The World Health Organisation’s Human Reproduction Programme (HRP) includes expenditure of 11% of its budget on projects directly related to promoting abortion.
Meanwhile just 5% of the programme’s budget is being directed towards projects which challenge violence against women. This is a travesty and clearly indicates where the priorities of the WHO lie.
The HRP intends to continue funding pro-abortion research which lends an “evidence basis” which can be used to lobby governments internationally to extremify their abortion policy. In Ireland, we can already see the very heavy emphasis placed by the Three-Year Review and campaigners on the need to follow the WHO’s 2022 abortion guidelines. These guidelines include the stripping away of all gestational limits – an outlandish proposal which would permit barbaric 9-month abortions.
The WHO guidelines which are often relied upon by Irish campaigners also recommends a full decriminalisation of abortion. Considering the Irish law defines a termination of pregnancy as the intentional ending of the life of a human foetus, the proposal to decriminalise abortion would have wide-ranging consequences. It would allow untrained people to perform abortions, at any stage of pregnancy, by any mechanism with total impunity – including the infamous “back alley abortions” which pro-abortion campaigners used to reference.
The HRP also sets aside millions of euro to lobby governments internationally to introduce telemedicine abortion. Ireland still has a telemedicine abortion regime, which was introduced under the cover of being a temporary Covid-19 response but one which has been allowed to remain on. As acknowledged by the HSE in March 2022, telemedicine abortion frustrates the possibility of “personalised care”. In-person consultations “allow potential problems to be identified and mitigated. Meeting the woman in person increases the likelihood of the provider identifying any coercion or domestic abuse.”
Irish politicians must realise that the abortion agenda pursued by the WHO, as aside from whatever other positive work it may do, is totally extremist and out of step with Irish public opinion.
