The UN's War on the Poor

We see a broad range of support for this agenda in another recent report.

A commission working for the United Nations recently released a number of important reports that are unusual in their open advocacy of legalized abortion and the radical sexual rights agenda.

Each report argues that advances in these areas are necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, a five year old U.N. initiative that is scheduled for review in September at a "Millennium Summit." However, the Millennium Development Goals do not make any mention of reproductive rights; neither does the Millennium Declaration on which they are based.

There is little question of where the authors of the task force stand on abortion:

The 2004 interim report by the same Task Force on Gender Equality was still more explicit, stating that to achieve this goal, "At a minimum, national public health systems must provide quality family planning, safe abortion, and emergency obstetric services."

The interim report also stated that "the Task Force opposes the political ideologies and religious fundamentalisms that have sought to erode women's reproductive rights guaranteed through numerous international conventions.

Here is the roll call of UN agencies that have jumped on this band wagon:

The Millennium Report has been endorsed by major U.N. agencies including UNICEF, whose outgoing head Carol Bellamy stated "We could not support it more strongly."

The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) specifically referred to the Report's focus on "ensuring universal access to reproductive health" as "critical" to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Also at the end of January, the U.N. Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) released a report detailing its strategy for upcoming U.N. conferences, including the Millennium Summit.

The report states that "the Millennium Development Goals provide a valuable opportunity for advancing the gender equality agenda," and should be treated "as a new vehicle for CEDAW and Beijing implementation."

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action are considered by prolife groups to support legalized abortion.

Why does the UN dissemble so? It's because many of the developing countries resent these attempts at depopulation. Not only have countries like Bangladesh been subjected to sterilization programs and dangerous contraceptives like the Daklon Shield, Depo-Provera and Norplant, but through NGOs like the International Planned Parenthood, they are introducing vacuum aspiration abortions and now with abortion pills their task is even easier. Islam of course opposes abortion, so the UN plays a subtle game with Islamic governments like Bangladesh.

Most developing countries would not be pleased with the views of IPP's founder Margaret Sanger. Her passion for eugenics and crusade to sterilize African-Americans is a bit of history Planned Parenthood has sought to whitewash. Nor are they likely to be happy to know that billionaires like Ted Turner, Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are generous financial supporters of population control programs.

With few worldly powers defending them, the UN quietly presses it's war on the poor despite growing evidence that the population bomb is a myth.

Fact: If every one of the 6 billion of us resided in Texas, there would be room enough for every family of four to have a house and one-eighth of an acre of land-the rest of the globe would be vacant. (True, if population growth continued, some of these people would eventually spill over into Oklahoma.) In short, the population bomb has been defused. The birth rate in developing countries has plummeted from just over 6 children per couple in 1950 to just over 3 today. The major explanation for smaller family sizes, even in China, has been economic growth. The Reaganites were right on the mark when, in 1984, they proclaimed this truth to a distraught U.N. delegation in Mexico City. (The policy they enunciated has been memorably expressed in the phrase "capitalism is by far the best contraceptive.") The fertility rate in the developed world has fallen from 3.3 per couple in 1950 to 1.6 today. These low fertility rates presage declining populations.

If, for example, Japan's birth rate is not raised at some point, in 500 years there will be only about 15 Japanese left on the planet.

Other Malthusian worries are similarly wrongheaded. Global food prices have fallen by half since 1950, even as world population has doubled. The dean of agricultural economists, D. Gale Johnson of the University of Chicago, has documented "a dramatic decline in famines" in the last 50 years. Fewer than half as many people die of famine each year now than did a century ago-despite a near-quadrupling of the population. Enough food is now grown in the world to provide every resident of the planet with almost four pounds of food a day. In each of the past three years, global food production has reached new heights.

Overeating is fast becoming the globe's primary dietary malady. "It's amazing to say, but our problem is becoming overnutrition," Ho Zhiqiuan, a Chinese nutrition expert, recently told National Geographic. "Today in China obesity is becoming common."

There is one area however where the UN is not only refraining from it's population control policies, but in fact seems to be encouraging population growth. These policies are conspicuously absent in the Palestinian refuge camps that the UN adminsters. It appears the the population bomb is welcome where it is directed towards Israel.