Pro-lifers assist ‘G-77’ delegates in defying renewed push for pupulation control
With the help of Canadian pro-lifers, delegates from developing countries stood up to the population control agenda of the West at a recent United Nations meeting in New York.
Moments after getting on the airplane at LaGuardia airport in New York, Campagne Québec-Vie president Gilles Grondin told LifeSite News that the so-called “G-77” countries present at the “Cairo+5” preparatory meeting even caused an extension of the conference closing date from March 31 to April 1, because they refused to be dictated to by the official delegates from the United States, the European Union, and Canada.
“At every turn,” reported Mr. Grondin, “‘sexual and reproductive rights’ are pushed on the G-77 countries.” He noted that by these terms the West was referring to “rights” to homosexuality, abortion, contraception, sterilization and sex-education to be granted from the age of 10.
According to Mr. Grondin, the G-77 nations are demanding that the UN articles be amended to recognize the right of individual countries to exercise their national sovereignty in implementing any agreements. But delegates from wealthy nations – with Canada in the lead – are aggressively fighting such sovereignty proposals with the help of the UN secretariat.
Mr. Grondin recalled that the Vatican delegate noted that whenever world “health” was mentioned only “reproductive health” was discussed. Mr. Grondin also said it was made clear that there was no end of money from the West available for reproductive health, but that there were definite limits on funding for other health concerns.
Mr. Grondin served for three decades as a diplomat for Canada’s department of external affairs and for the United Nations, and was involved in promoting human rights in the Third World. But he confessed that because of what went on at the conference, “I was ashamed to be from the West.”
The New York meeting was the final preparation for the official “Cairo+5” meeting to be held in June. That conference is meant to follow up on the decisions of the 1994 UN Population and Development conference held in Cairo. While population control was pushed with unprecedented force at the original Cairo conference, pro-lifers managed to contain the anti-life language in the final agreement, with strong leadership from the Vatican and several Roman Catholic and Islamic countries.
Mr. Grondin reported that he was successful in lobbying many of the developing countries at the recent meeting, giving them hard evidence that a population control agenda was behind the efforts of the West and the UN to renew the campaign for universal “sexual and reproductive rights.”
“Our discourse led to a strengthening of their positions,” he explained, referring to his own interaction with G-77 delegations, and to the work of other pro-lifers from Canada and around the world.
Mr. Grondin outlined for G-77 delegates National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), the paper which has guided U.S. foreign policy since the early 1970s. He said that when they were presented with the document’s harrowing population control recommendations – which specifically target developing countries as a threat to U.S. interests – Third World delegates felt better equipped to understand and respond to the agenda being pursued by Western representatives and UN leaders.
This is an updated version of an article which appeared originally in LifeSite News, The Interim’s on-line daily news service, at www.lifesite.net.
