Bush Roadblocks Global Women’s Health…Again

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Recent media coverage on this issue Expert Spokespeople: Peter Purdy, U.S. Committee for UNFPA Sally Ethelston, Population Action International Kirsten Sherk, Planned Parenthood Federation of America Rebecca Casanova, Family Care International Summary of the Programme of Action

November 4, 2002 - Bush Administration representatives at United Nations talks in Bangkok last week threatened to single handedly overturn the historic Programme of Action adopted at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo in 1994. (see articles by The New York Times, Associated Press, and Knight-Ridder). Once again, the White House is using its “bully” pulpit to force a politically-motivated agenda abroad that was devised to curry favor with extremists at home. What is being sacrificed in the process are the health and rights of the world’s most vulnerable women.

The painful irony here is that the United States was instrumental in brokering the groundbreaking Cairo consensus of 179 countries that implemented a human rights centered approach to promoting and preserving women’s health in slowing rapid and unsustainable population growth. These accomplishments go hand-in-hand with global expansion of girls’ education, reduction of maternal and infant mortality, and new policies to protect women and girls from violence, trafficking, and other dehumanizing treatments.

The United States should be championing these successes rather than throwing another sop to the farthest of the far right wing political operatives back home. This action demonstrates that the Administration’s strong-arm tactics are both cynical and dangerous. Women stateside may appear to be unaffected. Women in the developing world, whose governments are trying to implement the Cairo consensus, will be further disenfranchised.

The Administration falsely claims that references in the Cairo Program of Action promote abortion. Nothing can be farther from the truth. In fact, the document is silent on the subject except to say that in countries where termination of a pregnancy is legal, the procedure should be done in a safe manner—just as it currently is here in the U.S.

Governments, Ministers of Health and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) all over the world are still reeling from the Bush administration’s hijacking of the $34 million that Congress appropriated for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) to fund life-saving health services for the women and their children. They look to the United States to lead – as it did in Cairo – the global movement to protect hundreds of thousands of women’s lives through safe, voluntary contraception and reproductive health services. And, in the eight years since the Programme’s inception, women, particularly those in the poorest countries, have reaped the benefits.

To withdraw support for the U. N. Population Fund’s work in the poorest countries around the world followed by withdrawal from the globally supported mandate that guides all international work in improving women’s lives is a perilous message about the Administration’s economic and social priorities.

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