World Health Day at the White House - Event Speakers

President Clinton
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Dr. Enyantu Ifenne of Nigeria
Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY)
Representative James C. Greenwood (R-PA)

Location: The East Room, The White House
Time: 2:01 P.M. Edt Date: Friday, April 7, 2000

PRESIDENT CLINTON: (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you very much. Please be seated.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the White House on this beautiful day.

I want to thank all of you who have joined us, and particularly the members of Congress who are. Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jim Greenwood will speak in a moment. But I also want to acknowledge the presence of representatives Nita Lowey, Nancy Pelosi, Ellen Tauscher, Lois Capps, Connie Morella, Joe Crowley and Barbara Lee. Thank you for being here. (Applause.) And I thank Secretary Shalala for being here and for her strong advocacy. (Applause.) Thank you. And Secretary Albright and Dr. Ifenne of Nigeria will talk in a moment. We are joined today by the ambassadors from Albania, Colombia and Nigeria. We welcome them. (Applause.)

And I want to thank the foundations and the nonprofits, who are here, who have stepped up their own support for women’s health and family planning, and all the individual citizens, who have also come here to take part in this endeavor.

This week Congress begins debate on a new budget. And we have a new chance to return America’s support for family planning around the world to the level it ought to be, a new chance to lift the international family planning debate out of partisan politics and back to what it’s really about, human potential and human lives.

I have proposed an increase of $169 million in USAID’s international family-planning assistance this year and $25 million to support the U.N. Population Fund.

Members of the administration and I have made clear at every opportunity that we are ready to fight, and I know you are ready to help us win. (Applause.)

One person who is not here today, who wanted very much to be here, is Hillary. But she’s out struggling to make sure I gain a space in the Senate spouses’ club. (Laughter.) But I would -- (interrupted by applause). I would like to quote something she said last year at The Hague Forum:

"We know that no nation can hope to succeed in the global economy of the 21st century when its women and children are trapped in endless cycles of poverty, when they have inadequate health care, poor access to family planning, limited education, or when they are constrained in sad social or cultural customs that impoverish their spirits and limit their dreams."

Two weeks ago, I was in a little village in India, a country with nearly a billion people, and a per capita income of about $450 a year. I met the women who, with the smallest amount of encouragement, had started the women’s dairy cooperative and taken over the local milk business. I saw their community center’s computer, that any village woman, poor or nearly illiterate, can use to get the latest information on caring for a newborn child. Think about how life in that one village is changing for the better because women have access to education and health care.

Hillary and I have seen again and again around the world, in the smallest, poorest, rural villages on every continent, how empowering women lifts the lives of individuals and transforms the future of communities. Family planning is a vital part of that empowerment. It allows women and families to make their own choices and plan their own futures. If you believe God created women equal, if you believe every society needs women’s contributions to succeed, then you must be in favor of returning decisions on family life to the hands of women and their families.

Around the world, the complications of pregnancy kill about 600,000 women every year. We all agree on fighting child and maternal mortality, just as we’re working to eradicate polio and TB. But maternal mortality has been stuck at the same level for more than a decade now, even though we know family planning could help women bear healthier children and save the lives of 150,000 women a year. If you’re in favor of healthy mothers raising healthy babies, you ought to be in favor of family planning.

Around the world, 34 million people are now living with AIDS, and in the developing world, almost half of them are women. Last year AIDS killed 1.1 million women, leaving broken communities, crippled economies and millions of orphaned children. If you care about stopping the spread of AIDS, you ought to care about empowering women to make safe choices for themselves and for their children.

Around the world, more than a billion young people are entering their reproductive years -- the largest generation in history. And the one behind it is two billion strong. More than 150,000 million women worldwide would like to limit or space their children, but they have no access to contraception. The option these young people have and the choices they make will have vital consequences for every one of us, and will in large measure shape the world of the 21st century. So if you’re concerned about the health of our planet and about the health of everyone on it, you ought to support our family planning assistance around the world.

America has a profound interest in safe, voluntary family planning; a moral interest in saving human lives, a practical interest in building a world of healthy children and strong societies. And because we are a nation that believes in individual freedom and responsibility, we have every interest in supporting others around the world who seek the same rights and responsibilities we ourselves enjoy. That is why we have consistently supported family planning since 1993. We do not fund abortion, we fund family planning we know reduces the demand for abortion.

And I have asked Congress to return our support for international family planning to the level it reached in 1995, a level that serves our interests, keeps our promises, and leverages support from other donors around the world. I urge Congress to give us that money without restrictions that hamper the work of family planning organizations and bar them from discussing or debating reproductive health choices. Those congressionally sponsored restrictions impose a destructive double standard. When would we ever accept rules telling Americans at home not even to discuss women’s health and women’s choices? And how in the name of democracy and freedom can we impose those rules on others, which would be illegal here in the United States.

That is not the American way.

We know Americans favor family planning at home and voluntary family planning assistance abroad. We should not cloud what is at stake here. Does the United States want to save lives, promote mother’s and child’s health, and strengthen families and communities around the world? Together, we must make sure the answer is a resounding unequivocal "yes."

Now, I would like to turn to someone who has been a leader for us in the administration and around the world in making this case for women’s health and women’s empowerment, herself a trailblazer and a role model, who has distinguished herself, I believe extraordinarily, as our secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. (Applause.)

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Good job. Very good. (Applause.) Good job. (Applause.)

Well, I want to thank all of the speakers. Secretary Albright, thank you. And I thank Representative Carolyn Maloney, purist though she is. (Laughter.) We need a few.

And I thank Representative Greenwood. So many other members who are here -- Representative Pelosi, who had to leave; Representative Lowey -- have been leaders in this fight.

And I thank particularly the Republicans who have joined in this fight. And Representative Connie Morella here; I was just looking at Connie, thinking she’s probably got more kids and grandkids than anybody else in this audience -- (laughter) -- and, therefore, probably has more standing on this issue -- (laughter) -- than anyone else. And we thank her. And all the members of the House who are here, I thank them.

But mostly, I want to thank you, Dr. Ifenne, for being here. I think you could see what a responsive chord you struck. But when you were speaking and then when Congressman Greenwood got up to speak and he talked about visiting a village in Bolivia -- you know, the fundamental problem here, I believe, is that too many people are voting on this issue based on either pressures they receive or personal values they hold dear, genuinely. But they’ve never had -- they’ve never actually seen this.

If I hadn’t been president, I don’t suppose I ever would have gone to those small villages in Latin America and Africa and India and East Asia, and met with all those village women who are, I think, the most impressive citizens in the entire world today, changing the whole future.

When Dr. Ifenne was talking, I remembered when I was in Senegal I visited with a group of village women who came to see me from their little village. They wanted to come to the capital to see me because Hillary had gone out to see them. And it was a village where genital mutilation was practiced, and these women organized the village and got rid of it. And so they got up, dressed in their beautiful native dress and they came to see me, and they even brought along a handful of men who supported them. (Laughter.)

When you see these things, when you see people in the most basic ways taking control of their lives and you realize it is pro-child, pro-family, pro-every value that any of us ever propose to espouse, you know, what -- I believe that United States -- in my budget, I think it’s the least we should be doing. And frankly, I only proposed that much because I thought it was the most I could get passed.

But if you were to ask me what I have learned as president about our dealings with other countries, I would say that -- two things. One is, large countries too often forget the little people in other countries. You can’t afford it here because they can vote you out. But we know that the citizens are the strength of this country, the same is true everywhere. The other thing I have learned is that we get far more -- that foreign policy is a lot more like real life than most people imagine; you get a lot more, on the whole, out of cooperation than coercion.

And so, Doctor, we thank you for coming. It’s a long way from Nigeria. I hope your trip will prove to be worthwhile. If every member of the United States Congress could hear you, I’m quite confident we would prevail.

For the rest of us, we have to do our best to add to your voices.

But I hope, as you argue this, you will remember to talk to those who have never been to those villages about what we know is true. The empowerment of individuals in difficult circumstances is the ultimate answer to all of our challenges, and this is a very important part of that.

Thank you very much. (Applause.)

SECRETARY OF STATE, MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. President. (Applause.) (More thank-yous.)

As the president pulled out the step for me here, I would like to thank him for letting me stand tall. (Laughs.) (Laughter.) Thank you very much, Mr. President, for that introduction and, more importantly, for the principled stand that you have taken to remove restrictions on free speech and restore full funding for international family planning.

We are proud of you because we know you are right. And we are determined that, this year in this fight, we will stay together and that, together, we will win. (Applause.)

I am very pleased to see my partner, Secretary Shalala, here, who has done so much and who -- together we will win -- and also to have Congresswoman Maloney and Congressman Greenwood here, and other good friends in Congress who are behind this fight and have really shown stalwart leadership.

There are literally millions of women and families around the world who are better off because of your efforts. We are grateful to you and pleased to have you helping to show the way again this spring.

As the president noted, family planning is a vital international health issue. In developing countries, among women of reproductive age, maternity-related complications are the leading cause of death. As many as one in every four of these deaths could have been prevented through family planning.

Some say this is not our problem and that others will meet the need if we walk away. But when we are at our best, Americans don’t walk away from those who are in urgent need. And we certainly should not walk away from the millions of women around the world who would benefit from greater access to family planning.

Others have tried to turn this debate into an issue about arguing about abortion. But the recent experience of Russia and several countries in Eastern Europe provide real-world evidence that family planning helps to reduce the number of abortions. The restrictions, by contrast, are self-defeating. By limiting our foreign NGO partners and the services that they provide, they will lead to more unintended pregnancies, to more unsafe abortions and to more women dying. And by hindering the fundamental right to free speech, they are, in one word, anti-democratic.

The choice that women and their communities have to make because of these restrictions are clearly unacceptable. Manuela Ramos, a USAID partner in Peru with more than 20 years of family planning experience, recently said this about the restrictions, and I quote: "We are now in the position of having to choose between needed funding, on the one hand, and essential democratic participation, on the other. Either way, there is a cost to women’s reproductive health and to democracy." Unquote.

As secretary of State, I have had the opportunity to meet with women’s groups in scores of developing countries, including two weeks ago with the president in India and Bangladesh. Over and over again, I’ve heard the same clear message: Women want to have choices, not only about what jobs they have and how they live, but also about how we plan our families. We want to decide for ourselves how we can best contribute to our communities.

These aspirations by themselves would be enough to warrant our support, but I strongly believe that family planing assistance is not just the right thing to do, it’s also the smart thing to do, and should be an essential element of our foreign policy, because when women have the knowledge and power to make our own decisions, whole societies benefit. And this is how the cycle of poverty is broken and socially constructive values are most readily passed on to the young.

Access to family planning is not just a health issue, it’s a necessary part of our support for economic and political reform in developing countries around the world. And it’s also related to our hopes for protecting the global environment. We all know that a major contributor to the stress we place on the global environment is growth in the world’s population. As I’ve seen in my many visits to South Asia, Africa, Latin America and Haiti, rapidly rising populations make it harder for societies to cope. Even when economies grow, living standards don’t necessarily rise. And even when there is planning, resources of land and water are depleted. Even when overall production of food goes up, more people go hungry.

Many government and community leaders in developing countries now understand the challenge that is posed by rapid population growth, which is why two-thirds of the funding for family planning programs in those countries comes from domestic, not international, sources.

But the developing world still looks to the United States and other donors for support and assistance, so I’m proud that the United States remains the world’s largest single country donor to family planning programs and for our long-standing support to the United Nations Population Fund. I am proud that USAID remains the world’s leading expert in the field, that it helps to provide alternatives to abortion, promote safe pregnancy and delivery practices, and integrates new productive health with other needs, such as child nutrition and prevention of HIV/AIDS. All Americans, including all of Jim and Carolyn’s colleagues on Capitol Hill, should be proud of this leadership.

But we should also be concerned that our contributions to international family planning have declined by more than 30 percent since 1995. President Clinton has already mentioned that he is urging, I think "urging" is the right word -- pushing -- Congress to restore this funding, which would amount to an increase of $169 million over the current budget. I would add that restoring these funds will not change the fact that the United States spends less than 1 percent of its budget on international affairs and less than one- half of 1 percent on development and humanitarian programs.

We are the most prosperous nation on Earth, and we can and should do more. And no initiatives are more deserving of our support than international family planning. The programs we help are voluntary, they improve people’s health, they save people’s lives, they reduce significantly the number of abortions, and they contribute to a more livable world.

And now I would like to introduce a doctor whose work would benefit from the restoration of funding to family planning and a repeal of the gag rule. Dr. Ifenne is a pediatrician by training and the Nigerian country director for the Center for Development and Population Activities. Under her supervision, the Center has launched initiatives aimed at child survival and HIV/AIDS prevention, as well as political and reproductive rights and the economic empowerment of women.

Dr. Ifenne is working on the front line in Africa’s (sic) most populous country, and she is one of the reasons to hope that Nigeria’s new democracy will prove successful in reducing poverty, protecting human rights, and becoming a model for all Africa to follow. Dr. Ifenne. (Applause.)

NIGERIAN COUNTRY DIRECTOR FOR THE CENTER FOR DEVELOPMENT AND POPULATION ACTIVITIES, DR. ENYANTU IFENNE: Madame Secretary, thank you very much for that introduction. Mr. President, Madame Secretary, honorable members of Congress, distinguished guests, it is a great privilege indeed for me to be here and to tell you that the United States government support for family planning makes a world of difference in the lives of women, children and communities in Nigeria.

The real human face of the economic and social crisis in Nigeria is the face of women. In Katsina State in the North, Jamila (sp), aged 15, was married at 12. She got pregnant at 13. This is very common. She was in labor for four days, and at the end of it was left with unimaginable life-threatening damages. She was lucky. Thousands die. Many more are permanently traumatized and handicapped.

Maria (sp) lives in the middle in the state of Benue where one out of every five people is HIV-positive. At 32, she has five children. Six months ago, her sister and brother-in-law died from AIDS. Maria has to care for 11 children. No wonder she says, and I quote, "God, please bail me out." She has an intrauterine contraception device, and will benefit from a USAID-supported Orphans Care Project in her community.

In Imo State, in the southeastern part of Nigeria, a goat is slaughtered and there is celebration in the village whenever a women delivers a 10th child. Chenery (ph), at 28, has seen so many women in her community die from childbirth, and she is determined not to have any more than three children. With your generosity, she has access to contraceptives. She says, and I quote, "I’m able to do things I couldn’t do before. I can run my business. My husband is happy" -- how empowerment makes a world of difference in the lives of her three children.

With USAID support, family planning programs have been linked with democracy and governance programs in Nigeria. This has generated a broad impact. For instance, women networks mobilized 6.5 million women to a National Immunization Day and, in just two days, had 36,000 children immunized. Also, during our last elections, our networks of women registered 2.3 women in rural areas as voters.

We also place an emphasis on the future of the girl child. Rahab (sp) lives in Bauchi state in the north. Her three sons go to school. Her two daughters are kept at home to get married. After she attended a women-rights education training, with your support she decided to send her daughter Ruth to school. At 12, Ruth goes to school. Her marriage will be delayed and, hopefully, a traumatic obstetric experience avoided. In the same community, advocacy by women’s networks established the enrollment of girls in primary school, a very veritable investment in the future of women in their communities.

Jockases Means (sp) lived in the southeastern state of Edo. She bled and died after she underwent female genital mutilation. It is part of a premarital ceremony in her community; Jockases (sp) -- a member of women networks supported by the USAID.

In October 1999, through the efforts of this woman, a law was passed in Edo State, which makes female genital mutilation a criminal offense in Edo State. This is land breaking. But this came about through vibrant debates and public awareness generation. I’d like to tell you that your support enables women in my country to use the newly created democratic space to transform their lives.

I believe that the global gag rule, imposed by the United States Congress, stifles such robust debates on women’s reproductive rights in developing countries like mine.

It is, as one woman said, very un-American. (Laughter.) It is. (Applause.) May I add that it is retrogressive and, indeed, undemocratic. (Laughter.)

I’d like to conclude with my favorite quote. On the International Women’s Day in March, 1997, the first lady, Hillary Clinton, said, and I quote, "We may need to be reminded that democracy is not just about legally protected rights; not elections nor free market economies. It is about the internalization of democratic values in people’s hearts and minds. Democracy is rooted in people’s everyday lives."

After 40 years of stricture, Nigerians are anxious to experience the benefits and dividends of democracy in their everyday lives. Your support resonates these aspirations in thousands of communities where USAID has touched lives. Family planning has released the energy of the woman. It has catalyzed their selfless contributions to impoverished communities. Families have prospered, communities have been enriched as they create a space for women. Thousands of civil society groups have been activated through your generosity and are refreshingly committed to the most needed economic and social reforms in my country.

I urge you and American people to scale up your support and investment in family planning and woman empowerment across the world. We need you to steer the course and in Nigeria, as we take our tentative steps, want you to give us the moral and material support to nurture and sustain democracy in our country.

Mr. President, Madame Secretary, honorable members of Congress, distinguished guests, I thank you for your attention. (Extended applause.)

Thank you very much.

It is my singular privilege and honor to introduce Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney. Congresswoman, you know, is a most devoted and tenacious activist. (Laughter.) She’s an advocate of women’s issues and health care reform, amongst other things. And I feel very privileged indeed to introduce her. Congresswoman Maloney.

CONGRESSWOMAN CAROLYN B. MALONEY (D-NY): (Applause.) President Clinton, Secretary Albright, thank you for using this day to draw attention to the issue of saving women’s lives through international family planning. And it is an honor to stand before so many of you who have devoted your lives to this important issue. You are the activists, foundation and business leaders, government officials, celebrities, and our international guests. You know, every day we in government face problems for which there are no known solutions, such as environmental challenges like global warming, diseases like cancer and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and the AIDS crisis. But family planning presents a different challenge. We already have an answer. We know what works. The question is, do we have the will?

Mr. President, we both have daughters in college. They both have access to the information they need to make informed decisions about their reproductive health. And the fact that they should have an education is a given. But today, in a world of 6 billion, there are a billion young people between the ages of 15 and 25, and there are two billion younger than that. Will those of childbearing age have unrestricted access to the family planning they need? Will the youngest children, the girls, especially, get the education they deserve?

Mr. President, last month you visited India, an area of the world that suffers when we fail to fully fund international family planning programs. As a nation, we offer the young people of the poorest regions of the world a glimpse of the American dream, but all too often, what they get is the nightmare of early teen pregnancy, the nightmare of infant and maternal death.

Yesterday during our Congressional Women’s Caucus forum on saving women’s lives, Charity Ngilu, a member of the parliament in Kenya, told me about a mother there whose teenage daughter died in childbirth. What do we tell this woman? Do we explain there are some politicians in Washington who thought that she didn’t deserve the same information and health care services their own daughters get?

These programs are about saving women’s lives by providing women and girls an education, economic empowerment, and helping both women and men get access to reproductive health services.

This week, Bill Gates donated $57 million to the United Nations Population Fund to support AIDS prevention work in Africa. That doesn’t mean we are off the hook as a donor nation, it’s an indication of how critical this challenge is.

This fall, Mr. President, we’re facing yet another budget fight. It will be your last. (Laughter.) I’m sure you have mixed feelings about that! (Chuckles.) For the year 2001, we’re asking to go back to 1995 funding levels for both USAID and United Nations Population Fund. Your budget request included support at these levels. You call it "forward-thinking." We call it "back to the future." No matter what you call it, it’s the right thing to do. We want that money with no restrictions. Gag rules are enough to make you gag. (Laughter, applause.) In America, it’s unconstitutional. Around the world, it’s unconscionable.

Now, I’ve recently been called a "feminist purist" -- (laughter, applause) -- for pushing -- for pushing too hard on these issues. (Applause.) But maybe I am. (Laughter.) But I’m also an environmental realist and an economic realist. I’m convinced if we meet the challenge of international family planning, it will have a profound impact on America’s future and on the future of the world. It will slow down the degradation of our common environment, it will build more stable economic markets around the world. That’s good for American business and the American worker. And every minute of every day, it will save a women’s life. We must meet that challenge.

Thank you very much, Mr. President, for your commitment. (Applause.)

I would like to introduce my colleague and very good friend, Congressman James Greenwood from Pennsylvania. Congressman Greenwood has been a strong advocate for reproductive rights. He is one of the leading Republican proponents of international family planning because he knows that the life and death of children in the developing world are linked to the well-being of the mother. Last fall, Congressman Greenwood led the effort to avoid the restrictive gag rule that restricts free speech that Americans value so highly. I am very honored to introduce him today. (Applause.)

CONGRESSMAN JAMES GREENWOOD (R-PA): Thank you very much. (Continued applause.) I think that’s because I’m a Republican and I’m here. (Laughter.)

When I came to the United States Congress in 1993, I was a ready-made advocate for choice and for family planning, as I had spent 12 years in the Pennsylvania legislature fighting for those issues. And at the time, on the Republican side of the debate, Mrs. Meyers of Kansas led the debate on the international side. And when she departed Congress, some of my friends asked me if I would take up where she left off and lead the debate, at least on the Republican side of the aisle. And I was hesitant to do that because I said I don’t know this issue that well. I’ve just come to Washington and I don’t know the international side of this issue. And I said the only way I would be willing to do that is if I could see one of these programs operate in the real world.

And so I went to Bolivia, and I learned something in Bolivia that was profoundly impactful on my life. I learned that the government of Bolivia had made it illegal not only to have an abortion, but for a woman to have access to family planning. And the government of Bolivia did a routine survey of its health system. It went to all of the hospitals to see if they had enough hospital beds and what the shortage was. And so they did the survey and they asked what was the cause of every person’s being in the hospital, and they found an astounding fact; they found that one half of the beds in the hospitals in Bolivia were occupied by women who were suffering the results of botched abortions. And those were the consequences of having a policy in which women had not only not access to legal and safe abortions, but had no access to contraceptives or even had the ability to freely discuss their need for those resources.

And those are not the only consequences of a lack of family planning resources in the world.

Six hundred thousand women will die this year because of complications associated with their pregnancies. They will bleed to death, and they will bleed to death primarily because they’ve had too many pregnancies too closely spaced and their bodies were unprepared to handle the last one. While we have been here in the nation’s White House, about 100 women have died, have bled to death, for this reason. Another consequence of the lack of birth control information is 50 million abortions -- 50 million abortions and 75,000 women dying every year because they don’t -- because of botched abortions.

The lack of family planning promotes disease and overpopulation and ignorance, environmental degradation, pressure for immigration and illegal immigration, and, ultimately, warfare. It is not in the interests of our children that we enhance ignorance and warfare and disease and environmental degradation around the world.

And Republicans and Democrats have known this for a very long time, and that’s why these policies have been advanced in a bipartisan fashion in the Congress until just very recently. That’s because Americans, the American people, understand these issues, and they support these policies. And if this issue were put to a referendum today across the country, it would pass overwhelmingly; three to one, this policy would pass. So why, then, is this policy not reflected in the United States House of Representatives? In the people’s House, why is this not reflected? It’s not reflected because too many Americans don’t understand, are not aware of the fact that their representatives are not representing their views on this issue.

And so our purpose today -- our purpose today -- is to awaken Americans to this issue and to call upon every American who cares about the fact that hundreds of thousands of women are dying, and that millions of children are hungry because of these policies, to call your member of Congress and say to your member of Congress, "I wouldn’t let you gag me, and I will not let you gag anyone anywhere around the world." (Applause.)

We are going to have this fight again this spring. We came very, very close to winning. And if this message is delivered by the American people to its representatives, we will win this fight this spring. And because of that, hundreds of thousands of lives will be saved, millions of children will not go hungry for generations to come, and those future generations will thank us for doing so.

Thank you. (Applause.)

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