The Report approved by the European Parliament (cf. previous page) aims to promote extensive information campaigns and counselling services in the developing countries, so as to implement the recommendations of the Cairo Conference in the field of sexual and reproductive health. The immediate consequence will be the provision of sex education, contraceptives, condoms, forms of safe abortion, and the distribution of drugs for the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases in the developing countries. All these interventions form part of the commitment to safeguard the health and freedom of women. Now, it is impossible not to be concerned by the conditions in which women are forced to live in the developing countries, and in particular in Africa, during pregnancy, or the conditions in which they have to give birth and the consequences of difficult births they subsequently suffer. The absence of any form of medical assistance, and particularly of gynaecological and obstetric treatment, explains the high figures for puerperal mortality and acute and chronic complications during childbirth. Nonetheless, one must have the courage to question the benevolence of the interventions decided in the Western world. They allegedly form part of the strategy of achieving so-called sexual and reproductive health. What does than mean? According to the World Health Organization, reproductive health is the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not simply the absence of illness or infirmity, relating to everything concerning the reproductive system. What is striking is the degradation of women, when the transmission of life is reduced merely to a biological fact, which has well-being as its only condition. If the concept of procreation and all that it means is jettisoned, the exercise of sexuality is reduced only to a biological fact. The personal and spiritual dimension of the sexual act is negated, and only the techniques to regulate or alter the transmission of life are affirmed. The responsibility of the West is grave, because it brings to the poor countries a culture that is contrary to the dignity of women, with purely technical projects.
