CLC at the United Nations
On March 17, 2016, Campaign Life Coalition together with Real Women of Canada and the UK’s Society for the Protection of Unborn Children is organizing an official side event with the Holy See at the United Nations 60th Commission on the Status of Women.
The event entitled “Best Practices for Maternal Health Care in Africa” will discuss ways in which every dollar spent on abortion is a dollar denied to the provision of genuine maternal health care for African women and their children.
This message goes completely against the rhetoric of the many pro-abortion organizations and their advocates who flood the United Nations on a daily basis. That is why this event will be instrumental in providing a much needed alternative voice. Read the official statement, below:
Statement of Campaign Life Coalition, Real Women of Canada
and the Society for the Protection of Unborn Child
in anticipation of the event “Best Practices for Maternal Health Care in Africa”
March 17, 2016, UN Headquarters Conference Room 1, New York
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 830 women die every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. 99 percent of maternal deaths take place in the developing world. The majority of these deaths occur in Africa.
The high number of maternal deaths in developing countries, resulting from complications during and following pregnancy and childbirth, suggests that the real issues are lack of basic health care and skilled birth attendants.
If the international community is serious about meeting the 2030 agenda goal of reducing maternal and child mortality (SDG Targets 3.1 and 3.2), women in the developing world must be given access to the same basic standard of care that has been available to women in the developed world for decades.
The antithesis of helping mothers and their children is the practice of abortion. Ending the lives of babies before they are born is not infant healthcare. Rather than a solution, abortion diverts money and attention from the real needs of women and legalizing and expanding access to abortion will not improve maternal health. Evidence shows countries with restrictive abortion laws, like Sri Lanka, Chile and Ireland, often have the lowest maternal mortality rates.
For far too long, various western nations have been promoting abortion to the developing world as a form of foreign aid and as a ‘solution’ to reducing maternal mortality. It is never necessary deliberately to kill a baby in order to save the life of a mother. Our organizations join many UN Member States in opposing abortion as an abuse of authentic health care, or as a so-called strategy for reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality rates in Africa and around the world.
Promoting maternal health should never involve eliminating motherhood. Genuine maternal health includes obstetric care for all mothers to facilitate their children being born alive. Methods like abortion and abortifacient forms of contraception that end the lives of children before birth are a contradiction of genuine maternal health care.
Targets 3.1 and 3.2 of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, focused on reducing maternal, newborn and child mortality, should not be used to reduce the number of mothers, newborns and children through the promotion of abortion, sterilization or contraception. The truth is that women are dying during childbirth mainly because of infections caused by unsanitary conditions or because they didn’t have access to basic health care or clean water.
To meet the 2030 agenda and create a healthy and sustainable future for generations to come in Africa, the international community must prioritize the health of mothers and children in foreign aid. This means committing finances and health care resources to ensure that the life of every African mother and her children is treated with the same care and respect as the lives of each of us here at the 60th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women. In conclusion, every dollar spent on abortion, sterilization and contraception is a dollar denied to the provision of the real necessities of life and genuine health care: nutrition, clean water, medicine, and safe deliveries. Pregnancy is not a disease, sickness or illness. The solution to reducing maternal mortality is rooted in eliminating the causes of these deaths, not in eliminating the child.
To view a poster of the event, please click here.