BY Ian Dunn | April 11 | 
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United Nations told not to treat pregnancy as a disease
Holy See’s Permanent Observer advises care for the poor, rather than a focus on fertility reduction, is key to global development
The Vatican has told the United Nations that fertility and pregnancy must not be treated as a ‘disease.’
An official statement from the Holy See’s Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission to UN’s Commission on Population and Development described the Vatican’s grave concern that ‘no fewer than 80 countries now register a fertility rate below replacement level’.
“The unsustainable phenomenon of ageing populations can only be resolved by promoting family life and fertility,” the statement, which was delivered by Mgr Janusz Urbanczyk, (above) the Missions’s first counsellor, said. “Support systems for the ageing can only be sustained by a larger, not smaller, next generation, either by paying into a social security system, or by providing intergenerational family support directly.”
The statement also warned the international body that the ‘insistent promotion of so-called sexual and reproductive “rights”’ was an issue ‘of great international sensitivity.’
“The Holy See demonstrates that care and compassion for the poor, rather than focusing on fertility reduction, serves as a model for a truly human-centered approach to development,” it concluded.
Mgr Peter Smith, a former Chancellor of Glasgow Archdiocese, is an attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer mission at the United Nations in New York.
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