[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S923-S924]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, the Senate and House will soon vote on the 
President's finding that withholding disbursement of USAID family 
planning funds until July 1, 1997, will cause serious damage to the 
proper functioning of the program.
  It is no surprise that the President reached this conclusion. It is 
beyond dispute that family planning services, including the provision 
of modern contraceptives, are the most effective way to prevent 
unwanted pregnancies and abortions. The examples that the President 
cites to support his finding should be read by every Member of 
Congress. They illustrate the harm these restrictions have already done 
to the program, and the further harm, measured in the numbers of women 
who will die from unsafe abortions that could be prevented, and 
children who will die from disease or starvation because their families 
could not care for them, as well as in added administrative costs, that 
a further delay in disbursement will cause. They also refute the 
flagrantly erroneous claim of the right-to-life lobby, that this vote 
is about whether or not to provide $123 million to organizations that 
fund abortion. Not one dime of these funds can be used for abortion, 
and the vote is only about when, not whether, these funds will be 
disbursed.
  I will have more to say about this at the time of the vote, but I 
want to be sure that all Senators saw the editorial from this 
Saturday's Washington Post, and this Sunday's Post op-ed piece by David 
Broder, which make compelling arguments for upholding the President's 
finding. Perhaps most noteworthy is the quote from former Senator 
Hatfield, who was staunchly pro-life but an equally strong supporter of 
family planning. He said ``it is a proven fact that when contraceptive 
services are not available to women throughout the world, abortion 
rates increase.''
  Mr. President, that should be the beginning and end of this debate. I 
ask unanimous consent that the two articles be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the articles were ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 1, 1997]

                       A Key Family Planning Vote

       In the familiar and frazzling congressional argument over 
     U.S. foreign aid for family planning, the side whose explicit 
     purpose is to oppose abortion has been marking up notable 
     gains. In the past two years, these funds have been cut by a 
     full third, kept from being spent until nine months of the 
     fiscal year have passed and then allowed to be spent 
     (``metered'') only in small monthly sums. Now an important 
     vote is coming up that the family planning side hopes will 
     halt and reverse this legislative harassment of a valuable 
     program. The vote this month is not about funding abortions--
     something prohibited by law and policy anyway. It will simply 
     determine whether funds already appropriated for family 
     planning in fiscal 1997 will be held up until July or 
     released in March.
       Not a great issue, it could be said: a battle over crumbs 
     in Congress. But it is a great issue if you believe as we do 
     that American voluntary family planning programs--carefully 
     drawn, executed and monitored to ensure that they will not be 
     diverted to abortions--have made a central, proven, 30-year 
     contribution to reducing poverty and enhancing human dignity 
     around the world. The effectiveness of well-run programs, in 
     fact, is no longer at issue. They work. It is demonstrable 
     that when programs and funds are reduced--by cuts, delays and 
     policy encumbrances--unintended pregnancies and abortions 
     follow.
       We now come to the large and continuing mystery of these 
     programs. A strange belief that abortions can be made to end 
     if family planning is restricted in what apparently has led 
     antiabortion advocates to work for the denial and diminution 
     of family planning services. ``Chris,'' Sen. Mark Hatfield 
     wrote not long ago to one of those advocates, Rep. Chris 
     Smith (R-N.J.), ``you are contributing to an increase of 
     abortions worldwide because of the funding restrictions on 
     which you insisted in last year's funding bill. It is a 
     proven fact that when contraceptive services are not 
     available to women throughout the world, abortion rates 
     increase. . . . This is unacceptable to me as someone who is 
     strongly opposed to abortion.''
       The global generation now coming of child-bearing age is 
     the largest single generation ever to reach reproductive 
     maturity, the Rockefeller Foundation reports. This is a 
     sobering reminder of the need for the United States to resume 
     its leadership in an important field.
                                                                    ____


                [From the Washington Post, Feb. 2, 1997]

                     A Vote for Poor Women Overseas

                          (By David S. Broder)

       For 30 years, the United States has led an international 
     effort to reduce the toll of maternal deaths and unwanted 
     pregnancies by providing money and technical assistance for 
     family planning programs in underdeveloped countries. Despite 
     its dramatic successes and despite universal agreement that 
     federal funds would not be used to pay for abortions, the 
     program was severely cut and then temporarily suspended last 
     year by antiabortion forces in the House of Representatives.
       Now that issue is about to be revisited in a February 
     congressional vote that will directly affect the life 
     prospects of countless women and children--and provide an 
     important test of the shellshocked House Republican 
     leadership's ability to maintain a degree of cohesion in its 
     fragile majority.
       The background is this: Since the mid-1960s, the United 
     States, through aid to foreign countries and to private, 
     nonprofit organizations, has helped make contraceptive advice 
     and supplies available to couples in poor lands so they can 
     plan the size of their families. Its success is undeniable. A 
     report released last week by the Rockefeller Foundation, a 
     longtime supporter of family planning, noted that in the past 
     three decades, the percentage of women in these countries 
     using contraception has grown from 10 percent to 50 percent 
     and the average number of children they have borne has been 
     reduced from six to three.
       The reduction in family size has helped millions escape 
     from poverty and, for many women, enhanced the prospects for 
     education and a richer life--to say nothing of better health. 
     Fewer risky pregnancies and many fewer abortions are among 
     the benefits.
       No one seriously questions the efficacy of the program and, 
     equally, no one has sought to upset the longstanding ban on 
     U.S. government money paying for abortions. But when the 
     Republicans won control of the House in 1995, they sought to 
     write into law a policy that Presidents Reagan and Bush had 
     imposed by executive order banning U.S. aid to organizations 
     that used their own funds to pay for abortions. President 
     Clinton ended that policy two days after he took office, and 
     the House Republicans sought to overrule him.
       Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), whose opposition to abortion is 
     as fervent as it is sincere, argued that since money is 
     fungible, grants to groups such as the International Planned 
     Parenthood Federation, which offers privately financed 
     abortion counseling and services, were indirectly subsidizing 
     the procedure he despised. But before he retired last month, 
     Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.), as staunch an opponent of 
     abortion as can be found, rejected Smith's logic.
       In a letter to Smith last September, Hatfield wrote: ``I 
     have reviewed the materials you recently sent to my office in 
     response to my request that you provide proof that U.S. funds 
     are being spent on abortion through AID's [the Agency for 
     International Development] voluntary international family 
     planning program. Unfortunately, I do not see anything in 
     these materials to back up your assertion.'' Hatfield said, 
     ``AID has a rigorous process,'' enforced by outside monitors, 
     to carry out the abortion ban. ``In the meantime, Chris,'' he 
     added, ``you are contributing to an increase of abortions 
     worldwide because of the funding restrictions on which you 
     insisted. . . . It is a proven fact that when contraceptive 
     services are not available to women throughout the world, 
     abortion rates increase.''
       In 1995 and 1996, the House majority followed Smith, the 
     Senate Hatfield. To break the impasse and keep the program 
     alive, Clinton agreed last year that if the House Republicans 
     would not insist on reinstating the Reagan-Bush restrictions, 
     he would accept a 35 percent cut in family planning funds and 
     agree to the financing being suspended entirely for six to 
     nine months.

[[Page S924]]

       That agreement guaranteed Clinton an up-or-down floor vote 
     in the House and Senate this month on resuming the program 
     without the Reagan-Bush restrictions. But Smith is pressing 
     House Majority Leader Dick Armey to break the deal 
     Republicans made with the White House last September and 
     allow Smith to bring up his restrictive amendment again, 
     sweetened with a partial rollback of the funding cut. Armey's 
     spokeswoman told me, ``We're leaning toward'' giving Smith 
     what he wants.
       That prospect has impelled many of the three dozen House 
     Republicans who support the international family planning 
     program to write Armey that, rather than yield to Smith and 
     his allies, they are prepared to fight their own leadership 
     and, if necessary, hand them an embarrassing defeat on the 
     first major legislative test since Speaker Newt Gingrich was 
     disciplined for ethics violations. The issue goes before the 
     House Republican Conference later this week. But the women 
     and children who have most at stake around the world will not 
     have a vote.

                          ____________________