[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 199 (Thursday, December 14, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              WORLD HAS A CHOICE: FAMILY PLANNING OR CHAOS

                                 ______


                          HON. CHARLES WILSON

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 14, 1995

  Mr. WILSON. Mr. Speaker, as the ranking minority member of the 
Appropriations Committee on Foreign Operations I wanted to bring to 
everyone's attention once again an issue which we cannot ignore and 
which figured prominently in floor debate yesterday.
  We cannot keep putting money toward economic assistance in developing 
countries without first addressing the population problem through 
family planning funding. Continuing to turn our backs on this issue and 
relying solely on development aid is like pouring water in a leaky 
bucket.
  The Houston Chronicle recently ran an op-ed piece that address these 
concerns very well. I submit it now, for your consideration.

              [From the Houston Chronicle, Dec. 11, 1995]

              World Has a Choice: Family Planning or Chaos

                           (By Werner Fornos)

       As the year draws to a close, the consequences of rapid 
     population growth in a world that already has more than 5.7 
     billion--79 percent of them living in the world's poorest 
     countries and regions--are being brought into sharp focus.
       Some 600,000 square miles of forest have been cut in the 
     last 10 years, much of it attributable to the need for more 
     living space and firewood, still the main source of cooking 
     and heating fuel in the developing world.
       Twenty-six billion tons of topsoil have been lost.
       Regional fresh water supplies are dangerously low. Rivers 
     are drying up and many lakes are at their lowest levels in 
     history.
       All 17 of the world's major fisheries are being exploited 
     at or beyond their capacity.
       Eighty-eight nations have been classified by the United 
     Nations World Food Program as low-income, food-deficit 
     countries, unable to grow or buy enough food to accommodate 
     their inhabitants.
       There are nearly 960 million illiterates in the world 
     today, but 130 million children--including 90 million girls--
     are denied access to primary schooling.
       About half a million women die every year of pregnancy-
     related causes.
       All this in a world growing by nearly 100 million people a 
     year.
       Meanwhile, a myopic majority in the U.S. House of 
     Representatives, overlooking these facts regarding the 
     interrelationship between overpopulation, poverty, maternal 
     and child mortality and environmental degradation, continues 
     to confuse--either by design or denial--family planning with 
     abortion.
       The House has voted twice this year to deny funding to the 
     United Nations Population Fund, the largest provider of 
     multilateral population assistance to poor countries, so long 
     as it continues to support voluntary family planning programs 
     in the People's Republic of China. The rationale behind these 
     votes is rooted in allegations that the Chinese national 
     population program relies on coercive abortion, though not 
     a dime of U.N. assistance to China has ever been found to 
     finance abortion, forced or voluntary, there or anywhere 
     else.
       Ironically, the net effect of withdrawing U.S. assistance 
     to the fund (the 1996 contribution request for that agency is 
     $35 million) does little to penalize China. But it does 
     needlessly punish women and children in the world's poorest 
     countries that seek agency support and who are placed in 
     harms way as potential victims of pregnancies that occur too 
     soon, too frequently and too closely spaced.
       In fact, there are an estimated 350 million couples in the 
     world who do not have access to a full range of family 
     planning services, and it has been conservatively estimated 
     that 120 million of these couples would use these services if 
     they were available.
       But the irony does not stop there. The U.N. Population 
     Fund's assistance to China and 140 other countries is 
     primarily in the areas of establishing and strengthening the 
     delivery of conventional modern family planning information, 
     education and services. Under its mandate, the fund cannot be 
     involved in the delivery of abortion services.
       It should be remembered that China with 1.2 billion people, 
     is the most populous country in the world. By the year 2030, 
     the population of China is expected to consume an amount of 
     grain equivalent to the entire world grain production of 
     1994.
       The U.S. Senate, contending there is a sufficient safeguard 
     in the existing prohibition against the U.N. agency using any 
     funds in China that have been contributed by the United 
     States, has rejected both efforts of the House of 
     Representatives to cut off the contribution to the Population 
     Fund.
       The Senate apparently understands what the House cannot 
     seem to grasp: Family planning is the first line of defense 
     against abortion.

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