[Lifesite News] Last November at a summit in Nairobi, the UN Population Fund announced that it would take $264 billion to reduce global maternal deaths and protect women and girls from violence. The agency just released a publication outlining the details of how the billions would be spent — and the fine print includes abortion.
One of the enduring legacies of ICPD in 1994 is the compromise that was struck among nations: that the legal status of abortion was for national governments to determine, and that where legal, it should be “safe.” In the past quarter century, the same feminist organizations that sought to establish an international human right to abortion at the conference have continued to lobby for the same goal, calling it the “unfinished agenda of ICPD.”
Nevertheless, no right to abortion exists in international human rights or humanitarian law, and UNFPA, which receives its directives from agreements reached by governments at the UN, has no mandate to promote abortion. Its three central goals, set out in 2018, are to eliminate preventable maternal deaths, eliminate the “unmet need” for family planning, and end gender-based violence, including child marriage and female genital mutilation.
The price tag for achieving these three goals, set at $264 billion, was publicized at the Nairobi Summit, but the specific details were set out in January in a new publication. In collaboration with researchers from several universities and other organizations, UNFPA broke down the specific interventions in each category, with cost estimates for each of the three targets.
The elimination of preventable maternal deaths in 120 priority countries, estimated as costing $115.5 billion over the next ten years, requires ensuring that “29 interventions are universally available,” one of which is “safe abortion services.”
Unlike many UNFPA publications, which include a disclaimer specifying that references to abortion apply under circumstances in which it is legal, this estimate includes no such language.
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[Editor’s Note: This article was written by Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. and first posted at Lifesite News, title change by P&P]
