UN Steps Up Vigorous Call for Universal Access to Abortion

By C-FAM Staff | April 1, 2005

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM)   At next week's UN conference on HIV/AIDS and its links to population, development and poverty, a UN body looks poised to call for universal access to abortion as a necessary prerequisite for success in the fight against HIV/AIDS and the full implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Commission on Population and Development (CPD) will be the latest in a series of efforts by UN agencies and special interest groups to spread the pro-abortion agenda by inserting it into programs that have not included abortion rights, including the global fight against AIDS and the strategy to achieve the MDGs.

     In UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's preparatory reports for the 38th Session of the Commission on Population and Development (CPD), taking place from April 4 to April 8, he calls for "strengthening the links between HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health" and states outright that "The United Nations and its partners are expected to intensify program linkages between HIV programs and sexual and reproductive health services." Many in the UN system view "sexual and reproductive rights" as including access to abortion.

     In another report, Annan states that "Reproductive health is not explicitly included in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet…The international community's commitment to achieving the Millennium Development Goals needs to incorporate the universal reproductive health services target of the International Conference on Population and Development [ICPD] so that funding for family planning and reproductive health services is secured along with increased funding for HIV/AIDS." The ICPD conference was agreed to at Cairo in 1994, and is the guiding principle for the Commission's meeting next week.

     Annan also endorses a radical document recently created by the UN in collaboration with the abortion advocacy group Family Care International and the Rockefeller Foundation. The "New York Call to Commitment" calls for a mobilization of resources for "dramatically increasing linkages between HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health programs and services," and says that the MDGs "will not be achieved without ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and programs."

     The New York Call refers to another manifesto, the "Glion Call to Action," which claims to reflect the "consensus" achieved at the Cairo conference and urges all countries and UN agencies to "strengthen commitment to achieving universal access to reproductive health services, including family planning" and to "support the contribution of these services to HIV/AIDS prevention efforts."

     The Glion Call is signed by representatives of the leading global abortion providers Marie Stopes International and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, together with officials of UNICEF, UNFPA and the World Health Organization.

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