Sofia Vazquez-Mellado
LifeSiteNews
August 27, 2013
Representatives of 38 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed onto a document that includes language urging the region to, “Ensure … the availability of safe, good-quality abortion services for women with unwanted and unaccepted pregnancies.”
The document, titled the “Montevideo Consensus,” calls on governments that ban abortion “to consider amending their laws … relating to the voluntary termination of pregnancy in order to protect the lives and health of women and adolescent girls.”
The representatives met from August 12th to the 15th in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, with the stated purpose of examining the progress of the UN Cairo Conference on Population and Development held in 1994.
The document also declares that countries should “guarantee universal access to assisted fertility treatments,” and the “access to a wide range of culturally relevant, scientifically sound modern contraceptive methods, including emergency oral contraception.”
Ensuring “the effective implementation from early childhood of comprehensive sexuality education programs,” is also among the agreements the participants reached.
The meeting was organized by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the Uruguayan government with support from the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA). It also brought together 24 regional and international agencies and 260 non-governmental organizations.
Over 800 participants attended the meeting, which made it one of the largest intergovernmental conferences in recent years in the region, according to ECLAC.
Daphne Cuevas, of the Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Health Network, told the press that the reaction to the conference’s outcome was “jubilation.”
The document also contains language that could be used to force homosexual “marriage” on the signatories, claiming that it is necessary to “promote policies that enable persons to exercise their sexual rights, which embrace the right to a safe and full sex life, as well as the right to take free, informed, voluntary and responsible decisions on their sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity, without coercion, discrimination or violence, and that guarantee the right to information and the means necessary for their sexual health and reproductive health.”