A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 2, Issue 3 - Winter 2002/2003
Exporting the U.S. Domestic Anti-Family Planning and Anti-Woman Agenda
Thirty years ago the United States assumed a leadership role in the international effort to expand access to voluntary family planning and related health services.
At the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the United States was a key leader in orientating international population assistance toward an increased emphasis on providing quality, affordable reproductive health services within the framework of women's human rights.
The United States took a similar leadership role at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, as well as during the fiveyear reviews of both of these conferences in 1999 (ICPD+5) and 2000 (Beijing+5).
The ICPD marked a paradigm shift when governments agreed that women's empowerment is key to progress. Instead of seeking ways for states to control women's fertility, 184 governments agreed on a strategy founded on individual rights.Women all over the world have become more conscious, skilled, and active about their reproductive health and rights. At the same time, governments and NGOs have invested in more widely available and better quality contraceptive services and have worked to improve women's educational, social, and economic status.
Despite the U.S. assertions of support for international family planning and women's rights, its recent actions indicate that the current Administration is intent on exporting its domestic anti-family planning, pro-abstinenceonly- until-marriage, and anti-women's rights agenda-distancing itself from its own medical community and from the overseas consensus on reproductive and sexual health and rights issues.
At the Fifth Asian and Pacific Population Conference (APPC) this December in Bangkok, the U.S. Administration threatened to disregard its ICPD obligations.The U.S. negotiators stated that unless the terms "reproductive health care" and "reproductive rights" were "withdrawn or modified," the U.S.would not reaffirm its commitment to the agreement. All other 60 member countries of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific agreed to the conference's Plan of Action adopted at ICPD.
The language on reproductive health and rights agreed to at the ICPD is vastly supported by the international community.
"This document was agreed to by everybody in the world, including the Vatican, except the Vatican took exception to language on reproductive rights, saying they didn't want that interpreted to mean abortion.The document affirms that where abortion is legal, it ought to be safe," said Tim Wirth, a former Democratic senator who headed the U.S. delegation to Cairo in 1994.
"Cairo was about empowering women and focusing on the special needs and new circumstances surrounding reproductive health issues," said Wirth
This is only the most recent action on the part of the U.S. Administration's disturbing timeline that began with President Bush's first-day-in-office decision to reinstate the "global gag rule" in January 2001.
On January 22, 2001-also, the 28th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on legalizing abortion in Roe v.Wade,-President Bush enacted the global gag rule which restricts foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that accept U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) international family planning funds from using their own, non-U.S. money to provide legal abortion services, to advocate for abortion law reform, or even provide full and accurate information to patients.
Women's rights organizations and international family planning groups argue that the policy impedes the doctor-patient relationship, freedom of speech, respect for national sovereignty, and promotion of democracy.
While supporters of the global gag rule maintain that the policy is strictly anti-abortion, its opponents argue that it is also anti-family planning and anti-women.The policy does nothing to improve access to contraception. By prohibiting U.S. family planning assistance in hospitals and health clinics in developing countries that also provide legal abortion, or even abortion-related information, it also prevents financial assistance from going to these health clinics and hospitals to increase access to contraceptives and decrease the number of unsafe abortions.
At the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children in May 2002, the Bush Administration advocated, along with delegates from the Vatican, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria, to restrict sexuality education and information to "abstinence only until marriage."While the Administration failed in this effort, it was still able to make a push for its domestic abstinence- only-until-marriage agenda and take another step to make it global.
The Administration made it clear that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), rather than the State Department, would take the lead in staffing and preparing international meetings where matters relating to reproductive and sexual health were concerned.
In the past, the U.S. delegation at international meetings was composed of career international policy and population diplomats from the State Department, USAID, and DHHS with an NGO advisory board of international population advocates and service providers such as the Population Council and Population Action International.There has been a dramatic shift from international policy and population experts to political appointees with little or no international familiarity or population experience and private-sector advisors drawn from conservative organizations such as Concerned Women for America.
In June 2002, after heavy pressure from anti-choice and anti-family planning groups due to reports of supposed coercive abortions and sterilizations in China, the State Department announced it was pulling $34 million appropriated by the U.S. Congress for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).A U.S. fact-finding team that traveled to China found no evidence that the United Nations (U.N.) fund supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization. UNFPA's work in China is an effort to put voluntary family planning services in place. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has told the Senate that UNFPA does "invaluable work" and "provides critical population assistance to developing countries."
Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, director of UNFPA, says the $34 million would have helped prevent two million unwanted pregnancies, 800,000 induced abortions, 4,700 maternal deaths, and 77,000 infant and child deaths worldwide.
In October 2002, the State Department announced that it may withhold funds from the World Health Organization's (WHO) Human Reproduction Program because of anti-choice activists' objections to research being conducted on mifepristone, a non-surgical abortion procedure also known as RU-486.
In addition, Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and nine other members of the U.S. House of Representatives sent a letter to the head of USAID objecting to a recent $65 million grant to the Population Council because of its work on mifepristone. Smith also objected to the Population Council's strategy promoting condom use (as opposed to abstinence) to reduce HIV infection among youth.The letter further suggested that the global gag rule be expanded to cover HIV/AIDS funding (it currently applies only to population funding).That would mean that many reproductive health care providers who are on the front lines of fighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic in developing countries would be prohibited from receiving U.S. funding.
Advocates worldwide need to continue to publicize the Administration's policies that harm and jeopardize sexual and reproductive rights and continue to work toward policies and programs that will protect and improve the health of women and young people worldwide.
For more information, contact:
Action Canada for Population and Development
Zonny Woods
Suite 300
260, rue Dalhousie St.
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 7E4
CANADA
Phone: 613.562.0880
Fax: 613.562.9502
E-mail: zonny@acpd.ca
Population Action International
1300 19th Street N.W., Second Floor
Washington, DC 20036 USA
Phone: 202.557.3400
Fax: 202.728.4177
E-mail: pai@popact.org
Web site: http://www.populationaction.org
Population Council
One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
New York, NY 10017 USA
Phone: 212.339.0500
Fax: 212.755.6052
E-mail: pubinfo@popcouncil.org
Web site: http://www.popcouncil.org
Web Master: siecus@siecus.org