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UNITED NATIONS
False claims in ad
Family planning campaign deceptive
A pro-life group with non-governmental organization status at the United Nations has said that an ad campaign promoting family planning initiatives worldwide was misleading.
World Life League said the campaign that began with a July 23 advertisement in the Washington Post Magazine makes false claims. “In an effort to push contraceptives, and abortion and sterilization services on the poorest people of the world, a recent ‘family planning’ ad campaign is not above making absolutely false claims,” said Mark DeYoung, director of World Life League.
The campaign is supported by the National Audubon Society, Save the Children, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Population Action International and Communications Consortium Media Center, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
“These ideologues claim that 40 million acres of tropical rainforest are being lost each year because there are too many children being born. However UN data shows that there has been relatively no loss in forest acreage over the past 20 years,” said DeYoung, referring to a UN publication, The State of Food and Agriculture. From 1970 onwards, forest areas have remained stable in most regions and have increased in Latin America.
The group also said claims that sex education helps preserve wildlife from extinction is “ridiculous” and that there is no scientific data to support the assertion. The fact is, many indigenous peoples, not trees, are near extinction because of aggressive condom distribution, sterilization, and ‘family planning’,” said DeYoung. He said the population control programs were really aimed at “ridding the world of its poorest people.”
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