The Vatican’s obduracy claims another 70,000 innocent lives
What do Poland, El Salvador and Nicaragua have in common? They are all heavily under the influence of the Catholic Church. What else do they have in common? They have all written Catholic doctrine on abortion into their laws and, in the case of the last two mentioned nations, abortion is forbidden even if it the pregnancy endangers the mother’s life.
The Guttmacher Institute revealed this week that about 70,000 women die every year and many more suffer horrendous injuries as a result of being forced into illegal and unsafe abortions. Almost all of these cases were in countries with restrictive laws.
“Virtually all abortions in Africa and in Latin America and the Caribbean were unsafe,” says the report. In Asia, safe procedures outnumbered unsafe because of the large number of legal abortions in China. Most of those in Europe and almost all in North America were safe.
“Fundamental to turning the tide is preventing unwanted pregnancy, but in many countries there is little advice on family planning and contraceptive products are in short supply. “Women will continue to seek abortion whether it is legal or not as long as the unmet need for contraception remains high,” said Dr Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute. “With sufficient political will we can ensure that no woman has to die in order to end a pregnancy she neither wanted nor planned for.”
As well as the horrendous and needless loss of life, the economies of these countries are damaged by added strains on the health care system as women injured in back-street abortions are forced into hospitals for reparative treatment.
The Vatican is not the only guilty party in this arena, although its lethal obduracy must take the lion’s share of the blame. (Even as I write, Peru struggles to reform its laws while the Catholic Church is doing everything in its power to stop it).
The Guttmacher Institute is also critical of the former President of the United States, George W. Bush, who, under the influence of right-wing Protestantism, removed funding from any family planning organisation overseas that had anything to do with abortion – even if it only involved counselling. The Guttmacher Institute calls the Bush era “the lost decade”. Surely then it must regard the Vatican’s reign as the “lost millennia”.
Thankfully Obama has reversed Bush’s bigoted policies and slowly contraception is filtering back into countries that desperately need it. Condoms are not the complete answer, of course. In countries where women are little more than chattels, men will not always consent to the use of condoms, whereas pharmaceutical contraceptives give women control over their bodies.
Again, the dogmatic, unyielding Catholic Church stands in the way of giving them this control. Its intransigence kills innocent women. Its “teachings” causes misery and pain throughout the world. When will the United Nations make clear that religious demands can no longer thwart policies that have the potential to save lives?
