I'm very sorry to see that Sarah Brown (right), the wife of Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, has been speaking at a conference in Los Angeles at which the legalization of abortion is being promoted for African nations. The Parliamentary Network for Critical Issues (whose email address is info@pncius.org) reported: "The Vice President for the Africa Alliance of pro-abortion NGO IPAS, Dr. Eunice Brookman-Amissah, former Minister of Health, Ghana, spoke on the Maternal Health Panel and advocated for the legalization of abortion as part of a comprehensive health strategy."Dr Brookman-Amissah is quoted as saying elsewhere: "Women tend to seek abortions when pregnancies are not supported by their partners, families or communities, when the pregnancy may threaten the woman’s health or survival or when the foetus has abnormalities. It’s not for immoral reasons ... Induced abortion is one of the safest medical procedures."
All too often maternal mortality is advanced as a reason for legalising abortion. In 2oo4, an article was published that had been written by Jeanne E. Head, a retired labor and delivery nurse, and vice president for international affairs and UN representative for the National Right to Life Committee, and by Laura Hussey, a Ph.D. student and research assistant for the National Right to Life Committee. The piece was called Does Abortion Access Protect Women's Health?.
They say: "... the main factor that has dramatically diminished abortion-related fatalities since the 1930s and '40s until today is not legalizing the procedure so much as improving the overall quality of national health-care systems."
They also write: "UN publications provide several examples in which legal abortion and lower maternal mortality rates do not coincide. Consider Britain, where abortion has been broadly legal for decades, and the nearby Republic of Ireland, which has long banned the practice. According to the 1990 UN Demographic Handbook, Ireland's maternal mortality rate for 1988 was some three and a half times lower than Britain's."
They conclude: "... the facts suggest that maternal mortality can be reduced in the developing world the same way it has been done in the developed world since 1941--by improving basic and maternal health care and the general health status of women, not by legalizing abortion."
