Volume 12, Number 43

October 8, 2009

Fifteen Years After Cairo, Abortion Controversy Still Ongoing

By Samantha Singson

     (NEW YORK – C-FAM)  Next week, the UN General Assembly will hold a high-level meeting for the 15th anniversary of International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).  While some have used the anniversary to try and assess progress towards realizing the ICPD Program of Action, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and pro-abortion non-government organizations (NGOs) have sought to use the review process to expand the ICPD understanding of "reproductive health" and its related terms to include abortion.

     Claiming that now is the "time to renew efforts to achieve their targets and goals in the area of sexual and reproductive health and rights," UNFPA and abortion rights groups have vowed that they will fight any "backtracking" on the Cairo agenda.

     Critics point out that at the original ICPD meeting, states left Cairo with the understanding that abortion laws were to be determined by sovereign states and that the ICPD created "no new rights," particularly, no right to abortion. Many countries also made explicit reservations to ensure that terms related to reproductive health could not later be construed to include abortion.

     UNFPA has taken the lead role in organizing the events leading up to next week's commemorative GA session.  At the Commission on Population and Development (CPD) last March, heated negotiations on "reproductive rights" language went down to the wire as states fought to keep abortion out of the document. In Berlin last month, UNFPA sponsored an NGO forum on the ICPD anniversary and deliberately shut pro-lifers out of the proceedings. The Berlin Call to Action calls on states to repeal abortion laws. Parliamentarians have expressed worry that a UNFPA-organized meeting in Ethiopia later this month will likewise focus on abortion.

     In recent years, UNFPA and pro-abortion groups have also sought to keep the ICPD relevant by tying it to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), established in 2000.  Despite intense lobbying efforts by UNFPA and abortion rights groups, reproductive health was left out of the MDGs.  In 2005, however, abortion rights advocates started claiming victory, boasting of a new target under MDG 5 to improve maternal health calling for "universal access to reproductive health by 2015" which was not debated by states, but only included in the annex of a report from the Secretary-General.

     Since then, UNFPA and abortion advocates have been using the acclaimed new target on "universal access to reproductive health" to expand on the ICPD program of action and the MDGs to promote "safe abortion" under the guise of reducing maternal mortality.

     While UNFPA and pro-abortion NGOs continue to use the review process to expand the ICPD program, nations are continuing to push back and make interpretive statements defining abortion out of sexual and reproductive health and its related terms.  At the CPD in March, several countries made on-the-record statements reiterating that abortion is not part of reproductive health. Malta made a particularly strong statement highlighting the pressure put on nations and stating that his delegation was finding it more difficult to accept the resolutions of UN bodies like the CPD where there were consistent attempts to expand “reproductive health” to include abortion.

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