Gro Harlem Brundtland Quotes
Morality becomes hypocrisy if it means accepting mothers’ suffering or dying in connection with unwanted pregnancies and illegal abortions and unwanted children.
She was calling for universal legalization of abortion and addressing Catholic and Muslim representatives who were concerned about the morality of abortion.
Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norwegian Prime Minister, Speech, United Nations Conference on Population and Development, Cairo, 1994
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At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.
Portugal, a traditional Roman Catholic nation where the Church has always had great influence, had laws banning abortion. However, in a national referendum the Portuguese people voted overwhelming to allow abortion despite the Church’s stand. The Parliament then overwhelmingly passed a law legalizing abortion on demand up to the 10 the week of pregnancy. The President, though opposed personally to abortion signed the bill. This quotation illustrates a common occurrence in industrial democracies whereby politicians will not impose their personal moral views on the laws of society but may well have contrary personal views.
Gro Harlem Brundtland is a Norwegian politician, who served three terms as Prime Minister of Norway (1981, 1986–89, and 1990–96) and as Director-General of the World Health Organization from 1998 to 2003. She is also known for having chaired the Brundtland Commission which presented the Brundtland Report on sustainable development.
