Vatican condemns abortion, birth control for
refugees
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
Rome
Putting a new exclamation point on a long-held position, the
Vatican has again condemned the inclusion of birth control and abortion among
services offered to refugees by international aid agencies.
The sharp condemnation of anti-values that
offend the dignity of the poorest and most vulnerable populations
came in a multilingual document jointly issued by three curial agencies. This
unusual procedure generally signals a matter of strong Vatican interest.
The document, dated Sept. 14, was made public by the Vatican Nov.
8. It was motivated by the 1999 issuance of a field manual for United Nations
personnel, published by the United Nations High Commission for Refugee
Affairs.
The Vatican asserts that the manual reflects
utilitarian and Malthusian values rooted in moral
and intellectual confusion about the nature of the human person. In
its attempts to promote individual freedom, the Vatican says, the manual
neglects corresponding individual and social duties.
Specifically, the Vatican condemns:
- The use of emergency contraception after forced
sexual intercourse, in part because Vatican experts regard the so-called
morning after pill as a chemical abortion. The idea
that an embryo is simply a bunch of cells, according to the
document, is a sophism
that does not have a precise biological
basis.
- Other methods of contraception with a well-known abortive
effect, such as a pill based on progestogens, injectable contraceptives
(Depo-Provera), implants (Norplant) and the IUD.
- Sterilization, often carried out in poor countries
without the victim always being correctly informed.
- Separation between sexuality and procreation.
- Promotion of a nonjudgmental approach to
extramarital relations and homosexuality. The Vatican criticizes sex education
programs in which boys and girls are introduced into the world of
individualistic and irresponsible sexual pleasure, which increases the risk of
extending the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
- The ubiquity of condoms in massive quantities,
despite their not insignificant rate of failure.
- The presence in a refugee milieu of equipment that can be used
for abortions, especially MVAs, multiple vacuum aspirators.
Though the treatment of these points in the document is unusually
extensive, in essence these points reflect longstanding disagreements between
the Vatican and international agencies, especially the United Nations, on
approaches to the reproductive health of refugees.
In 1993, for example, John Paul II issued a letter to Cardinal
Vinko Puljic of Sarajevo, in which the pope rejected suggestions that Bosnian
women who had been raped during ethnic conflict in the Balkans should be helped
to abort pregnancies.
With maximum clarity it must be stressed that the child to
be born, not having any responsibility for what happened, is innocent and
cannot, therefore, in any way be considered an aggressor, the pope wrote.
He called on raped women to transform the act of violence into an act of
love and welcome.
In 1998, the Vatican in league with Muslim nations successfully
resisted efforts to have enforced pregnancy defined as a war crime
punishable by the new International Criminal Court, fearing that it would lead
to assertions of a right to abortion.
In 1999, Vatican authorities opposed proposals to distribute the
morning after pill to rape victims in camps sheltering Albanian
refugees during the Kosovo conflict.
The new document provides good guidance for us, said
William Canny, head of the International Catholic Migration Commission,
headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The commission, sponsored by 65 national
bishops conferences including the U.S. conference, has 400 employees and
is active in at least a dozen nations.
We certainly will adhere to Catholic social doctrine,
Canny told NCR in a Nov. 14 interview in Rome during an annual meeting
of his groups governing commission. We wont distribute birth
control.
At the same time, Canny said, the situations described in the
Vatican document simply dont come up very often.
Almost half of the refugees in the world are Muslim, and
they arent pushing birth control, Canny said. This wont
be a problem in Pakistan, for example.
Canny said his field experience is that United Nations personnel
dont distribute birth control devices or provide abortions often. He also
said that while his group receives funding from the United Nations, he has
never felt pressure to either participate in or condone the provision of these
services.
Jesuit Fr. Robert Araujo, professor of law at Gonzaga University
who is part of the Vatican delegation to the new International Criminal Court,
said disagreements over reproductive issues should not overshadow a lot
of overlap of common interest and cooperation between Rome and the United
Nations.
In an interview with NCR, Araujo cited joint concerns
ranging from child nutrition to a ban on land mines.
Araujo said there will always be disagreement when
U.N. policy runs up against church teaching, but argued that strong Vatican
interventions have produced fruits. He said the Beijing Plus Five
conference in 2000, compared to the U.N. Conference on Women in Beijing in
1995, showed modest improvement in what the Holy See would consider
favorable.
John L. Allen Jr. is NCRs Rome correspondent. His
e-mail address is jallen@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, November 23,
2001
|