§ Lord Braine of Wheatleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they regard abortion and so-called reproductive health as a universal human right.
§ Lord CheshamThe Government subscribe to the Programme of Action agreed at the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development. This states that people with good reproductive health "…have the capability to reproduce and the freedom to decide if, when and how often to do so. Implicit in this last condition are the rights of men and women to be informed and to have access to safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods of family planning of their choice, as well as other methods of their choice for regulation of fertility which are not against the law…"The Programme of Action also states that "in no case should abortion be promoted as a method of family planning".
§ Lord Braine of Wheatleyasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will publish in the Official Report a list of those countries who entered reservations to Chapter VII and VIII of the report of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo because of their opposition to abortion.
§ Lord CheshamThe following countries entered reservations on text relating to abortion in Chapters VII and VIII of the Cairo Programme of Action:
- Argentina
- Dominican Republic
- Ecuador
- El Salvador
- Guatemala
- Holy See
- Honduras
- Libya
- Malta
- Nicaragua
- Paraguay
- Peru
- Yemen