United Nations: access to contraception is a “universal human right”

This is what your taxes fund:

United Nations Declares Access To Contraception A ‘Universal Human Right’

For the first time, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) explicitly described family planning as a ‘universal human right.’ In its annual report, the organization said that improved access to contraception and other methods of family planning could greatly improve the lives of women around the world: ‘Family planning has a positive multiplier effect on development,’ Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin, executive director of the fund, said in a written statement. ‘Not only does the ability for a couple to choose when and how many children to have help lift nations out of poverty, but it is also one of the most effective means of empowering women. Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive. Women’s increased labor-force participation boosts nations’ economies.’

Precisely what the Obama Administration has been pushing at home and abroad.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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36 Comments

  1. wmeyer says:

    I agree. Anyone can choose to abstain, or to use NFP. Non-Catholics can choose to use condoms or the pill. With all those possibilities–all of which depend on responsible adult behaviors, of course–can we not do without the murder of innocents?

    But of course, they mean something quite different. They mean abortions on demand, for whatever reason, funded by the taking of money from the citizens by the government.

    Free services are of two sorts, one moral, the other immoral. Service, by definition, involves labor by the service provider. To place an obligation of uncompensated service on the provider amounts to slavery, and we don’t like that, so we don’t do it. Services can be provided–morally–in either of two ways: the provider can elect to donate his service, or others may elect to donate to a charitable organization. When government takes from us our treasure to compensate a provider for a service we do not need, which is rendered to someone who believes the service is a “right”, that is immoral, as it amounts to theft. Worse, still, when we are made complicit in providing services to which we have a religious objection, then the immorality is of both theft and violation of the 1st amendment.

  2. mike cliffson says:

    “greatly improve the lives of women around the world: ‘Family planning has a positive multiplier effect on development”
    Proven by who?
    I suspect:
    The First world wealthy aristocrats at Versailles behave like degenerate Romans.
    Ergo, if you behave like a degenerate Roman, you will become an Aristocrat at Versailles.

  3. Speravi says:

    Heu… Anyone get the sense that there is something praeternatural at work?

  4. AnnAsher says:

    Lovely.
    I shouldn’t be surprised. The UNFPA is pro eugenics, anti family and inherently in that anti life.

  5. chonak says:

    What idiocy. A consumer product that didn’t exist a hundred years ago is never a human right.

  6. dominic1955 says:

    Heh, if I were in charge I’d pull every dime of funding and all support whatsoever to the U. N.

    Now try making a go of issuing stupid proclamations and sitting around doing nothing without U.S. goodies. Parasites…;)

  7. Christopher says:

    ‘Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive.’

    Where, I suppose, those who do not use contraceptive are absolute morons who cannot put two and two together?

    How, also, does one become empowered in their household?

    God Bless.

  8. Christopher says:

    dominic1955
    ‘Now try making a go of issuing stupid proclamations and sitting around doing nothing without U.S. goodies. Parasites…;)’

    Also tyrants, they force these abominations on very small nations, yet when it comes to nations like China, they are nothing but mere cowards.

    God Bless.

  9. wmeyer says:

    Heh, if I were in charge I’d pull every dime of funding and all support whatsoever to the U. N.

    And then raze the structure. Turn the land into either a park, or a manufacturing complex. Either way, more useful than now.

  10. mamajen says:

    I cannot understand how a recreational activity has come to be determined as a human right that we all must pay for. Unlike food, shelter, basic healthcare, etc., recreational sex has ZERO to do with survival. If you don’t want babies, don’t make them…it’s that simple. If women are being forced to have sex against their will, THAT should be addressed, not simply throwing pills at them so they don’t get pregnant.

    This is all so ridiculous.

  11. wmeyer says:

    I cannot understand how a recreational activity has come to be determined as a human right that we all must pay for.

    Amen.

  12. Withdraw from the UN, level the UN building, are my only two thoughts after this.

  13. jeffreyquick says:

    I agree with the UN: sinning is a universal human right. So is not sinning. It’s that free will thing. Make me sin by paying to facilitate your sin (which is where this is going), and that’s a different issue entirely.

  14. rodin says:

    Get the US out of the UN and the UN out of the US!

  15. thefeds says:

    What idiocy to think that something that wasn’t even around to any great measure more than sixty years ago could somehow be conceived as a universal human right! Driving an automobile has been around nearly twice as long, and is ubiquitous across the globe, but governments universally view it as a privilege to be licensed, rather than a right to be paid for by taxpayers. Hopefully, someone from the US State Department has a few functioning brain cells left.

  16. Ignatius says:

    UN delenda est.

  17. chantgirl says:

    I agree with those who advocate starving the beast. However, the US government is the one funneling our tax dollars to the UN, so it seems that if we want to starve the UN, we’re going to have to deal with our own government first. Sadly, government spending now makes up such a large percentage of our GDP that simply cutting our spending a little can throw our economy into a recession or depression. There is no way to resolve any of this without some serious pain. I feel like I’m watching a the herd running full speed for the cliff.

  18. Boniface says:

    Can anybody (please) provide the most appropriate person(s) and their and address(es) for us to contact to protest this?

    Thanks!

  19. Charivari Rob says:

    Now, now – everyone just calm down. They can’t possibly use that to advance anything unacceptable.

    After all, the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms the Right to Life – right there in Article 3:

    “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.”

    …and there’s Article 6:

    “Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.”

    In the face of such guarantees, no one would dare to push abortion under the guise of “family planning”.

    Right?

    Anybody?

    (Is this thing on?)

  20. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    Further worth reading (with link to full report text – which I have not yet read):

    http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/un-declares-birth-control-a-39human-right39

    Apparently, no explicit call for abortion, but weaselling by way of promoting abortifacients and denying embryonic humans being are just that, human beings, and by the vague breadth of “family planning” in the direction wmeyer well indicates: ” They mean abortions on demand, for whatever reason, funded by the taking of money from the citizens by the government.”

    “Access to […] other methods”, indeed! For Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin must know that the only way, strictly speaking, for “a couple to choose when and how many children to have” is to kill the ‘unwanted’ ones, everything else being choosing to attempt to have, or to avoid having.

    But apparently they have other sweeping ambitions as well. Ben Johnson writes, “The report calls on nations of the world to fight ‘cultural barriers,’ as well as legal constraints, that cause women to forgo the use of birth control.” That presumably (though not – yet- explicitly?) means using state force to silence religious and other natural justice-minded objectors who might encourage “women to forgo” killing, etc.

  21. Kevin says:

    Contraception helps “lift nations out of poverty”. At least until 50 or 60 years down the line when all the “free lovers”, who made sure to have only one child, lest they not be able to afford those extra cars and holidays, find themselves aged and with no younger, extended family to support them (through taxes or more directly). I suppose the “solution” then will be to declare euthanasia/assisted suicide a human “right”, nay obligation.

  22. bookworm says:

    “Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive.’”

    Classic case of putting the demographic cart before the horse. Nations don’t become wealthy (or less poor) because they stop having babies. They stop having babies (or more precisely, have fewer of them) because they become wealthy. As a society transitions from agricultural (where having lots of kids is an advantage because they can help you work your land) to industrial (where having lots of kids is a major expense because they need to be sent to school, etc.), the overall standards of living rise, and educational expectations, particularly for women, rise, people just naturally wait longer to marry, and have fewer children when they do. Also, in a society where infant and child mortality is high the “replacement” birth rate will be higher than the standard 2.1 children per woman for First World countries. A couple in a country like, say, Haiti or Bangladesh may have to have 6 or 7 children in order for 2 or 3 to make it to adulthood. Swooping down on them and making them stop having babies isn’t going to make them any richer — it’s just going to leave them with no family to care for them in a country with no social “safety net.”

  23. Imrahil says:

    Dear @Rodin,

    the… er… problem with getting the US out of the UN is that in that case it would lose its veto. And, of course, could perhaps be subjected to humanitary intervention.

    Stopping the money for these side-programs would be a more effective way, which still also would uphold the something good that after-all is in the UN. – Though that requires a US administration that acts for the good.

  24. Gail F says:

    What a load of crap. Western societies began having fewer children LONG before there was effective (or any) birth control available. It is true that there is a correlation between having smaller families and being more prosperous — but the being more prosperous part has historically come FIRST. You cannot make people be prosperous by ensuring they don’t reproduce. This is an attempt to control the poor, so that the rich can have more resources. How can we have all our gadgets and fly around in our planes and throw away all the food we don’t eat if those poor Third World people keep having more children, as they do in their selfish and irresponsible way? They should be responsible and rich and wasteful like us!!!!!! Seriously, it is much better to help people be healthy and have enough to eat just the way they are without attempting to change everything else about them until they are exactly like us. Talk about arrogance.

  25. wmeyer says:

    “Women who use contraception are generally healthier, better educated, more empowered in their households and communities and more economically productive.”

    Correlation does not imply causation. Or in terms better suited to this blog, cum hoc ergo propter hoc. There are many observations which could be offered, such as the reality that in societies with high infant mortality, large families are prevalent. The converse is that in societies with low infant mortality, there is little pressure to reproduce.

    Even so, as has already been observed, contraception (in its current form, only decades old) can’t be a “right.” And as I have previously argued, declaring a service to be a “right” is immoral, as it implies some form of slavery.

  26. Andrew says:

    Scurra furiosus, improbus, petulans, protervus, turpis, flagitiosus, obscaenus, maledicus, nefandissimus, scelestus, facinorosus, flagitiosus, dedecorus, socors, tardus.

  27. jaykay says:

    “… find themselves aged and with no younger, extended family to support them… I suppose the “solution” then will be to declare euthanasia/assisted suicide a human “right”, nay obligation.”

    Rem acu tetigisti – and I’d say it’ll be definitely more of an “obligation” than a right, knowing the modus operandi of those people. Stop burdening Mother Gaia, and all that. While I don’t believe the conspiracy theorists and the Bilderberg/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove etc. cabal thing, I sure as hell do believe that the nihilist eco-freak mindset – in all its mindlessness – is more than capable of introducing enforced euthanasia programmes without blinking an eye. They’re just waiting for their moment, which is not quite here yet but slouching ever nearer.

  28. The Masked Chicken says:

    After 1.3 billion years of evolution, this is the height of thinking we’ve arrived at? Proof, positive that evolution can produce stupidity.

  29. Eric says:

    “contraception” has a positive multiplier effect.

    tap tap tap…. Hello… Mcfly.

  30. Greg Smisek says:

    Women who use contraception are … more economically productive. Women’s increased labor-force participation boosts nations’ economies.

    Homo economicus — Marx strikes again! Sounds like a fair trade-off: instead of producing fellows of the saints, they’re producing mammon.

  31. Sissy says:

    Helen Alvare, who is doing great work fighting the HHS mandate, has assembled a fact sheet rebutting the UNs nonsense:

    http://womenspeakforthemselves.com/docs/WSFTrisk_compensation_fact_sheet.pdf

  32. James Joseph says:

    I am little confused.

    If contraception and marriage a basic human right then why am I not supplied by the government or at least why does not the government assign me a requisite male/female to enage these particular human rights with?

  33. Andkaras says:

    I’m afraid a great portion of our culture has gone “sensuum defectui”

  34. NoraLee9 says:

    At the very least make those UN Dippos pay for their Manhattan parking, like the rest of us!

  35. Margaret says:

    Sissy’s link to the “Women Speak for Themselves” pdf is worth the time to click through and peruse. I don’t recall seeing the prisoner’s dilemma applied previously to women, dating and sex, but it fits perfectly. Helen Alvaré is a treasure.

  36. Sissy says:

    James Joseph said: “If contraception and marriage a basic human right then why am I not supplied by the government or at least why does not the government assign me a requisite male/female to enage these particular human rights with?”

    Given them time, James Joseph, give them time. They are currently working on micro-managing your health. They’ll get around to providing you with your government-issue spouse next year.

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