After two weeks of intense work in the halls of the United Nations our UFI delegation has returned home. Although we are a bit beaten and bruised, our efforts helped ensure that the policies coming out of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) were truly positive for women, children, and families.
Our efforts were absolutely necessary in slowing the work of the radical delegations that are there to substitute the needs of women worldwide with an anti-life, anti-family, and inherently anti-feminine platform. These manipulations by the opposition centered on the issue of maternal mortality–one of the most important women’s health issues of our time.
Maternal Mortality
It is estimated that in 2008 alone 550,000 women died due to maternity related complications and the majority of these deaths occurred among the poorest women in the most underdeveloped countries, where proper maternal care is inaccessible or non-existent.
The international community is widely aware of this issue and in 2000 established the Millennial Development Goal of reducing maternal mortality rates (deaths per 100,000 live births) by 75% by 2015. With only five years remaining and maternal mortality rates down only 6% internationally, the question of how to further reduce these tragic numbers in the next five years was a primary issue in the document resolutions coming out of this year’s CSW.
A Twisted Solution
The solution to this problem appears quite simple: invest in improving facilities, equipment, and training for maternal care professionals. Our opposition, however, sees this as only a small part of the solution and is using this huge threat to the lives of women around the world to secure funding for contraception and abortion services. According to radical organizations such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation, family planning and reproductive health services are as, if not more, important to reducing maternal mortality as improved maternal care services. They argue simply that the most cost-effective way to reduce maternal mortality is to reduce maternity. Through family planning, i.e. contraception and abortion, nations can drastically reduce the number of pregnancies and thus reduce the number of maternal deaths with a cost savings of $5.1 billion.
This radical ideology represents a dangerous logic. It equates maternity with disease . They are arguing that the most cost-effective means to reducing maternal mortality is through contraception and abortion. Such logic demeans every woman and the life-giving power within her by equating it with a disease. It also devalues human life to a degree once thought unconscionable. This is not only anti-life and anti-family, it is anti-feminine.
Our Work at CSW
Despite the inherently anti-feminine logic of this position, our opposition was able to use the pressing need to reduce maternal mortality to insert both family planning and reproductive services language (UN code word for abortion) into two different resolutions. These documents, designed to serve women, advanced a radical agenda that undermines, rather than protects, the beauty and sanctity of womanhood. Due to the efforts of UFI representatives and the pro-family coalition, we were able to temper this language, focusing on providing real solutions to maternal mortality and proper care for mothers around the world.
Into the Future
Unfortunately, our opposition will continue their work to manipulate the issues of our times to serve their agenda. On April 12, UFI representatives will be returning once again to the UN to attend the Commission on Population and Development (CPD), wherein our opposition will once again attempt to use the needs of developing countries to push their radical agenda. We will be there to ensure that the rights of women and children, born and unborn alike, are truly being defended in every resolution that lives the UN.