By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
A new report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations, a liberal think tank, claims an increase in taxpayer funded international family planning programs is needed because these programs have demonstrated a “high return on investment.”
CNSNews.com is reporting that the Council’s new study calls for giving international family planning assistance “greater priority” because of how central the issue of population control is to many foreign policy issues.
“Women today are recognized as critical to reducing poverty, boosting economic growth and agricultural productivity, promoting environmental sustainability, and raising healthy and well-educated children – steps that are imperative to confronting a range of pressing foreign policy challenges around the globe,” the report says.
It goes on to say that allowing women to make “critical decisions” about the size of their families and the spacing of pregnancies is “better enabling them to be linchpins of positive change in their communities.”
However, as the report notes, the link between family planning and abortion has caused many of these programs to lose favor with the American public who have become increasingly unwilling to give money to international family planning affiliates such as Planned Parenthood and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) because they also provide abortion.
” . . . (T)oday there is serious talk about drastically cutting support for international family planning, even though it is one of the most cost-effective foreign assistance programs the United States funds,” the report states.
CNS reports that panelists at a discussion coinciding with the report’s release said access to contraceptives could reduce the 35 million abortions that take place annually in developing countries, and insisted that family planning and abortion are not synonymous. However, many of the organizations that participated are long-time abortion advocates, such as International Planned Parenthood Federation, The Guttmacher Institute, Advocates for Youth, the United Nations Population Fund, and Population Action International.
Their insistence that abortion is not part of these programs was contradicted only last month when Laurie Shestack-Phipps, a U.S. representative to the United Nations, participated in a panel discussion in which she clearly stated that abortion is part of “comprehensive” family planning.
“How can you say that you value family, community and marriage, but not bring into the picture that both men and women have a right to a healthy life, to be able to avoid unsafe abortion, and have access to the highest attainable standard of reproductive health, and to decide how many children they should have?” asked Phipps who was quoted by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.
Archbishop Francis Chullikatt of the Holy See Mission countered Phipps arguments by warning about the promotion of family planning overseas, not just because it includes abortion, but because it is often forced on populations who are in desperate need of other assistance. “International programs of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are affronts to the dignity of the person, the family, and the human community,” he said.
Wendy Wright, president of the pro-life group Concerned Women for America, also commented about her visits to medical clinics in Africa where medicine cabinets were empty of essentials such as penicillin, but were overflowing with condoms – so many that children blow them up like balloons and play with them as if they were toys.
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