Amnesty International, the formerly respected human rights organization that upset supporters years ago with its decision to promote abortion, is pressuring the national of Peru in South America to legalize it.
Salil Shetty, the secretary general of the group, is presenting Peruvian official with a petition reportedly signed by 11,000 people asking for abortions to be allowed. The petition is said to contain signatures from abortion advocates from Peru and other countries.
Zarela Solis Vasquez, the Peru health minister, was set to meet Shetty today, according to a Catholic News Agency report.
The news site indicates Amnesty International has been distributing a report throughout Peru called “Fatal Deficiencies: The Barriers to Maternal Health in Peru,” which makes the false claim that legalizing abortion would reduce maternal mortality numbers. The report wants abortions legalized in cases when the baby potentially has birth defects or when a teenage is pregnant.
The number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 33%, a new report shows.
Scott Fischbach, director of the MCCL Global Outreach program, told LifeNews.com today in response to the study: “It is a big step in the right direction to have the UN acknowledge progress on maternal mortality. The facts are clear that we can protect women and their babies with adequate health care, not abortion.”
The new WHO numbers follow a seminal report in the British medical journal The Lancet in April showing a dramatic decline in maternal deaths worldwide.
The Lancet reported 526,300 maternal deaths worldwide in 1980 and 342,900 deaths in 2008, a reduction of 35 percent.
“This new study is further proof that it is clean water, clean blood and adequate access to health care—not abortion on demand—that will help pregnant women and their babies globally,” Fischbach told LifeNews.com at the time.
“For years the advocates of abortion have used the maternal mortality issue to overthrow pro-life laws in country after country,” Fischbach continued. “Without the maternal mortality argument, another gaping hole exists in their push for abortion on demand.”
The solution to illegal abortions and high maternal mortality rates is very simple Fischbach explains: provide hope, opportunity and support for pregnant women by ensuring a clean water supply, clean blood supply and adequate health care. Statistics confirm that these save women’s lives — not the legalization of abortion.
Ireland, a country with pro-life laws in place, has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world, and Nepal, a country with abortion on demand, has one of the highest maternal mortality rates at 830 deaths per 100,000 live births.
According to the new study, maternal mortality increased in the United States by 42 percent from 1980 to 2008. Abortion was legal in the U.S. throughout all nine months of pregnancy during this 28-year period.
The Lancet researchers were surprised that three of the richest countries in the world actually showed increased maternal morality; the United States, Canada and Norway were three countries with the most liberal abortion laws in the world.
The Lancet’s editor Dr. Richard Horton told the New York Times he was pressured “by [pro-abortion] advocacy groups” to delay publication of the report.
