[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 28 (Tuesday, March 5, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E275-E276]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   THE IMPACT OF FAMILY PLANNING CUTS

                                 ______


                       HON. CONSTANCE A. MORELLA

                              of maryland

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, March 5, 1996

  Mrs. MORELLA. Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my dismay and 
disappointment with recent legislation that devastates international 
family planning programs.
  Although this is not an abortion issue, we have opted to treat it 
like one. People on both ends of the abortion issue spectrum have 
argued that they want to strengthen the family, yet the impact of these 
funding cuts will result in millions of couples losing contraceptive 
services, millions of unwanted pregnancies, and inevitably millions of 
abortions. In addition, this funding cut will stymie maternal and 
infant health programs, as well as education about sexually transmitted 
diseases/HIV, around the world as agencies shuffle what little 
appropriations they have.
  This is not the way to promote the family. The Washington Post 
published a Judy Mann column February 2 which addresses these 
devastating cuts. I submit for the consideration of my colleagues.

                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1996]

                    Extracting Their Pound of Flesh

                             (By Judy Mann)

       Congressional opponents of family planning scored a major 
     victory last week by passing legislation that will strangle 
     U.S. support for international contraceptive services.
       Led by House Republicans and backed by the Christian 
     Coalition and other right-wing groups that oppose abortion, 
     these efforts ironically will lead to an additional 200,000 
     illegal and unsafe abortions, according to Nils Daulaire, 
     deputy assistant administrator for policy and child health 
     policy adviser at the U.S. Agency for International 
     Development.
       Damage to family-planning programs will be far more 
     extensive than it appeared from early news reports about the 
     temporary budget agreement. The legislation will decrease by 
     35 percent the amount of money available to spend on 
     international family-planning programs--that is, it will cut 
     the budget by nearly $200 million. USAID will not be 
     permitted to spend any of its appropriation for family 
     planning until July 1, nine months after the start of the 
     fiscal year, which, in Daulaire's words, will cause a 
     ``tremendous disruption in services.'' It is the only 
     international assistance program

[[Page E276]]

     that is restricted in this way. After July 1, spending cannot 
     exceed 6.7 percent per month of the total appropriated, which 
     means that only a small amount of the whole will actually be 
     spent before Oct. 1, when a new fiscal year begins.
       Daulaire projects that as many as 5,000 more women will die 
     over the next year as a result of unsafe abortions and 
     mistimed pregnancies, and that roughly 500,000 additional 
     births will result, putting further stress on child-survival 
     programs that are strained already. Further, he says, the 
     piecemealing restrictions imposed by Congress will increase 
     administrative costs by four to five times, costing U.S. 
     taxpayers $750,000 to $1 million more.
       Most of the campaign against family planning has been 
     carried out in the guise of preventing U.S. foreign aid funds 
     from paying for abortions, although that practice has been 
     banned since 1973. This current fight began last year when 
     House Republicans voted for a measure sponsored by Rep. 
     Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) that would have prevented any 
     foreign nongovernmental organization from receiving any U.S. 
     family-planning money if it attempted to provide information 
     about abortion or lobby its own government to change 
     regulations regarding abortion. The Senate refused to go 
     along with the Smith language, the White House said it 
     would veto any bill with this language, and a stalemate on 
     the whole foreign aid package ensued.
       Pressure to get a foreign operations appropriation bill 
     mounted steadily after Oct. 1, when checks to Israel and 
     Egypt weren't delivered, foreign aid missions weren't getting 
     their funding, their contractors weren't being paid and 
     population programs weren't being funded at all, according to 
     Victoria Markell, vice president of Population Action 
     International, a nonprofit, research-based advocacy 
     organization that receives no federal funding.
       The Smith language was cut out of the final bill last 
     Thursday in the face of growing public outrage over the 
     prospect of yet another government shutdown. ``The ideologues 
     had to come up with some formulation that will restrict 
     population-planning spending as much as they could,'' Markell 
     says. Neither the Senate nor the White House wanted the blame 
     for another government shutdown.
       ``It's such an attack on women and children,'' Markell 
     says. ``How in the world can you pretend to care about child 
     survival when we know that women and mothers are going to die 
     without access to family planning?'' She cites a World Health 
     Organization statistic that 90 percent of children in 
     developing countries who lose their mothers in delivery will 
     die by their first birthday. ``We know that if women have 
     fewer children, the children they have live longer and are 
     healthier and everyone benefits.''
       ``One of the key priorities of our family-planning program 
     is to reduce abortions worldwide,'' Daulaire says. Yet, when 
     it became clear that the Smith language gutting family-
     planning services would not pass, ``they decided that the way 
     to extract a cost was by severely restricting AID's ability 
     to provide family-planning services around the world. They 
     understood very clearly that this language would mean not 
     just a 35 percent reduction in funding but was really much 
     harsher.''
       What is clear from this exercise is that the conservative 
     Christian bloc of House Republicans is targeting 
     international contraceptive and family-planning services, not 
     just abortion services. And the people who will suffer are 
     women and children in the poorest parts of the world. Is that 
     the Christian way?

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