Contact: Larry Jacobs or Don Feder, World Congress of Families, 815-964-5819, 513-515-3685 cell, media@worldcongress.org
MEDIA ADVISORY, Jan. 11 /Christian Newswire/ -- In its recently released annual report, the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA) boasted of its spending on "reproductive health services" (contraception) and pledged to pressure governments to do more in this regard.
UNFPA spends $148 million annually on "reproductive health" programs, compared to only $51 million on development programs.
The report warns that "every minute, 190 women are forced to confront the possibility of an unplanned or unwanted pregnancy – one that could have been easily prevented if only they had access to contraceptives."
World Congress of Families International Secretary Allan Carlson responded: "UNFPA acts as if this was one of the great tragedies to befall humanity – that a woman is expecting a child whose conception wasn't planned. How many of the great men and women of history – scientists, inventors, artists and composers – were the result of an 'unplanned pregnancy'?"
UNFPA claims to be "abortion neutral," but states it promotes "family planning as a means to reduce unsafe abortions." By "unsafe abortions," UNFPA means "illegal abortions," which implies that the agency considers legal abortion to be a valid "reproductive health service."
In the past, investigators from the governments of the United States and Britain have charged the agency with complicity in China's forced abortion program. For that reason, the U.S. no longer contributes to UNFPA.
According to The New York Times, UNFPA has also been charged with promoting forced sterilization in Peru, where indigenous women were sterilized without their consent or were bribed into undergoing the procedure for bags of groceries.
Carlson noted: "UNFPA's agenda is the same as that of Planned Parenthood. If it could, it would locate a condom dispensary in every school and neighborhood in the Third World."
Carlson continued: "The UN agency acts as if people are a plague – a hindrance to economic development and social stability. If that was true, why are some of the most densely populated nations among the most prosperous – including many of the countries of Southeast Asia?"
The Warsaw Declaration (adopted at the close of World Congress of Families IV – May 11-13, 2007) noted, that "the future of humanity passes by way of the family" and that such families accept, "joyful responsibility for every child-to-be, versus the fear of the child expressed in the contraceptive mentality."
The World Congress of Families calls on UNFPA to re-think its dogmatic support for so-called family planning and focus instead on helping nations plan for the needs of their people – born and unborn.
For the Warsaw Declaration (translated in four languages), click here: http://www.worldcongress.pl/warsaw.php?change_lang=en. For more information on World Congress of Families, go to www.worldcongress.org. To schedule an interview with Allan Carlson, contact Larry Jacobs at 1-800-461-3113.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seeks to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the ‘seedbed’ of civil society. The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been four World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007).
