Pro-Life Groups Upset UN Coronavirus Relief Funds Can Promote Abortions in Ecuador

International   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   May 18, 2020   |   1:41PM   |   Washington, DC

The United Nations is using coronavirus aid to fund abortions in Ecuador, pro-life leaders in the country claim.

The Catholic News Agency reports the country’s Ministry of Foreign Relations and Human Mobility recently asked for $46.4 million in aid from the UN Humanitarian Response Plan COVID-19.

Within that UN funding package, however, is a goal to “maintain continuity of maternal, neonatal and children’s health and other sexual and reproductive health services during the pandemic,” including abortions, according to the report.

“[Our] fear is that our highest authority in Ecuador will even consider accepting this economic shakedown of $46 million in exchange for the lives of thousands of unborn children,” Martha Villafuerte of the pro-life Guayaquil Family Network told ACI Prensa.

The Guayaquil Family Network and other pro-life organizations recently began a petition urging President Lenin Moreno to reject the abortion agenda within the aid, according to the report.

“It goes against the Constitution, specifically article 45, which guarantees the right to life from conception, a right that was ratified last September 17 at the plenary session of the National Assembly,” Villafuerte said.

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Villafuerte said the UN plan would give Ecuador $46.4 million, but $3 million of that aid would be used to train “health personnel on safe, legal abortion and post-abortion care.”

Some lawmakers are speaking out against the abortion agenda, too.

“Unbelievable! The UN conditions ‘safe legal abortion’ in its humanitarian support plan for Ecuador,” Assemblyman Héctor Yépez wrote on Twitter. “While we all want to save lives, some insist on eliminating the lives of unborn girls and boys.”

UPDATE 5/26/20: The Ecuadorian government has assured Yépez that funds would not be used to legalize abortions and would only be spent in accordance with current laws.

In statements to ACI Prensa, legislator Yépez referred to the Foreign Ministry’s response. “The objective of preventing them from executing what the UN wanted, which was an attempt to advance abortion, was achieved, but now they come out with a pun to wash their faces, in which they say that they were only referring to what it was already established in the Comprehensive Organic Penal Code ”.

“I think the objective has been met, having discovered the intent, and with this letter they themselves are ensuring that they are not going to execute anything outside of what the law says in Ecuador, which is what we were looking for,” he stressed.

However, Yépez urged “to remain very vigilant so that the COVID-19 Humanitarian Response Plan is not distorted.”

The United Nations has faced prior international criticism for pushing abortions as part of its response to the coronavirus.

Jonathan Abbamonte of the Population Research Institute wrote more about it earlier this month:

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has also been urging governments to ensure uninterrupted access to abortion during the pandemic. An interim technical brief recently issued by UNFPA calls on governments to: “Ensure women’s and girls’ choices and rights to sexual and reproductive health is respected regardless of their COVID-19 status, including access to contraception, emergency contraception, safe abortion to the full extent of the law.” The technical brief also advises governments to “encourage” women who have recovered from a COVID-19 infection to seek abortion services “to the full extent of the law.”

This seems a backhanded way of saying that, when women come to African health clinics to be treated for the coronavirus, they should also be propagandized about the benefits of abortion. Health care in Africa has often been directly tied to population control programs in this way.

The WHO also faced heavy criticism from pro-life leaders this spring when it falsely claimed abortion is an essential service during the coronavirus pandemic.

President Donald Trump stopped giving United States tax dollars to the United Nations Population Fund in 2017, and, in April, he halted funding to the World Health Organization (WHO).

LifeNews Note: This story was revised/updated 5/26/20.