The Scottish Herald reports today that midwives in Scotland are calling for more action to prevent maternal mortality in developing world. The White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood is supporting the midwives' call. A closer look at the White Ribbon Alliance reveals some disturbing facts.Among the Alliance's members are the world's leading anti-life organisations: the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Marie Stopes International (MSI) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). The Alliance's material claims that these organisations "promote safe motherhood" - when in fact they promote abortion, the antithesis of motherhood.
The Alliance uses the usual anti-life euphemisms: "sexual and reproductive health", "informed choices", "expanding choices", "family planning" etc. It promotes contraception, claiming that there is a massive unmet need for contraceptive services. (As we know, most methods of contraception can also act abortifaciently.) And the Alliance wants "health care systems [to] [p]rovide reproductive health education and services for adolescents." (page 19 in the document, page 30 of the PDF). This almost certainly means secret abortion, without the knowledge or consent of parents.
Providing abortion and contraception does not help maternal health. Abortion is banned in the Republic of Ireland, yet that country has the world's best maternal health statistics. Providing contraception on a mass scale appears to lead to an increase in irresponsible sexual behaviour, which in turn leads to sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies (which often end in abortion).
It is also worrying that some Christian organisations are also members of the Alliance, including several Catholic dioceses and several branches of Caritas, the Catholic Church's leading aid agency. I feel sure that their membership of the Alliance is due to ignorance of its anti-life associations. I will be writing to them to urge them to leave the Alliance.
