UNFPA Drops Name From UNESCO Sex-Ed Guide Pushing Abortion on Children
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 4, 2009
New York, NY (LifeNews.com) — A new sexual education guide from UNESCO that saw the UN agency calling for children to promote abortions across the globe was too much for the UNFPA. That agency has pulled its name from the document, according to news reports out today.
The New York Times indicated today that criticism from pro-life groups, published in LifeNews.com, led the UNFPA to pull back from the proposed guidelines and ask that its name be left off the final published materials.
Bill Poehler, the communications director for the Global Outreach program of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, which brought up the children-abortion connection, told LifeNews.com the pro-life group "is very pleased that the organizations responsible for creating the UNESCO sex education guidelines have pulled back.
"UNESCO would be wise to acknowledge that cultures across the world will not support the promotion of abortion to our children," he said. "Even the UNFPA has recognized how radical the guidelines are in promoting abortion ‘rights’ among young children."
“We are hopeful the revised guidelines will exclude abortion from sexuality education. Children need to be encouraged to respect all human life from the moment of conception," Poehler added. "This has been an invariable principle among the great cultures of the world for millennia.”
The UNECSO report, entitled International Guidelines on Sexual Education, not only tells children about abortion but encourages them to be trained to “advocate” the pro-abortion position.
It is filled with advice for sex education instructors to advance the abortion agenda and calls on making children as young as 9-year-old aware of abortion and its legal status “locally and globally.”
When children become 12, the report encourages teaching them where they can obtain a legal abortion. By the time the kids reach 15-18 years of age, the report encourages instructors to teach them “advocacy to promote the right to and access to safe abortion.”
Despite the move, other pro-life advocates working on an international level say the UNFPA isn’t out of the woods yet. The agency, which has received funding from President Barack Obama, is sponsoring a pro-abortion conference in Germany.
Concerned Women for America president Wendy Wright and Samantha Singson of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, say the UNFPA is training 400 activists to demand countries fund and provide similar sex ed programs and abortions.
Sessions focus on training activists to agitate for more money from countries and foundations, pressuring governments to provide sex ed and abortion, and training youth to advocate for abortion, they said.
Materials entitled "Ensuring Women’s Access to Safe Abortion" and "I Need an Abortion" are distributed to attendees, they indicated.
They also noted Thoroya Obaid, Director of UNFPA, told the conference, "Unlike us at the UN who are held accountable by intergovernmental mechanisms, you as NGOs have more freedom and space to push the agenda ahead."
Samantha Singson stated, "In the same week that UNFPA backtracked on putting its name on the sex ed manual, it trained activists to demand ‘comprehensive sexuality education’ and access to abortion for all youth."
Wendy Wright said, "UNFPA tells people to ‘create a need’ for reproductive health care. Now we can see that UNFPA creates the need for abortion, HIV/AIDS treatments and other health care by teaching kids as young as five to be sexually active."
Related web sites:
MCCL – https://www.mccl.org
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