Volume 7, Number 9

February 20, 2004

UN Plans Public Relations Campaign Against Abortion Critics

By Douglas A. Sylva, Ph.D.

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) The United Nations Department of Public Information (DPI) convened a meeting at UN headquarters yesterday so that UN officials, members of influential UN non governmental organizations, and public relations experts could coach UN allies on effective ways to counter the charge that the UN promotes abortion.

     The central suggestion made at the meeting, entitled "Defending the UN, What Every NGO Should Know," was that the outright denial of any UN involvement in abortion would be the most effective public relations strategy. Gillian Sorensen, a senior adviser at Ted Turner's UN Foundation, and former UN Assistant Secretary General for External Affairs, told the audience members that whenever the issue of abortion is raised, they should respond by saying that the UN only supports such uncontroversial components of sexual and reproductive health services as safe delivery and healthy motherhood initiatives.

     No panelist suggested that actual allegations, such as the charge that the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has supported China's coercive "one child policy," or that UNFPA, itself, distributes early abortion devices and chemical abortifacients to countries in the developing world, should be addressed on their merits.

     Denial appeared to be the most logical public relations strategy, since the panelists did not seem to believe that individual citizens, especially citizens of the United States, could evaluate complex debates on international reproductive and sexual health policies. Sorensen, for instance, said that, in the United States, "there is a huge reservoir of ignorance and apathy, a great vacuum in this country that has been seized by the hard right." William Luers, president of the UN Association of the USA, and a former US ambassador, told the audience members that they should "assume that an American knows nothing about this organization," and that, instead of answering direct charges, UN allies should speak in "sports metaphors."

     Outright denial also appeared logical because the panelists did not think that critics, both within the Bush administration and within conservative non governmental organizations, were worthy of debate on such ethical issues as reproductive health policies. As proof of the US government's own ethical lapses, Sorensen, for instance, cited the Bush administration's defunding of UNFPA, as well as the US government's history of supporting dictators. "Once Saddam Hussein was our man in Iraq," Sorensen told the audience. Luers argued that the best solution to Bush administration criticism of the UN would simply be to work for Bush's electoral defeat. "The short answer is the ballot box," he said.

     A long-time UN lobbyist told the Friday Fax that "It is absurd and insulting to deny everything, to stand there and say the UN is not involved in abortion, when everybody knows the UN promotes abortion."

     This meeting appears to illustrate that the UN system has not learned from the example of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO) which, when faced with credible proof that it had promoted abortion, admitted its error and promised tangible reform.

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