By Jeanne E. Head, R.N. and Paul Stark

Rio+20, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, will be held in June in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It will mark the 20th anniversary of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.

A statement from the National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund was accepted in advance of the conference and is posted on the Rio+20 website. NRLC is one of only two pro-life organizations with contributions. In contrast, a number of groups who advocate expanded abortion are included, such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

As is often the case, the original or “zero” draft of the Rio+20 document which will be used as a basis for negotiations throughout the year contains no troublesome language regarding abortion. However, it is expected that the abortion advocates will again try to use this conference to promote their goal of enshrining abortion as a fundamental human right worldwide as they have done during negotiations on every one of the many UN Conferences since 1992.

In all this time, they have not been able to achieve their goal through any UN-negotiated document. Nonetheless, they keep trying and have been resorting to other means to promote their abortion agenda.

And when pro-life policies are abandoned, unborn lives are lost. In a lawsuit to block enforcement of the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which had been restored by President George W. Bush in January 2001, the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), which was founded in 1992 for the express purpose of establishing abortion as an enforceable human right worldwide, boasted that several nations legalized abortion during the Clinton Administration (from 1993 to 2000) when the Mexico City Policy was not in effect.

“Foreign NGO’s (Non Governmental Organizations) receiving USAID funds were free with their private funds, to promote abortion as a human right,” and “to urge decriminalization of abortion as a human right ... ,” CRR explained.

Tragically the Obama Administration has put the United States government firmly on the side of the abortion advocates. On just his third day in office, Obama overturned the Mexico City Policy that President Bush had restored.

As a result of the Obama Administration’s policies, U.S. foreign aid funds can go to groups that perform, promote, and work to legalize abortion in other countries. Millions of our tax dollars now bankroll the aggressive promotion of abortion around the globe. The Obama Administration has also provided funding for the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), which has been complicit in China’s program of coerced abortions and sterilizations and has promoted abortion at the UN and throughout the world.

Pro-abortion UN agencies such as UNFPA and NGOs such as International Planned Parenthood (IPPF) discard truth and proper interpretation of UN documents in order to promote abortion around the world, country by country. And they are achieving some success, thanks to the Obama Administration and millions of American tax dollars.

The last three years have seen an alarming escalation of attacks, sometimes successful, on the laws protecting unborn children in pro-life countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America.

The blatantly false, but most convincing and effective, argument that has been used to promote abortion legalization is that it is needed to save women’s lives, and that thousands of women are dying from illegal abortions. It was used in the United States prior to Roe v. Wade, and it is used throughout the world today, unfortunately with some success.

That is why NRLC’s educational programs are crucial and why we must help delegates understand that, as we say in our Rio+20 statement: “Human beings are at the center of all sustainable development. The loss of mothers and babies due to a lack of even basic health care and the failure to dedicate adequate resources to save women’s lives is the greatest impediment to development in all areas. ... MDG 5 (Millennium Development Goal 5, Improving maternal health) will not be achieved by 2015 unless there is a significant acceleration in allocation and in proper direction of resources.”

Even Jill Sheffield, president of the 2010 Pro-Abortion Women Deliver Conference in DC, said, “Even now we know, beyond doubt, that unless and until MDG 5 is fully realized, none of the other MDGs will succeed and the world will be no better off than we were when the MDGs were conceived 10 years ago.”

The first draft of the document for the June Rio Conference doesn’t even mention maternal health care even though it is essential to the achievement of all of the MDGs. Women of the developing world must receive the kind of health care, particularly maternal and child health care, that has been available to women in the developed world for over 60 years. The world has failed to reach these goals because resources have been directed toward decreasing the number of children women deliver, rather than making the delivery of their children safe.

Legal abortion does not mean safe abortion. The evidence shows that a country’s maternal mortality rate is determined to a much greater extent by the quality of medical care than by the legal status of abortion. Comparisons made between nations that have strong abortion restrictions, such as Ireland and Poland, and nations that permit abortion on demand, such as Russia and the United States, demonstrates that nations with strong abortion restrictions actually have lower maternal death rates than countries that permit abortion on demand.

The key, therefore, to reduction in maternal mortality rates from all causes, including abortion, is the improvement of maternal health care, not the legalization of abortion. Legalized abortion only leads to more abortions and in the developing world—where medical care, antibiotics, and even basic asepsis are scarce or absent—legalization would increase, not decrease, the number of women who die or are harmed by abortion.

In this ongoing debate about abortion globally and in pro-life African and Latin American countries in particular, millions and millions of lives are at stake. The United States should lead the way on the side of human life, advocating for improved maternal health care for the benefit of both mothers and their children. But to do this there would have to be a pro-life President.

Jeanne Head is National Right to Life’s vice president for international affairs and UN representative for National Right to Life. Paul Stark is communications associate for Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life GO (Global Outreach).