Canadian International Aid Tied to Abortion, Charges Doctor
Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (CFAM)
Friday Fax: September 13, 2002 Volume 5, Number 38
Copyright - C-FAM. Permission granted for unlimited use.
Credit required.
The head of MaterCare International (MCI), a group of Catholic
obstetricians and gynecologists dedicated to the care of women in the
developing world, charges that the Canadian International Development Agency
(CIDA) has refused to fund MCI's new birth trauma center in the African
country of Ghana because MCI does not perform abortions.
Dr. Richard Walley* told the Friday Fax that MCI has "been working with
CIDA for some time, but I think now they have found out exactly who we are
and they certainly don't like a Catholic/pro-life organization of
obstetricians and gynecologists such as ours. CIDA recognizes the
significance of MCI, and is therefore out to block it or destroy it."
According to Walley, MCI has assembled a "world class team of
specialists" for the trauma center, along with substantial donations of
money, land and medical equipment. The government of Ghana supports the
project. However, Walley asserts that "CIDA has finally chosen, without
adequate explanation, to ignore these accomplishments and thus the suffering
of poor African women. It should be a source of complete shame that Canada's
development agency has cynically turned its back on the suffering of women
in Africa."
"This is not the first time that MCI has witnessed international
organizations, including the United Nations, place the promotion of abortion
ahead of the care of poor women. According to Walley, "We have experienced
opposition, most recently when we tried to establish essential obstetrical
care in
East Timor, where there are no obstetricians. It was made clear to us by
the UN that we were not welcome unless we were prepared to provide
reproductive health care, which is abortion, the morning after pill,
sterilization, etc. Of course, we refused, so the UN has blocked our
participation."
Walley has also learned how the UN indirectly funds abortion. "While I
have not been present as a UN official carried out an abortion," he said, "I
have certainly seen their material and it is clear that UNFPA [the UN
Population Fund] is pushing manual vacuum aspiration, an early form of
pregnancy termination, and there is a kind of money laundering going on. The
funding that they had to provide these services had been transferred to an
organization known as the International Relief Service."
MCI will hold its second international workshop of Catholic obstetricians
and gynecologists in Rome, from October 23 to 27. The conference has been
organized along with the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations
(FIAMC). One of the primary goals of the meeting will be to address how MCI
can function in the face of such strong international opposition.
Walley believes that MCI must succeed because "UN population controllers
have corrupted health care. At the very least, I can only say that abortion
and birth control are irrelevant to a mother who has obstructed labor or who
is dying from a postpartum hemorrhage. They [the UN] will claim that they
are preventing a woman from becoming pregnant, thus preventing her from
becoming a maternal death. So they provide so-called 'safe abortion.' What
they are not addressing adequately is the essential obstetrical care which
women require."
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*Actually Dr. Robert L. Walley