New UNICEF Head Says Abortion Issues "Irrelevant" to Group's Mission

New York, NY (LifeNews.com) -- UNICEF, a UN agency devoted to helping children, has long been condemned by pro-life advocates for promoting abortion. However, someone new, who says abortion issues are "irrelevant" to the mission of the organization, is replacing the longtime director of the agency.

Outgoing U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman will take over at UNICEF after being nominated by President Bush for the post. She has received support from UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Veneman says she will shift the agency's attention back to helping children combat hunger and disease and away from making sure teenagers can get abortions.

When she starts work at the agency in May, Veneman will replace Carol Bellamy, the agency's director since 1995, when pro-abortion President Bill Clinton appointed her.

On Tuesday, Veneman said at a press conference that she wants UNICEF to champion "an agenda of helping children, particularly in the areas of education and health and to address the issues of hunger and malnutrition."

Asked by a reporter about "reproductive health" issues, she responded: "I don't believe that these issues are relevant to the missions of UNICEF."

As recently as October, UNICEF officials wrote members of the New Zealand parliament telling them to oppose efforts to require abortion business to tell parents when their teenage daughters are considering an abortion.

"The child advocacy group said the primary right when a girl became pregnant was not the right of a parent to know," the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.

"UNICEF denies promoting abortion, but it has endorsed, and even helped to draft, documents that call for the legalization of abortion," Population Research Institute president Steven Mosher says.

According to Mosher, UNICEF has funded the Population Council, the group that holds the U.S. patent for dangerous RU-486 abortion drug that has killed women in California and Sweden recently.

Another group UNICEF funds is a South African organization called LoveLife, which actively encourages teenage girls to have abortions.

Dismayed at the change in focus, the Vatican ended its financial support for the UN agency in 1996.

This is a good day. Finally UNICEF will stop telling countries to offer abortions and start finding was to help the poor children of the world in a way that actually helps them.

Here is the article.

-- Scott (papasquat10@hotmail.com), January 21, 2005

Answers

-- (@@@.com), January 21, 2005.

abortions are good if the foetus isn't really developed yet

a zygote or embryo don't have a life

so there cannot be taken a life away from them

you can also say that killing a plant is evil then...

but here it's about potential human beings so it's murder,but in the level of development there is not much difference

-- sdqa (sdqa@sdqa.com), January 21, 2005.

sdqa,

what point DOES life start then? at what point DO you become human? Human life is inborn from the moment of conception. from the moment the two gametes touch a unique genetic code (and soul) is established. the baby cannot become a tree, or a chicken, or anything other than a human. the problem is the understanding of life.

is it what you speak that makes you human? does that mean people of a different language are more or less human than me?

is it the fact that you have fingers that makes you human? what about amputees, are they less human then?

is it the moment we can survive on our own outside of the womb? are people on life support less human then?

OR>>> is it the imortal human soul infused from the moment of our creation which is the primary essence of human being from which we derive our humanity? truly, all things we have in the "Human developement" can be taken away, with the exception of the soul. thus we are human from the moment of conception, not because of our form but because the true nature of what it is to be human is already there in us and cannot be taken away.

-- paul h (dontSendMeMail@notAnAddress.com), January 21, 2005.

sdqa:
Can we prove to you, how you don't know what you're talking about?

Who is sdqa??????? This much we know:

sdqa is a fetus who reached term, was born and lives. This isn't a myth. sdqa is a ''zygote. sdqa is an embryo, and became a fetus and became a baby.

When she was that baby, she was innocent. It's a heinous crime to kill an innocent baby. It's a heinous sin to kill the same baby pre-natally, or the zygote. It's all sdqa; and she has to admit it. No zygote, no baby, no sdqa.

Pregnancy isn't a disease. The experts have lied to you, sdqa.

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), January 21, 2005.

Oh! Excuse me; is sdqa a man? I was saying she. Sorry. In fact, he's a fetus who was not aborted. Thank God.

-- eugene c. chavez (loschavez@pacbell.net), January 21, 2005.

Steve,

You show your ignorance of Catholicism by sending a portion of your paycheck to this garbage.

-- - (David@excite.com), January 21, 2005.

David,

How are you talking to?

-- Scott (papasquat10@hotmail.com), January 21, 2005.

Scott, he’s referring to an old thread where I said I donate (in a very modest way) to UNICEF, pointing out that UNICEF spent 99.9% (now apparently 100%) of my donation on good causes. You’d think that if David was half the exemplary Catholic he keeps proclaiming himself to be, he’d join us in rejoicing at UNICEF's change of policy. But he’d rather keep up the snide and destructive comments and finding fault with and condemning everyone but himself. That’s our Davey boy. BTW Davey if you ever find out what Catholic teaching really is, you will find that it does NOT say that any charity which the Holy See does not currently donate to is “garbage”, nor that those who give to such charities are “ignorant of Catholicism”. That description rests squarely on you, my intolerant friend.

-- Steve (55555@aol.com), January 22, 2005.