NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      VATICAN (CWNews.com) -- Speaking at a special UN conference on world population being held this week at the Hague, the head of a Vatican delegation strongly protested efforts to abandon the set agenda and launch aggressive new family-planning efforts.

      Msgr. Frank Dewane, an official of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, spoke on February 10 on behalf of the Holy See. The meeting at the Hague is intended to follow up on the results of the UN's special conference on world population, held in Cairo in 1994.

      Msgr. Dewane complained that in appraising the results of that Cairo conference, UN officials had placed very little importance on the themes of education and the reduction of poverty-- efforts which had won universal approval from the delegates in Cairo. The Vatican delegate also pointed out that educational efforts had received little funding, while efforts to secure "reproductive health" were lavishly subsidized.

      The Vatican insists that efforts to promote "reproductive health" should emphasize education. But UN efforts, Msgr. Dewane noted, had included promotion of contraception-- including the abortifacient "morning-after" pill-- and abortion. He charged that some UN delegates are still seeking to establish an international "right" to legalized abortion-- an effort which was rejected by the Cairo conference.

      Msgr. Dewane also deplored the use of forced sterilization as a method of population control. He pointed out that the Cairo conference flatly condemned all forms of coercion in government family-planning programs.