Stop Encouraging Contraceptive Use, Civil Societies Tell Health Minister

Peter Uzoho and Godbless Eduviere

A coalition of Civil Society Organisations of Nigeria (CSON) have called on the Minister of Health, Prof. Isaac Adewole to stop encouraging the use of contraceptives by Nigerians, debunking the minister’s position that increased use of contraceptives could lead to abortion reduction.

The organisation believed that most modern contraceptives were abortifacients which cause mini and micro abortions, hence abortion and contraception achieve the same purpose of the most despicable, callous, heinous and inhuman method of killing, pointing that, the child was killed by their parents and doctors, the very persons who were supposed to protect them.

Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, with the theme “Population Control Or Improving The Living Conditions of The People”, Director-General, Project for Human Development, Mr. Jerry Okwuosa, said the Minister’s proposal was to increase the contraceptive prevalent in Nigeria from the present 15.1 per cent to 36 per cent for the purpose of reducing Nigerian’s population.

“They want us to believe that increasing contraceptive use will reduce abortions. This is a lie. Can they mention any country the world over that has reduced abortion by increasing contraception? Contraception increases abortion”, Okwuosa said.

“The undisputed truth is that not only has contraception not lowered abortion rates anywhere, it has in fact increased it because of the manufacturer-approved conclusion that ‘no contraceptive can guarantee 100 per cent effectiveness’.

“Contraception is a slippery slope to abortion, hence once a woman is tricked into using contraception, and it fails (as they always do), she will go for abortion (the ultimate contraceptive) because she considers the resulting baby a failure of technology and not her fault.

Okwuosa revealed that there were 125,000 abortions every day in the world, making abortion the commonest medical surgical procedure in the world followed by sterilisation. However, he noted that the 661 million women on contraception based on three per pent failure rate of perfect use of contraceptives, kill 652,000 babies every day, 5.2 times, the abortion carnage. He said Nigeria aborts average of 1,125,000 million babies annually, stressing that using the world ratio of abortion and abortifacient deaths; Nigeria was killing 5,850,000 million by contraception annually. He further said that, to increase contraceptive prevalent from 15.1 per cent to 36 per cent would take our contraception death toll to 13,947,020 million annually or an additional 8 million deaths by professorial antics.

“And most importantly, contraceptives are dangerous to health. The World Health Organisation (WHO), classified contraceptives as carcinogenic (cancer-causing agents), in a September 2005 report. In spite of the carcinogenicity, WHO routinely makes the unsupported claim that health benefits clearly exceed the health risks? Is it not shocking that the WHO is not concerned that women are putting cancer-causing chemicals, which are in the same category as cigarettes and asbestos, in their bodies?”

Also contributing, Human Right Activist and Public Affairs Commentator, Mr. Achike Chiude, said the statement made by the Minister of Health was unfortunate, pointing that, he, the minister, did not consider the primary obligations of the government.

“That’s a very unfortunate statement coming from the Minister because that statement does not take into consideration the responsibilities, the duties the obligations of government. And of course, you would have even been arguing that perhaps the population of this country is too much if all the potentials of these country, huge potentials; mineral potentials, human potentials, have been harnessed for the good of the country. But it is very clear that we’re far from harnessing our resources. So on that basis, it is practically impossible for any minister to come and begin to look at your population as a problem. Population is an asset. its part of the national asset and national power”, Chiude said.