[Paris, 17 April 2014] This announcement alone is shocking enough in a secular republican country.
It is all the more so since one of the two canonised popes will be John Paul II, the same who bears the heavy responsibility of the failure of the United Nations’ Conference on “Population and Development” held in Cairo in 1994, on a fundamental point: recognising the right of women to accede to safe abortion services.
Using his international reputation, mobilising his diplomatic networks thanks to the observer status acquired by the Vatican at the UN, the Polish pope, literally obsessed by the abortion issue, did not hesitate to ally himself with the worst word theocracies, Saudi Arabia, the Islamic Republic of Iran and other dictatorships, to obtain agreement that abortion legislation were the sole responsibility of States.
To justify his beatification, followed in record time by his canonisation, the Church asserted that John-Paul II caused the miraculous cure of two women. As against that, how many millions of women died of clandestine abortions throughout the world in the past 20 years?
Today we are able to evaluate the world-wide consequences of the status quo obtained by that pope (*)
– 21 million “unsafe” abortions are practiced each year, 40% of which concern young women from 15 to 24 years of age,
– The annual result: 8 million women suffer complications due to these abortions and 47,000 maternal deaths, or 13% of all maternal deaths.
The multiplication is simple enough…
Contacts: LDIF Annie Sugier 06 38 39 42 92
Femmes Solidaires : 06 76 71 08 54
(*) Doctors of the World, 2013: «Dangerous abortions :from refusal to act : commit to action at Cairo + 20 for better access to contraception and safe and legal abortion».
