NEW YORK (C-Fam) An organization with a singular focus on abortion is targeting the African continent. Two events at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York this week [week of March 22, 2024] illustrate how they are insinuating themselves into health ministries by using disability rights. They also hope to ensure that increased budgets for “reproductive health” will ensure a steady stream of government funding for abortion.
Among the feminist groups present at CSW, Ipas stands out because it exists for only one purpose: to promote and provide abortion internationally. One of their events detailed a project to advocate for access to health care for women with disabilities in Nigeria, a country with strong pro-life laws.
The project was described as an effort to increase contraceptive use among deaf women and women with physical disabilities, but the Ipas representatives made it clear that the true purpose of the project is far more insidious and controversial. In the name of educating health workers about how to better serve disabled people, Ipas conducts “values clarification” trainings, which it has long used to indoctrinate health care providers and break down their moral objections to abortion.
One attendee at the event questioned how Ipas’s focus on disability rights squares with the fact that unborn babies diagnosed prenatally with disabilities like Down syndrome are often selectively aborted. Another attendee—an obstetrician/gynecologist—wondered what Ipas was doing to ensure that pregnant women with disabilities had access to prenatal care, not just contraceptives and abortion. Ipas representatives dodged the questions, although one panelist, a deaf woman from Nigeria, shared the story of how her own experience accessing prenatal and delivery care was impeded and delayed because of communication barriers.
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In 2021, Ipas released a new version of its “values clarification” curriculum with a focus on disability. Like its prior curriculum, its ultimate focus is convincing health workers to be comfortable providing abortions. Every mention of the word “prenatal” refers to how testing for disabilities “sometimes gets misused as a reason to restrict abortion access” and calling on disability rights activists to join with abortion groups in advocating for “the right to abortion on demand for any reason” as well as social support for children with disabilities.
A second Ipas event focused on the need for financing for “safe abortion” to achieve gender equality. The keynote speaker was the African Commission Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie. She focused her remarks on the Maputo Protocol, a regional agreement that calls for legal abortion under certain specific circumstances, such as rape, and credited Ipas with assistance in drafting general comments on how the protocol should be interpreted.
Tweet This: Ipas, which exists to promote & provide abortion internationally, inserted itself at 2 events at the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women
The presence of pro-life attendees at both Ipas events was noted. The Commissioner told Devex that she was initially pleased at the high turnout, but then disappointed that “that was the interest on the opposite side.”
In her view, their questions about protecting children’s lives and focusing on prosecuting rape rather than focusing on abortion for rape victims were “not done to hold a dialogue, but rather to disrupt discussions.”
“From their look and accent, these people were not African,” she said.
While Ipas has local offices and staff in several Africa countries, according to its financial statements, “Ipas receives its principal funding from private foundations as well as from European governments.”
Editor's note: Rebecca Oas 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.
