GEAR Campaign

The GEAR (Gender Equality Architecture Reform) campaign has been introduced to the UN to consolidate four UN agencies into one, with a single under-security-general and $1 billion in funds (where do you think that will come from?). According to the UN, "the primary objective of the campaign is to convince national governments to support these civil society’s / women’s groups’ proposed initiatives in the deliberations of the UN General Assembly." The GEAR campaign endeavors to reduce maternal mortality by making abortion legal. Making abortion legal will make it a little bit safer for the women (only in the sense of modern medicine protecting against infection) but if we are trying to save mothers' lives, why not save the lives of the babies, some of them being future mothers? Making abortion absolutely illegal did work well for Chile, whose maternal mortality rate was 275 per 100,000 live births in 1960, and, because of stricter abortion laws in the 1980's, was reduced to 18.7 deaths per 100,000 live births. One of GEAR's main focal points is the IPPF (International Planned Parenthood Federation). http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/5439.html http://www.worldmag.com/articles/16531