UNICEF: The Mask is Off!

October 18, 2004

Volume 6 / Number 32

Dear Colleague:

Halloween is just around the corner, and once again UN Children’s Fund is recruiting millions of little children to fundraise on its behalf.  But if a cute little ballerina (or superman) comes to your door bearing a little orange box marked UNICEF, give them candy instead of coins.  The UN Children’s Fund, which promotes abortion, sterilization and contraception, does not deserve to have its coffers fattened.  Read on.

Steven W. Mosher

President

UNICEF: The Mask is Off!

For several decades the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has used children to fundraise on its behalf, collecting over $100 million in nickels, dimes and quarters.  Having children “Trick or treat for UNICEF,” as the slogan went, was seen as a way for privileged American children to help poor, hungry and sick boys and girls elsewhere. 

But today’s UNICEF is not the same organization it was as recently as ten years ago.  Where it once spent its energies on child survival, primary health care, and development, it is now heavily into family planning and sex education. In the words of a recent Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-FAM) report, “UNICEF now engages in a number of controversial programs centered upon the promotion of a radical feminist ideology.”1

UNICEF has become just one more UN organization run by an unholy alliance of radical feminists and population controllers, who apparently believe that promoting the “reproductive and sexual rights” of children is more important than providing them with clean water, decent food and legitimate medical care.  The Vatican, dismayed by this turn of events, withdrew its support from UNICEF in 1996.  

Let me give you some specifics, starting with abortion. UNICEF denies promoting abortion, but it has endorsed, and even helped to draft, documents that call for the legalization of abortion.  The organization also approves of the distribution of abortion-causing “emergency contraception” to refugee women.

UNICEF also helps to fund organizations that promote abortions.  One such organization is the Population Council, the group which holds the U.S. patent for the “abortion pill” RU-486.  Another is a South African group called LoveLife, which actively encourages teenage girls to have abortions.

LoveLife provides a toll free number to Marie Stopes International abortion clinics, recommending abortion “… if you are happy to pay for the services.  Remember, it is your right to get counseling [and] an abortion. If people are unhelpful, don¡¯t get discouraged. Keep trying. You don¡¯t need permission from anybody to have an abortion.”  LoveLife, which describes an abortion as a “gentle suction,” encourages girls to “Talk to someoneþua health worker, a counselor, or someone you can trust.” Afterwards, LoveLife tells girls, “You will feel a sense of relief. Some people like to do a ritual to end the processþulight a candle, plant a flower, write a poem or go for a long walk.” No mention of post-abortion trauma here, one is merely “ending a process,” not taking the life of the child.2

This is not your mom or dad’s UNICEF.

This Halloween, “Trick or treat for UNICEF” is the scariest trick of all.

Endnotes

[1] Douglas A. Sylvia, The United Nations Children’s Fund: Women or Children First? C-FAM White Paper Series, 2003.    The quote is from the Executive Summary, pp.1-2.

[2] Douglas A. Sylvia, The United Nations Children’s Fund: Women or Children First? pp. 26-27. It should be noted that LoveLife and UNICEF ran for cover after their website was reported in the media, making significant changes to the text.


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