By Catholic News Service • Posted September 17, 2011

GENEVA (CNS) — Scientifically, and not just morally, the best way to prevent maternal deaths is to improve the medical care offered to pregnant women, not divert needed resources into promoting contraception and abortion, a Vatican official said.

The international community “has made insufficient progress in preventing about 350,000 deaths that occur annually during pregnancy and childbirth,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican observer to U.N. agencies in Geneva.

The archbishop took part in a Sept. 15 U.N. Human Rights Council discussion on “adopting a human rights-based approach” to reducing maternal mortality.

He said the Catholic Church agrees that pregnant women, like all women and men, have a right to decent health care, and, he said, the Church has demonstrated that fact by operating hospitals and clinics around the world, including in the poorest and most rural areas of the globe.

The international community “has made insufficient progress in preventing about 350,000 deaths that occur annually during pregnancy and childbirth,” said Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, the Vatican observer to U.N. agencies in Geneva.

However, the archbishop said, the Church strongly disagrees with U.N. proposals that promote contraception and abortion as important elements in projects to prevent maternal deaths.

“The World Health Organization has demonstrated that women in Africa die primarily from five major causes: hypertensive diseases, obstructed labor, hemorrhage, sepsis and infection, and HIV-related diseases,” he said.

Addressing those problems requires training and employing skilled midwives and other professionals, ensuring the availability of antibiotics and other medications, and improving emergency blood supplies, he said.

The Vatican “finds totally unacceptable any attempts to divert much-needed financial resources from these effective and life-saving interventions to increase programs of contraception and abortion, which aim at limiting procreation of new life or at destroying the life of a child,” the archbishop said.