Catholic Schools for UNICEF?

Six Catholic colleges and universities have chapters on campus that, effectively, lobby for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), but the well-known multilateral agency may not itself accommodate the principles of the church.

“In fact, in 1996, the Vatican suspended its financial support—and symbolic approval—for UNICEF, a move that still rankles senior UNICEF officials and remains a public relations problem for the agency,” Douglas A. Sylva writes in The United Nations Children’s Fund: Women or Children First? Sylva’s study was published by the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute.

Despite the Vatican’s seal of disapproval, about half a dozen Catholic colleges and universities host UNICEF lobbying groups on their campuses. These schools are Boston College, Fordham, Georgetown, Loyola-Marymount-California, the University of St. Thomas (Texas) and Villanova.

“UNICEF Campus Groups are present in 27 states promoting campus-wide education, advocacy and fundraising for UNICEF,” according to the United States Fund for UNICEF. But students and even school administrators might be misled by the UNICEF promotional literature. Although children are featured prominently in the agency’s advertising, what the UN bureaucrats actually support runs more along the lines of the pro-choice movement.

“For instance, UNICEF has endorsed documents, and has participated in the drafting of documents, that call for the legalization of abortion,” Sylva writes, citing as an example the United Nations International Guidelines on HIV/AIDS and Human Rights. He quotes relevant passages from the Guidelines:

• “Laws should also be enacted to ensure women’s reproductive and sexual rights, including the right of independent access to reproductive and STD health information and services and means of contraception, including safe and legal abortion…

• “States should ensure that all women and girls of child-bearing age have…access to the available resources to…proceed with childbirth, if they so choose.”

Sylva is the Director of the International Organizations Research Group and the Vice President of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. He points out that UNICEF’s goals have shifted in its half century of existence.

“In the 1950s, UNICEF concentrated its efforts on combating epidemics and diseases like malaria, leprosy and tuberculosis,” Sylva notes. “UNICEF established field offices in regions all over the world, and began distributing ‘material assistance’ in the form of vaccines, penicillin—even automobiles—in its efforts to reach as many children as possible.”

The agency really remade itself as a virtual arm of Planned Parenthood when President Clinton appointed long-time New York politico Carol Bellamy to head UNICEF in 1995. As a member of the New York state assembly in the 1970s, Bellamy had an aggressively pro-choice voting record.

“She voted against a bill that would have provided hospitals and medical professionals with a ‘conscience clause,’ the right to refuse to perform abortions if they did not believe in the morality of the procedure,” Sylva writes. “The bill was considered an essential legal defense for the large network of Catholic hospitals operating in New York State.”

What is truly remarkable is the degree to which Bellamy’s voting record in the 1970s matches up to UNICEF pronouncements today. Catholic college and university administrators and students that reflexively support UNICEF because of its historic mission should take a look at more current events at the agency.

Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.