SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH ABOUT MATERNAL DEATHS
BABETTE FRANCIS, JULY 10, 2010
Scientists have been told by United Nations staff and
abortion advocates that they should “harmonise” their findings
on maternal death numbers so that the press cannot report numbers that
conflict with the ones abortion advocates use to lobby policy-makers and
major donors. This instruction was reportedly given at a prestigious symposium
on maternal and child health research, hosted by the University of Washington’s
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the British medical
journal Lancet at the end of May. This was reported by Susan Yoshihara,
PhD and Catherine Glenn Foster, researchers for the New York-based Catholic
Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), which acts as a pro-life,
pro-family “watch dog” on UN activities.
Ann Starrs, president of the abortion advocacy organisation Family Care
International (FCI) told scientists at the Washington symposium to “lock
all the academics in a black box and have them come out with a consensus
set of numbers” or “at least hide that there is disagreement”
and “infighting”. FCI is the founder of Women Deliver, which
hosted a UN-backed “reproductive rights” fundraising conference
in Washington in June.
Lancet had published an IHME study in April that refuted the UN-sanctioned
highly controversial figure of 500,000 annual maternal deaths. For two
decades, abortion advocates have attributed many of these supposed deaths
to the absence of safe and legal abortion. However, Lancet gave a much
lower estimate of 342,900 maternal deaths, with 60,000 of those from HIV/AIDS,
and said the number has been declining since 1980.
Tessa Wardlow, chief of statistics at UNICEF, shared Starrs’s concerns,
saying that there is a “system in place for harmonising estimates
for mortality, and I would invite IHME to participate in that process
and contribute to the methodological dialogue”.
Lancet editor Dr Richard Horton responded that researchers should not
come to a “consensus” or “harmonise” their findings,
but rather should have a “scientific summary view of what the totality
of available evidence should be”. He argued this should not be centred
at the UN, but housed “independently within the scientific community”.
He said: “Unless we subject numbers to that peer-review process,
I think we are accepting second-class data, and that applies wherever
the numbers come from.”
Horton told the press that he had withstood significant pressure from
activists not to release the IHME study figures until after major global
funding conferences concluded this year. These include the G8 summit,
the UN General Assembly and the recent Women Deliver conference.
Highlighting the tension in the room between the researchers’ desire
for openness and activists’ call for secrecy, Horton said, “For
God’s sake, your country, the United States was founded on the press!
One of the best documents in the history of humankind is the Federalist
Papers; if it wasn’t for the press, we wouldn’t have a United
States! So learn to love the press.”
Scientists flatly refused to back up the 20-year-old claim by UN agencies
and activists that artificial family-planning, including abortion, improves
maternal health. Hans Rosling, professor at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute,
referred to Sri Lanka’s decline in maternal mortality and asserted
that the island-nation benefited from asphalt roads and other infrastructure
put in place under its period of colonialism. Not mentioned was the fact
that abortion is highly restricted there.
At the Women Deliver conference in Washington DC in June, the National
Right to Life Committee provided pro-lifers with bright pink bags with
a “Celebrate Motherhood” logo. In the bags were a colour brochure
showing maternal mortality rates and proven methods for reducing maternal
mortality, a foetal model, a foetal development brochure and a “tiny
feet” pin. The bags were confiscated by Women Deliver volunteers;
but after a complaint by Jeanne Head of International Right to Life, some
were returned.
Molly White, of Women for Life International, who represented Endeavour
Forum at the Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York in
March, covered the Women Deliver 2 conference as a journalist. She reported:
“During the entire conference, we heard over and over again that
women had the right to information. Obviously, the right to information
only pertains to information about a woman’s right to sex, birth
control and abortion, but there was absolutely no information on the risks
involved. … It was another International Planned Parenthood Federation
promotional event which has the potential of making billions more dollars
if abortion laws are stricken in every country. “On the last day
of the conference, speakers were more brazen then ever. The plenary was
on educating participants on how to break abortion laws and get access
to medicines that would cause abortions. They did not, however, give advice
on what to do if the woman started haemorrhaging or if she went into toxic
shock. They didn’t even discuss the risks involved.”
Molly White’s questions on health risks associated with contraception,
and what help was available to women who suffered physical damage after
legal abortions, caused embarrassment. She was probably lucky she was
not locked up in a black box along with the dissident scientists.
Babette Francis, B.Sc. (Hons) is co-ordinator of Endeavour Forum Inc.
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