United Nations' abortion agenda in Iraq condemned

Westminster, 31 March 2003--The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC) has condemned the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for exploiting war-torn Iraq in order to promote abortion.

UNFPA has launched a campaign to provide "reproductive health" to Iraqi refugees.1 "Reproductive health" is a euphemism which the World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined as including abortion on demand.2

UNFPA directs attention to expectant mothers, whom it claims to be as many as one in five women in Iraq. This would require a birthrate of around 50 per thousand population, whereas the estimate rate for 2002 was 34 per thousand. It has declined rapidly in the past decade. (see http://www.theodora.com/wfb/)

SPUC political spokesman Anthony Ozimic commented: "These women need care, but UNFPA is not the agency to deliver it. UNFPA's plan is full of euphemisms for abortion. "Surgery units" can refer to abortion operating theatres. "Emergency reproductive and obstetric care" is a way of referring not simply to assistance during labour, but to abortion-inducing drugs and devices supplied to women in early pregnancy."

"The overall aim of UNFPA activities is to impose population control on people in poorer countries. UNFPA exploits women in vulnerable situations in poor countries in order to promote its anti-child policies. UNFPA may also be exploiting the turmoil in Iraq and in neighbouring refugee camps to perform abortions on grounds which would be illegal under the local laws. UNFPA has an agreement with the world's largest abortion provider IPPF for activities in Iraq.3 IPPF has endorsed activities outside the law to promote its abortion agenda4", said Mr. Ozimic.

Mr. Ozimic continued: "UNFPA has used this deceit in other recent war zones. For example, UNFPA aided and abetted "ethnic cleansing" by indicted war criminal Slobodan Milosevic by assisting his regime's plan "to limit or forbid the enormous increase of the birthrate in Kosovo".5 UNFPA has little respect for human rights, evidenced by its proven complicity in coerced abortion in communist China6 and coerced sterilisation under the Fujimori dictatorship in Peru.7"

"The UNFPA is seeking to present itself as a crisis intervention agency while it is treating displaced women - pregnant or not - as targets for its population control agenda. The organisation is not specialised in crisis intervention, nor is it renowned for helping expectant mothers give birth (other groups lead in that field). UNFPA is notable for promoting population control, for funding abortion-providers and supplying abortion equipment and abortifacients (drugs and intra-uterine devices). UNFPA's allies even promote sterilisation and contraception for refugees when they need shelter, clean water and basic health care. Their real agenda is evident from their record over past decades. Their activities are not reflected in their latest press release", said Mr. Ozimic.

Mr. Ozimic concluded: "Abortion and UNFPA's neo-imperialist population control agenda are deeply offensive to the vast majority of Iraqi citizens, Muslim and Christian alike. UNFPA is showing contempt for Iraqi people by attacking its cultural values. Having declined to sanction military action against Iraq - rightly or wrongly - the UN authorities must stop this assault on innocent Iraqi women and children by its own retinue ."



  1. UNFPA press release 21 March 2003
  2. Technical definitions prepared for the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), Cairo, 1994.
  3. IPPF country profile: Iraq
  4. "Family Planning Associations and other nongovernmental organizations should not use the absence of a law or the existence of an unfavorable law as an excuse for inaction; action outside the law, and even in violation of it is part of the process of stimulating change." IPPF, The Human Right to Family Planning, 1984.
  5. Population Research Institute (PRI), The Kosovo File
  6. Letter by U.S Secretary of State Colin Powell, July 21, 2002
  7. Population Research Institute (PRI) briefing December 6, 2002


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