Argentina: UNICEF Collaborates With the Catholic Church
While the United Nations Population Fund moves to establish a rationale for population control through population census planning and policy-making processes, the Argentinean Episcopal Conference is assisting in the establishment of UNICEF networks in that country. Adopting the chameleon-like cultural and social marketing techniques perfected in other areas of the world, UNICEF brochures appeal to the largely Catholic population through the authority and language of the Catholic Church. Colorful brochures, with the combined logos of UNICEF and the Argentinean Episcopal Conference, publicize an “Agreement of Cooperation” between UNICEF in Argentina and the Permanent Secretariat for the Family of the Episcopal Conference. The brochure, which is sprinkled with quotations from the Catholic Pope, will be used in an effort to cement the collaboration.
Brazil: Ministry Complains About Sterilizations
The Minister of Health in Porto Alegre stated that his department will begin a national survey of the activities of birth control clinics and organizations in order to investigate any irregular action.
“If these data on sterilization are correct,” he said, “a crime against our country has been committed. When you see clinics open in all Brazil, financed by foreign organizations, carrying out sterilization in five minutes, and when you see the lack of responsibility of international organizations who pay doctors on a production basis, so much per sterilized woman, there appears a need to investigate those things.”
“We must investigate the abject crime of castrating a whole nation,” said the Minister. “And the worst of it all is that Brazil is the world champion of abortions, a failure of the family planning system. Any form of family planning must be reconsidered in the light of our reality, our moral background, our sense of ethics and, in the first place, our way of living together” (Jornal de Brasilia, July 15, 1990).
Czechoslovakia: Planned Parenthood
Planned Parenthood in Czechoslovakia reports that a “gentle revolution” of opposition against birth regulation, induced abortion and compulsory sex education has occurred in that country. With the new freedom, opposition has become diverse and widespread whereas previously it had been mainly Roman Catholic.
A recently established movement to protect unborn life now receives financial support from the Government. Opponents of birth regulation stress that the liberal abortion law is a relic of the monopoly of the Communist Party.
Planned Parenthood priorities in that nation include: the establishment of birth regulation clinics, the use of hormonal contraceptives and condoms, contraceptive distribution for adolescents and students, government funding for contraceptives and media promotion of family limitation methods.
Members of the Czechoslovak Family Planning Association suggest that, although contraceptive education is not included in the new School Law, the citation “moral, aesthetic, health education” could be used by teachers who want to teach birth regulation methods (IPPF/Europe, No.2, Sept. 20, 1990).
India: Discrimination Prompts “Year of the Girl Child”
The International Herald Tribune reports that in order to focus attention on the inferior status of girls, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) has declared 1990 the Year of the Girl Child. Discrimination against girls in SAARC nations (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka) is especially acute. According to the Herald, girls are considered “temporary visitors,” destined to become part of another family.
With modem technology, female discrimination begins before birth. An Indian government study showed that in Bombay, of 8,000 abortions performed after amniocentesis only one of the fetuses was male (International Herald Tribune, Sept. 29-30, 1990).
Japan: Only 400 Japanese Left in 700 Years?
Hakuo Yanagisawa, an official of the Liberal-Democratic party, told a meeting for women party members, “if (women) don’t bear for us 2.1-2.2 children, then the population will decrease” disrupting the pension plan for retirees.
Yanagisawa said the LDP faces a dilemma because it would like women to play a larger role outside the home, “…but in a way that won’t have a big impact on the population.”
“We are confused,” he admitted.
Kiyoko Ono, head of the Women’s Bureau, cited experts as saying that at the current rate of reproduction there will only be 400 Japanese in 700 years.
A government study released a week ago showed that last year, the Japanese birthrate fell to a record low of 1.57 children per woman, down from 1.66 in 1988. This amounts to a rate of 10.2 babies per 1,000 population (Mainichi News, June 20, 1990).
Mexico: Prostitutes as Sex Educators in Mexico City
The National Committee for the prevention of AIDS will train prostitutes as sex educators and promoters of the condom. It is estimated that each one of them will “educate” 10 men daily, said the director of the CONASIDA program, Gloria Ornelas. The prostitutes are already receiving training, and together with the homosexuals, they are among the best informed groups where it concerns AIDS.
Ms. Ornelas lamented the fact that the Pope condemned the use of the condom for the prevention of AIDS while he was in Africa. She claimed that fidelity and celibacy are not enough now, as the Church recommends, and pointed out that we must do away with myths and tabus (El Universal, Sept. 6, 1990).
Peru: Contraceptives and Condoms
An angry exchange occurred between President Alberto Fujimora and the Peruvian Catholic Church over a government financed birth control program. The dispute was centered on a $1 million government distribution of free contraceptive pills and condoms to Peruvian women.
Fujimora responded to Church criticism of the program by saying that some ecclesiastical sectors had “medieval opinions and recalcitrant positions” in their stand against birth control.
Later in the day, Archbishop Luis Bambaren, head of the Family Committee of the Bishop’s Conference, replied that “it is medieval that medicines do not reach those who are sick” (UPn 11/01 1636 Birth Control Controversy in Peru).
The Philippines: Too Many Babies?
President Corizon Aquino was attacked in a message from the pulpits of Catholic Churches throughout the country. In a ringing denunciation of Mrs. Aquino’s $200 million birth control program, the Church message described the effort as “evil” and “anti-life.”
Mrs. Aquino, who has been viewed as a devout Catholic, has accepted the argument that the country’s gradual economic recovery will be held back unless population growth is checked (The Economist, October 20, 1990).
