
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 18, 1994                   TAG: 9408180110
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: LONDON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.N. CALLS BIRTH CONTROL A WOMAN'S RIGHT

The United Nations, at odds again with the Roman Catholic Church and some Muslims, called Wednesday for all women to have access to modern birth control methods and the right to choose when to become pregnant.

``Individual choice in the size and spacing of the family is a human right,'' the United Nations Population Fund said in its annual report.

Setting the stage for next month's U.N. population conference, the fund said ``empowering women'' - by removing ``barriers to free choice'' and improving their status, health and education - is the key to slower population growth in the 21st century.

``If equality for women can be achieved, balanced population growth is not all that far distant,'' Dr. Nafis Sadik, the fund's executive director, told reporters.

``The fact is that women have been and still are disregarded and undervalued for everything they do apart from having children, preferably boys.''

The report echoes many of the points in the draft of a 20-year plan for controlling world population that will be debated at the U.N. conference next month in Cairo, Egypt. The conference starts Sept. 5 and will be attended by 180 countries.

Pope John Paul II and Muslim leaders have condemned the conference proposal, saying it will promote abortion and threaten traditional families. The Vatican had no comment on Wednesday's report.

Sadik, who is secretary-general of the Cairo conference, said participating countries already have agreed on nearly 90 percent of the plan, which she called ``extraordinary progress.''

The unresolved issues, to be decided at the conference, are the most contentious: How to deal with unsafe abortions; universal access to reproductive health and family planning services; and adolescents' rights to birth control.

Sadik predicted there would be an international agreement, but she said the Vatican and possibly some other nations will not join the final consensus.

The U.N. report, entitled The State of World Population 1994, notes that an estimated 500,000 women die annually from pregnancy-related causes, including 60,000 from unsafe abortions.

Without endorsing abortion, the report says, ``at a minimum, women have the right to know that they do not have to risk their lives for a pregnancy, wanted or unwanted.''

by CNB