[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.
____________________