The Vatican’s “Human Rights” Agenda

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH | 18 November 2025
Church and State

This excerpt comes from our Chairman Dr. Stephen D. Mumford’s seminal book, The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (1996). The book is available at Kindle here and to read for free here.

"The primary focus of the Church bureaucracy is the protection of the principle of infallibility."

Postponing Self-Destruction of the Catholic Church https://t.co/ghzoANEFzf via @ChurchAndStateN

— Church and State (@ChurchAndStateN) November 18, 2025

The Vatican similarly claims the exclusive right to define human rights. It is obvious that its definition of human rights also has been formulated to meet its institutional needs. For example, 400,000 women die each year as a result of their fertility: Half of them—200,000—die early, in their teens or 20s, in the course of wanted pregnancies or childbirth. Half of them die later in their child-bearing years as a result of unwanted pregnancies, after they’ve achieved their desired family size. It is reasonable that all women should have the human right to avoid premature death posed by their own fertility by any suitable means they choose, including modern methods of contraception and safe and legal abortion. But this very basic human right does not appear on the Vatican’s list.

Webster defines fraud to be an act of trickery or deceit, especially when involving misrepresentation; an act of deluding; an intentional misrepresentation, concealment, or nondisclosure for the purpose of inducing another in reliance upon it to part with some valuable thing. The Vatican is clearly committing fraud when it intentionally deceives Catholics and non-Catholics alike by describing their list of human rights, when they full well know the list was formulated in such a way as to protect the institution from self-destruction—by protecting the principle of infallibility. It is obvious to the Vatican leadership that these 200,000 women each year are paying with their lives solely to postpone the self-destruction of the Papacy.

I find this behavior shocking, indeed one of the most offensive attributes of this institution. We have the technology and resources to prevent nearly all of these deaths with little difficulty. But not only does the Vatican exclude this basic human right from its list, it has successfully thwarted all efforts to end these needless deaths by providing contraception and abortion to these women.

All American activities that might lead people to believe that Vatican concerns about human rights are genuine should be suspended—with good reason. The Vatican’s incessant cries for “human rights for all” deceives billions of people into thinking that the Vatican is sincere in this concern. The resulting positive image of the Church buys time for the Church by slowing the loss of credibility, postponing self-destruction.

We should not be a party to this obvious deception. We should not, in any way, encourage people to think that the Vatican is the guardian of human rights. The credit fraudulently earned by the Church as a result of our own failure to vigorously challenge the deception will simply postpone the Vatican’s self-destruction.

Dr. Stephen Mumford is the founder and President of the North Carolina-based Center for Research on Population and Security. He has his doctorate in Public Health. His principal research interest has been the relationship between world population growth and national and global security. He has been called to provide expert testimony before the U.S. Congress on the implications of world population growth.

Dr. Mumford has decades of international experience in fertility research where he is widely published, and has addressed conferences worldwide on new contraceptive technologies and the stresses to the security of families, societies and nations that are created by continued uncontrolled population growth. Using church policy documents and writings of the Vatican elite, he has introduced research showing the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church as the principal power behind efforts to block the availability of contraceptive services worldwide.

In addition to his books on biomedical and social aspects of family planning, as well as scientific articles in more than a score of journals, Dr. Mumford’s major works include American Democracy and the Vatican: Population Growth and National Security (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1984), The Pope and the New Apocalypse: The Holy War Against Family Planning (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1986), and The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy (Research Triangle Park, North Carolina: Center for Research on Population and Security, 1996).

The Life and Death of NSSM 200: How the Destruction of Political Will Doomed a U.S. Population Policy

By Stephen D. Mumford, DrPH
Paperback Publisher: Center for Research on Population and Security (October 1996)
Kindle Publisher: Church and State Press (February 6, 2015)
ASIN: B00TBR5AIK
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