high rates and nearly 80% of abortion clinics are located in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion across the country and placed the U.S. among those countries with the most extremely liberal abortion laws, was acknowledged by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as having eugenic and racist motivations: “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”

The submission to the health rapporteur encourages her to uphold the global consensus that abortion laws are for countries to determine and encourage international donors to distance themselves from the racist legacy of population control, including in its subtler forms that rely on misleading statistics like “unmet need.”

Such efforts have been described by Pope Francis as “ideological colonization,” and, like earlier forms of colonization, emanate from sources that are typically wealthy, white, and Western.

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