Volume 7, Number 41

October 1, 2004

Abortion Lobby Uses AIDS to Extend "Reproductive Rights"

     (NEW YORK - C-FAM) Pro-abortion nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) recently released a blueprint for their allies to force governments to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic by establishing "complete reproductive rights" for HIV-positive women, including a right "to access safe, legal abortions."

     The paper, entitled "Fulfilling reproductive rights for women affected by HIV: A tool for monitoring achievement of Millennium Development Goals" calls for health facilities to adopt and publicly display two radical "reproductive rights" documents.

     The first of these documents is the "Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights" issued by UNAIDS and the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, which calls for the decriminalization of prostitution and for the enactment of laws "providing penalties for vilification of people who engage in same-sex relationships" and "giving legal recognition to same-sex marriages and/or relationships".

     The second document is the Barcelona Bill of Rights of 2002, which declares that all women and girls have the right to "live their sexuality in safety and with pleasure irrespective of age, HIV status or sexual orientation", to "choose marriage, form partnerships or divorce, irrespective of age, HIV status or sexual orientation", and "to be "leaders within religious...institutions."

     The blueprint claims that these rights must be recognized if the international community is to meet the "Millennium Development Goals" (MDGs), even though the MDGs do not make any direct mention of reproductive rights, which in UN parlance includes abortion. The handbook claims that broad expansions of "all areas of HIV-positive women's reproductive health" are necessary to "challenge inequalities and gender-biased norms" and to enable the achievement of MDG 5, which aims for a 75% reduction in the maternal mortality ratio by 2015, and MDG 6, which plans to begin a reversal of the spread of HIV/AIDS.

     Women with HIV/AIDS are to have access to "assisted reproduction techniques" such as in vitro fertilization, and to have the option of "adopting or fostering" children, although research is lacking on "maternal death rates and orphan survival vis-à-vis HIV/AIDS".

     Pregnant women are also to have the right to refuse HIV testing because of the potential "psycho-social effects" of an HIV-positive diagnosis. The manual does not mention the higher likelihood of perinatal transmission of AIDS/HIV for mothers who refuse HIV testing.

     One author of the handbook is Ipas, the manufacturer of manual vaccum aspirators (MVAs) which are marketed for early-term abortions. Financial backers of the groups that authored the manual include the Turner, Ford, Gates and Rockefeller foundations and several multinational and UN agencies, including UNESCO, UNAIDS, UNDP, and the World Bank.

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