Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a four part series on the implications and effects of the International Conference on Population and Development that took place twenty years ago in Cairo.
Say “Egypt” and images of the pyramids may come to mind. Say the name of its capital, Cairo, and pro-life advocates who battle at the United Nations (UN) immediately think of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) held there in 1994, the scene of the greatest international battle over abortion the world had ever experienced. 179 governments came together to discuss development issues and ways to improve the lives of the world’s population, especially those suffering extreme poverty, hunger, unemployment and lack of access to health care and education. That critical work was almost hijacked by disruptive attempts to advance the destruction of unborn children through abortion as a universal right.
A number of developed countries, led by the United States delegation under the Clinton administration, attempted to use the meeting co-organized by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to achieve official recognition of “an international right to abortion”, an action that would have dire consequences to preborn children and their mothers whose lives and health were, and are, protected from the violence of abortion in a majority of UN member states which ban or restrict access to abortion.
Delegates from less developed countries reported receiving threats and admonishments about the negative consequences to their country’s development aid that would occur if they failed to support controversial language advancing abortion in the outcome document of the ICPD, the Programme of Action.
The tactic backfired.
The campaign for a “right to abortion” was defeated when the Holy See, under the leadership of Archbishop Renato Raffaele Martino, in consultation with Pope John Paul II, united with African and Latin American delegates to successfully block attempts to classify the child-destroying act of abortion as an international right. Instead, the Programme of Action recognized that many countries oppose abortion and declared in paragraph 8.25: “Any measures or changes related to abortion within the health system can only be determined at the national or local level according to the national legislative process.”
Twenty years later, this critical acknowledgement of sovereignty on abortion figures prominently in abortion debates at the UN and is known as the “ICPD caveat”. Its juxtaposition with the term “reproductive rights” in UN negotiated documents is contentious and opposed by countries of the Global North, especially the US and Nordic countries, which argue for unfettered “reproductive rights” in their relentless attempts to advance international access to abortion.
The ICPD Programme of Action also recognized the broad concept of “reproductive health” which along with “reproductive rights” has since been at the epicentre of debates over abortion.
ICPD expressed a critical view of abortion declaring: “Governments should take appropriate steps to help women avoid abortion, which in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning” and “Women who have unwanted pregnancies should have ready access to reliable information and compassionate counselling.” It also stated “In circumstances where abortion is not against the law, such abortion should be safe”.
UNFPA and radical non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have used the commemoration of twenty years since Cairo to promote what they describe as the “unfinished business of ICPD” in the ongoing quest to advance not only access to abortion, but a broad undefined agenda of “sexual and reproductive health and rights” (SRHR) that, if successful, would adversely impact respect for life, the family, marriage, freedom of conscience and religious beliefs.
This comes at a time when numerous countries with histories of broad access to abortion and contraception are facing unprecedented demographic challenges brought on by aging populations and plummeting fertility rates while population control zealots worry about the number of births in Africa that may result from the current largest generation of adolescents in history.
The battle that began in earnest at Cairo rages on as countries that oppose SRHR are often chided to “move forward”, be “progressive” and advance “evolving issues”,inferring that failure to embrace the radical anti-life, anti-family and anti-faith agenda is “backward”, “repressive” and “regressive”. A number of developed countries, UNFPA, pro-abortion activists serving in key UN positions, and well-positioned NGOs—International Planned Parenthood Federation foremost among them—are taking their attempts to “complete the unfinished business of ICPD” into hyperdrive as the UN deliberates new sustainable development goals (SDGs) that replace the Millennium Development Goals set to expire in 2015.
Once finalized and approved by the General Assembly in September 2015, the SDGs will guide global priorities, be integrated into national programs, receive unprecedented funding and take effect on January 1, 2016, lasting until 2031. These noble efforts to eliminate extreme poverty will likely include ensuring access to fresh water, sanitation and a sustainable supply of food, providing primary education to all girls and boys, helping women learn job skills, and protecting the environment, but are again at risk of being hijacked, this time by an obsessive push to position the SRHR agenda as the centerpiece of the SDGs.
The United Nations General Assembly held a Special Session on September 22, 2014, to evaluate progress in the twenty years since ICPD, but attendance by member states was underwhelming. SRHR activists, however, were in full attendance, using the opportunity to expand upon their anti-life perspective and express their desire to complete the “unfinished business of ICPD” in the post-2015 development agenda.
Radical activists understand the critical juncture the world is facing as they agitate in capitals around the world for support for their agenda. Many are frantic that after twenty years of stagnation their agenda must “move beyond ICPD”. A small number of developing countries have recently succumbed to these high powered and well-financed lobby efforts abandoning their cherished beliefs in the protection of preborn children and proclaiming support for an international right to abortion.
The world cannot “move forward” by destroying its greatest treasure—children.
The violence of abortion has no place in the world beyond ICPD or anytime.
The stakes for a culture of life have not been this high since Cairo.
Marie Smith is the Founder and Director of the Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (PNCI), a global outreach of the Gospel of Life Ministries that seeks to advance respect for life from conception to natural death through law and policy. She is a frequent speaker at pro-life conferences in the U.S. and internationally, and has engaged in pro-life advocacy for over 40 years. She is a Special Representative to the United Nations for Priests for Life, which has Special Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the UN. Marie was the co-recipient of the 2014 Evangelium Vitae Medal from Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture and was a recipient of the 2009-2010 Life Prizes Award in recognition of her efforts to protect women and children around the world from the violence of abortion. She is the mother of four children and grandmother of three.
