Madam, - Father Tom Ingoldsby (February 27th) insists on repeating the unfounded claim that the draft EU regulation on "Aid for policies and actions on reproductive and sexual health and rights in developing countries" (i.e. the Sandbaek report) seeks to promote abortion in developing countries. This is a gross misrepresentation of the facts.
The draft regulation currently being considered by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers is entirely consistent with the principles adopted by 180 countries worldwide (including Ireland) at the Cairo conference in 1994 and at "Cairo + 5" in 1999 and other development conferences in recent years. These principles support the right of parents to make a free and informed choice about the number and spacing of their children, to have access to good family planning and sexual health services, and to have access to skilled care during birth.
Over 600,000 women die worldwide during pregnancy and childbirth every year, 99 per cent of them in developing countries. Three-quarters of these deaths would be avoided if proper health services and medical support were available. Almost 80,000, or 13per cent, of these deaths result from unsafe abortions. All of us clearly have a responsibility to seek to bring this horrendous loss of life to an end.
A campaign of orchestrated misrepresentation has been waged against this draft regulation and other EU efforts in this field. Unsubstantiated allegations by Dana Rosemary Scallon about EU funds being diverted from Irish fisherman to "forced abortions in China" form part of this campaign, as does her decision to submit an amendment to the Sandbaek report seeking to "rule out" something that wasn't being proposed in it. She should apologise to Irish fishermen for misleading them and to the organisations whose work she misrepresented.
Were this campaign to succeed, the only effect would be to condemn thousands of women in developing countries to death during childbirth and to continue the cycle of poverty and destitution for many generations. - Yours, etc.,
PROINSIAS DE ROSSA MEP,
Molesworth Street,
Dublin 2.