Guest Column

Head of UNFPA claims she’s ‘never heard’ of common type of 2nd trimester abortion

UN Population Fund, Josie Luetke, Campaign Life Coalition

(NEW YORK — C-Fam) The head of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) berated a Canadian pro-lifer for her comments on abortion. This happened at an event in conjunction with the just-concluded UN Commission on Population and Development.

Pro-life advocate Josie Luetke of Campaign Life Coalition said, “If our goal is peace, how can we be perpetuating violence against preborn human beings through abortion, which sometimes involves the dismemberment of human beings in the womb?”

Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of UNFPA, denounced her comment as “a very dangerous thing to say,” adding that she had “never heard or seen [dismemberment abortion] happening” and that it would be “the opposite of what my noble profession tries to do, which is to uphold the sanctity of life.”

Kanem added that this was “misinformation and disinformation, which has led to deaths from measles in some of the most advanced health economies of the world.”

Dr. Pascale Allotey of the World Health Organization sat alongside the head of UNFPA, and she knows well that dismemberment abortions occur. Her interagency Human Reproduction Program published a 2023 clinical abortion guideline that discusses using “forceps to complete the evacuation of fetal parts” in surgical abortions after 14 weeks of gestation, with further guidance if not all parts can be located. Allotey did not move to tell Kanem that the Canadian pro-lifer was right and not spreading misinformation.

 

READ: Father seeks justice for deceased daughter’s alleged rape and forced abortion

At multiple events throughout the Commission, warnings about “misinformation and disinformation” were raised, often to preemptively silence pro-life and pro-family messages and promote abortion.

An event on “Science integrity in SRHR” hosted by the WHO referred to reports that misinformation about abortion is giving rise to restrictive laws around the world, particularly in the U.S. and in African countries.  However, the examples of “misinformation” used as examples are dubious.  For example, the phrase “late-term abortion” …

Read the entire article at C-Fam.

Editor’s Note: Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. writes for C-Fam. This article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-Fam (Center for Family & Human Rights), a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. This article appears with permission.

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