[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 139 (Thursday, September 29, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           SHOWDOWN IN CAIRO

                                 ______


                          HON. JOHN J. LaFALCE

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 28, 1994

  Mr. LaFALCE. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month the United Nations 
concluded its Conference on Population and Development in Cairo. After 
a long and difficult debate, conferees defeated U.S. attempts to 
establish abortion as a fundamental right of all women.
  That is fortunate, for the original U.S. proposal would have run 
roughshod over the deeply held moral and religious beliefs of millions 
of people here and around the world.
  Abortion cuts to the heart of the most fundamental right we cherish 
as Americans--the right to life. Statistics show that most Americans do 
not support unlimited access to abortion at any time for any reason. 
Why then should we attempt to force this proabortion scheme on the rest 
of the world--particularly on countries that have a strong religious 
and cultural tradition of respect for life?
  Abortion advocates were unable to provide a satisfactory answer, and 
were forced to moderate their extreme proabortion agenda. John Leo of 
U.S. News and World Report has written an insightful analysis of the 
Cairo Conference, and of the internal dynamics which produced the final 
consensus. I commend this excellent article to the attention of my 
colleagues.

           [From U.S. News and World Report, Sept. 19, 1994]

                       Playing hardball at Cairo

                             (By John Leo)

       The Cairo population conference will have to go down as one 
     of the oddest adventures of the Clinton administration. Like 
     many a Clinton saga, it follows the basic Lani Guinier story 
     line; the staking out of a highly controversial position, an 
     attempt to discredit opposition, followed by a quiet collapse 
     and an explanation that ``we never meant to do anything like 
     that at all.''
       First the staking out. In March, a State Department 
     ``action cable'' instructed all U.S. embassies to tell their 
     host governments: ``The United States believes that access to 
     safe, legal and voluntary abortion is a fundamental right of 
     all women. * * *''
       The use of the term ``fundamental right,'' as part of an 
     aggressive U.S. lobbying effort, was a breathtaking leap. 
     Since abortion is a fundamental right nowhere outside of 
     North America, this amounted to an attempt to impose the 
     ideological structure of Roe v. Wade on the rest of the 
     world.
       This was not an offer to fund abortion for poor nations 
     that want it. It was an attempt to override laws and customs 
     by establishing some sort of internationally recognized right 
     that might be financially enforced in the future by the U.N. 
     or international aid organizations.
       Tim Wirth, under secretary of state and point man in the 
     U.S. abortion lobbying effort, said that ``a government which 
     is violating basic human rights should not hide behind the 
     defense of sovereignty.'' He meant that once international 
     organizations accept abortion as a fundamental right, it can 
     be cited to trump the laws, constitutions and sovereignty of 
     any nation.


                           costly resistance

       Most Third World nations are heavily dependent on U.S. 
     foreign aid, so the implication left hanging in the air is 
     that resistance to the worldwide version of Roe v. Wade might 
     prove costly. The March cable made it clear that the United 
     States intended to play hardball, stating that ``senior-level 
     diplomatic interventions'' with the World Bank and the 
     International Monetary Fund would ``advance U.S. population 
     policy interest.''
       A spokesman for the U.S. Catholic bishops quoted a 
     Guatemalan government minister as saying: ``If I don't go 
     along on abortion, there goes all my aid money.'' Miguel 
     Prado, an adviser to Peru's delegation, told me much the same 
     thing, complaining about the ``fanatical agenda'' and ``big 
     engine'' of the U.S. abortion lobby at the conference.
       Does the United States have the right to throw its weight 
     around like this in the Third World? It depends on your taste 
     for cultural imperialism and American arrogance.
       Pushing other nations this hard was an extraordinary 
     decision for Clinton to make. He picked a hard-line, hard-
     edged delegation, with a very aggressive game plan based on 
     domestic ``pro-choice'' lobbying: Moral or cultural qualms 
     were dismissed. Abortion was positioned as a woman's issue or 
     a health issue. Abortion was a legitimate tool of population 
     control, a fundamental right. Laws protecting the fetus were 
     ``coercive.'' Abortion should be covered by national health 
     plans.
       Many of the controversial American positions in the draft 
     program of action were set forth in a fog of protective 
     euphemisms. ``Reproductive health services,'' it turned out, 
     included abortion, and the persistent linking of the words 
     ``family planning'' and ``reproductive health services'' was 
     a devious way of expressing an idea that the American 
     delegates didn't dare say out loud: that abortion should be a 
     legitimate family planning method.
       Because the Vatican challenged these linguistic sinkholes 
     and rallied 20 to 30 nations to resist, the Clinton 
     administration backed down. (Surprise!) By week's end, 
     abortion was gone from the document's family planning 
     section, Al Gore was acknowledging national sovereignty and 
     disavowing both the ``fundamental right'' language and 
     abortion as population control.
       The press was so preoccupied writing articles about the 
     pope as a fuddy-duddy obstructionist that it barely noticed 
     that the Vatican had successfully picked apart the American 
     word games and had the Clintonites in full retreat. The 
     Vatican has its own problems here, notably its refusal to 
     accept birth control; but in this case it exerted clear moral 
     leadership, coming to the aid of poor nations being bullied 
     by one particular rich one.
       This whole episode raises serious questions about the 
     Clinton administration. This wasn't an attempt by a ``pro-
     choice'' team to consult and persuade, or to offer clinics to 
     nations that want them. It was a highhanded attempt to ``push 
     the envelope,'' as one delegate put it, by going way beyond 
     what other nations want, and what the American people are 
     willing to have done in their name.
       The administration may be in favor of abortion rights, but 
     it might have shown a decent respect for the obvious moral 
     uneasiness Americans feel on this issue. This is an 
     administration representing 43 percent of the voters in a 
     nation where half the people consider abortion immoral and a 
     fairly large majority thinks the government shouldn't be 
     involved in abortion at all. There is no mandate here for 
     turning America into the world's largest and pushiest 
     abortion lobbyist. This is an administration that needs to 
     get its constituent pressure groups under control.

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