Society for the Protection of Unborn Children
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Maternal mortality briefing August 2010

Timeline and details
During the United Nations year 2000 World Summit, all 192 Member States of the United Nations, and 23 international organisations agreed upon eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG). MDG Goal five concerns maternal health. The target set for MDG five is ‘to reduce maternal mortality by three quarters between 1990 and 2015. This goal has been systematically hijacked as a means to impose abortion as a human right.

The original Millennium Development Goals and the Millennium Declaration, which all 192 member states agreed and signed-up to in the year 2000, makes no mention of universal access to reproductive health, meaning abortion, contraception and sterilisation.

MDG hijacked and manipulated
However, in 2005, the World Summit issued a high-level official resolution, establishing universal access to reproductive healthcare under Millennium Development Goal 6 as a means of eradicating HIV and AIDS. A clause was inserted that sought to extend this target to include strategies for reducing maternal mortality. This target was promoted vigorously by various UN agencies and NGOs through non-binding and inaccurate reports and agency websites. In 2009, a high-level ministerial declaration called for universal access to reproductive healthcare as a means for achieving Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, which concern child and maternal mortality.  

New report attempts to impose abortion as a human right
Ahead of the high-level plenary summit on the Millennium Development Goals to be held in New York 20-22 September, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, together with the Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, has issued a report about preventable maternal morbidity and mortality.

This report does several things:

• the call for universal access to reproductive healthcare is changed from a development target to a fundamental human right under MDG five, by invoking Human Rights Council resolution 11/8: ‘Preventable maternal deaths and injuries may also entail violations of the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, including sexual and reproductive health’ (§10).
• the authentic Millennium Development Goals are downgraded: ‘This commitment is encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals, which derive from the Millennium Summit commitments, and which have come to play a defining role in international development efforts. Specifically Goal 5 concerns improving maternal health and ensuring universal access to reproductive health care’ (§48). This indicates that summits are setting the agenda, altering the goals, and setting themselves above the goals agreed by the member states in 2000. This paragraph also suggests a false link between the goals agreed in 2000 and the recent addition of reproductive healthcare as a right.
• this report also presents false figures to support its claim: ‘the maternal mortality ratio (the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births) declined globally at a rate of less than 1 per cent a year between 1990 and 2005. The estimated total number of women dying in pregnancy or childbirth per year decreased only slightly between 1990 and 2005, from 576,000 deaths in 1990 to 536,000 deaths in 2005 (§ 7). The incidences of maternal mortality caused by abortion are given as 13%, and the distinction between spontaneous and induced abortion is not made (§6). This can be considered evidence of exaggerating results and utilising out-of-date statistics when compared to those of The Lancet medical journal.   

The proposal that reproductive healthcare, meaning abortion, is a human right will be introduced at the summit in September, as the report makes clear (paragraph 63).

False statistics exposed
The prestigious medical Journal The Lancet (Volume 375, Issue 9726, Pages 1609 - 1623, 8 May 2010) has reviewed maternal mortality for one hundred and eighty one countries between 1989 and 2008. It found 342 900 (uncertainty interval 302 100—394 300) incidences of maternal deaths worldwide in 2008, down from 526 300 (446 400—629 600) in 1980. This exposes the report statistics as inaccurate and out of date.

The Lancet also reports that more than 50% of all maternal deaths were in only six countries in 2008 (India, Nigeria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), dispelling the myth that maternal mortality caused by abortion is an international and widespread problem.  In the absence of HIV, there would have been 281 500 (243 900—327 900) maternal deaths worldwide in 2008. These figures are also supported by the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation, which is a key partner working with the UN to achieve the MDG.

Furthermore, the World Health Organisation lists eight causes of Maternal Mortality: Haemorrhaging; infections; Eclampsia; obstructed labour; other direct causes; other indirect causes; and procured and spontaneous abortion. The United Nations 2010 report on the Millennium Development Goals states that abortion accounts for around 9% of all maternal mortalities not 13%, as the report inaccurately states.

More abortion does not mean fewer maternal mortalities
Legalised abortion leads to more abortions. In developing countries, where the maternal mortality rate is highest, abortions are even more dangerous because of poor general health care of women - particularly lack of antibiotics, drugs to prevent haemorrhage and lack of clean facilities. Poland’s experience also contradicts the assumption that liberalisation of abortion improves maternal mortality. Legal restrictions on abortion were introduced in 1993 and in the last 20 years maternal mortality in Poland has dropped by 82% (SPUC intervention on the maternal mortality report). The restriction on abortion as decreased maternal mortality is also reflected in Ireland’s statistics.   

Calling for a practical and real solution to maternal mortality
What we see is the gradual imposition of abortion as a universal and fundamental human right. This is being imposed through misuse and misinformation of the Millennium Development Goals. What needs to be promoted are effective and direct solutions to maternal mortality, such as: giving HIV positive mothers access to antiretroviral medications; increasing the availability of emergency obstetric care, including the provision of universal pre and post-natal care; adequate transport to medical facilities; skilled birth attendants; a clean blood supply and a clean water supply; appropriate antibiotics; and the introduction of a minimum age of 18 years for marriage (Intervention of the Holy See).