Brasilia

Dr. Geraldo Hideu Osanai is a well-known Brazilian physician and author.

The Reuter News Agency stated on 13 November 1991 that “More than 400,000 women die each year in Brazil from botched abortions” and that “more than four million abortions were carried out every year, many of them under primitive conditions.”

Those figures appear to be blatant exaggerations when confronted with the annexed official data of the Instituto Brasileiro Geografia e Estastica (IBGE)1 and with existing data of WHO.2 The broadcasting of those figures by Reuter should seriously endanger its long-established credibility, the exaggeration in the first of the two above-quoted statements being, according to those data, on the order of one hundred to one thousand times the true figure.

According to IBGE, only 55,066 women between 14 and 50 years of age have been reported as deceased during the year 1988. It could be argued that many deaths are not reported, but this can only be significant in rural areas, for in any urban area, the dead cannot be admitted into any cemetery without an official declaration of death which is, sooner or later, computed by IBGE. Over three-quarters of all Brazilians nowadays live in urban areas. Therefore, the number of women deceased from any cause between 14 and 50 years of age can never be more than 10 or 20% greater than the number registered by IBGE for the year 1988 — say 65,000, or at the most, 70,000. Out of these, how many die of abortion? According to WHO’s 1989 statistics, in 1986 only 241 women, out of a total of 41,685 who had died that year between 15 and 41 years of age, died of abortion in Brazil.

In its World Declaration on the Child’s Survival, Protection and Development, UNICEF stated on 30 September 1990 that, in the whole world, “half a million mothers die each year from causes related to giving birth,” and that, out of that total, 20% to 30% deaths are caused by illegal abortions. This would mean between 100,000 and 150,000 women dying annually from illegal abortion IN THE WHOLE WORLD!

How can we explain those absurd contradictions among statements which are published as world news? Who can ever be interested in swelling so enormously numbers of abortions and maternal deaths which most people consider as evils?

The answer is clear: There are a few people who don’t. In the name of the “common good,” or of the State, or of their own mother country, a few influential people have been considering abortions and deaths in Brazil (among other target countries) as good things.

Proof of it is the U.S. National Security Agency’s confidential memorandum NSSM200: “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests,” of 10 December 19743 which indicates Brazil among 13 target countries as potentially harmful to U.S. interests. That document estimated 212 million inhabitants as the projected population for Brazil by the year 2000 and recommended actions and budget appropriations to keep that figure down.

As a result, birth control and sterilization campaigns were financed in countries, assisted by … the United States Agency for International Development, at such rates as 211 million dollars in 1982 and 290 million dollars in 19854. By, now contraception, sterilization and abortion have had so much effect in the 13 target countries that, instead of 212 million, under-populated, Brazil is likely to have less than 165 million inhabitants in the year 2000 and its rural population is steadily decreasing.5

In fact, the public should be informed that “less than 400 women die each year in Brazil from abortion, which has remained illegal in that country.”