[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 25, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1580-S1581]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         POPULATION ASSISTANCE

 Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. President, I ask that the following 
background statement be printed in the Record.
  The statement follows:

    [From the National Right to Life Committee, Inc., Jan. 28, 1997]

   Background on the Clinton administration's Promotion of Abortion 
     Through the State Department and the Foreign Aid Program for 
                       ``Population Assistance''

       Abortion should not, and need not, be interjected into the 
     ``population assistance'' program as the Clinton 
     Administration has done. At the end of the Bush 
     Administration, under the pro-life ``Mexico City Policy'' 
     (described below), the U.S. ``population assistance'' program 
     provided 45% of the total pool of ``family planning'' funds 
     contributed by all donor nations. Much of this money went to 
     some 400 private foreign organizations that provided non-
     abortion services in developing countries.
       NRLC takes no position on contraception, or on federal 
     funding of contraceptive services, whether in the U.S. or 
     overseas. Throughout the Reagan and Bush Administration, NRLC 
     testified that it had no objection regarding the increases in 
     ``population assistance'' funding that were approved during 
     that era, because the Reagan-Bush ``Mexico City Policy'' 
     governed those funds. The ``Mexico City Policy,'' in effect 
     from 1984 through 1992, provided that U.S. population 
     assistance funds would not support private foreign 
     organizations that perform abortions (except in cases of life 
     endangerment, rape, or incest) or lobby to legalize abortion 
     in foreign nations.
       However, President Clinton radically changed the thrust of 
     the program. Upon taking office, he immediately nullified the 
     Mexico City Policy. Subsequently, the Clinton Administration 
     granted massive funding to certain organizations that are 
     heavily involved in promoting the legalization and provision 
     of abortion in foreign nations, chief among these the London-
     based International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). 
     (IPPF-London had refused to accept U.S. funds under the 
     Mexico City Policy. However, about half [57] of IPPF's 
     national affiliates did accept U.S. funds under the ``Mexico 
     City'' conditions.)
       IPPF-London has often made it clear that the legalization 
     of abortion and the expansion of abortion networks are among 
     its primary goals. The IPPF's 1992 mission statement, 
     Strategic Plan-Vision 2000, repeatedly and unambiguously 
     instructs IPPF's 140 national affiliate organizations to work 
     to legalize abortion as part of a mandate to ``advocate for 
     changes in restrictive national laws, policies, practices and 
     traditions.'' Precise strategies for accomplishing this end 
     are discussed in the summary of IPPF's Mauritius Conference. 
     (See ``Promotion of Abortion in the Developing World by the 
     IPPF,'' Population Research Institute report, 1996) 
     ``Progress'' toward abortion legalization that IPPF has 
     recently accomplished in specific nations (including 
     Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Uruguay) are described in 
     the IPPF Annual Report Supplement in 1994-95.
       Donald P. Warwick of the Harvard Institute for 
     International Development has written the IPPF ``has in word 
     and deed been one of the foremost lobbyists for abortion in 
     the developing countries.'' In a 1996 report, the Population 
     Research Institute observed: ``No other organization has done 
     more to spread abortion throughout the world than the 
     International Planned Parenthood Federation . . . the IPPF 
     has forcefully and repeatedly stated its intention to assist 
     in the legalization of abortion in every country of the world 
     . . . and has also voiced its willingness to equip abortion 
     centers and provide the expertise required to perform 
     abortions on a massive scale.''
       The Clinton Administration has pressured foreign 
     governments to get in line with its forcefully declared 
     doctrine that legal ``abortion is a fundamental right of all 
     women.'' Indeed, on March 16, 1994, Secretary of State Warren 
     Christopher sent an ``action cable'' to all U.S. diplomats 
     and consular posts. The cable called for ``senior level 
     diplomatic interventions'' to urge host governments to 
     support U.S. priorities for an upcoming U.N. population 
     conference. The cable read: ``The priority issues for the 
     U.S. include assuring . . . access to safe abortion. [. . .] 
     The United States believes that access to safe, legal and 
     voluntary abortion is a fundamental right of all women.''
       In May, 1993, Under Secretary of State Tim Wirth gave a 
     speech on population control in which he proclaimed, ``A 
     government which is violating basic human rights should not 
     hide behind the defense of sovereignty . . . Our position is 
     to support reproductive choice, including access to safe 
     abortion.'' At about the same time, Mr. Wirth said that the 
     Administration goal was to make this ``reproductive choice'' 
     available to every woman in the world by 2,000 AD. At the 
     1994 Cairo conference on population control, sponsored by the 
     United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and at more recent 
     U.N.-sponsored conferences, the Clinton Administration has 
     zealously promoted this doctrine, and has brought pressures 
     to bear on delegates that resist it.
       Groups that support the Administration's abortion doctrine 
     often insist that ``U.S. law already prohibits the use of 
     population assistance funds for abortion.'' This is a red 
     herring. The ``existing law'' referred to is the 1973 Helms 
     Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act, it has been 
     construed very narrowly, as barring the direct use of U.S. 
     funds to pay for abortion procedures overseas. But the real 
     issue is not the direct payment for individual abortion 
     procedures, but the Clinton Administration's perversion of 
     the population assistance program to promote the legalization 
     and expansion of access to abortion as a birth control method 
     in developing nations. It is noteworthy that after less 
     than three months in office, the White House urged 
     Congress to repeal the Helms Amendment, declaring abortion 
     to be ``part of the overall approach to population 
     control'' (White House press security, April 1, 1993).
       The Clinton Administration's extrapolations regarding how 
     many abortions U.S. funds supposedly ``prevent'' completely 
     ignore the abortion-promoting activities of the 
     Administration and those of its taxpayer-funded surrogates 
     such as IPPF. For example, they completely disregard the vast 
     increases in the number of abortions that result when a 
     nation's laws protecting the unborn are removed. As Stanley 
     Henshaw, deputy director of research for the Alan Guttmacher 
     Institute, a pro-abortion advocacy group, acknowledged in a 
     June 16, 1994 document, ``In most countries, it is common 
     after abortion is legalized for abortion rates to rise 
     sharply for several years, then stabilize, just as we have 
     seen in the United States.''
       The Clinton Administration's overseas abortion crusade is 
     on a collision course with the laws, and the cultural and 
     religious values, that predominate in most developing 
     nations, including nearly all of Latin America, most of 
     Africa, and many places in Asia. About 95 U.N. member states 
     have laws that permit abortion only in narrowly defined 
     circumstances. These laws cover 37 percent of the world's 
     population, or over two billion (2,000,000,000) persons. 
     (Under Secretary Wirth has been quoted as saying that all 
     except 17 U.N. countries ``permit'' abortion, but this is 
     highly misleading, since he refers only to nations with total 
     bans on abortion. Typical abortion laws in developing 
     nations, permitting abortion only to save the life of the 
     mother or in other narrowly defined circumstances, are far 
     removed from the Administration's ``fundamental right,'' 
     abortion-on-demand doctrine.)


                    action during the 104th congress

       During 1995, the House of Representatives repeatedly voted 
     in favor of amendments offered by Congressman Chris Smith (R-
     NJ), the chairman of the House International Relations 
     Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, to 
     restore the Reagan-Bush policy. The Smith language would deny 
     U.S. ``population assistance'' funds to foreign private 
     organizations that perform abortions (except life of the 
     mother, rape, or incest), that violate foreign abortion laws, 
     or that lobby to change foreign abortion laws. (Note: neither 
     the Mexico City Policy, nor the Smith amendments, placed any 
     restrictions no counseling regarding legal abortions.) 
     However, the White House threatened to veto any bill that 
     contained Rep. Smith's language, which contributed to the 
     defeat of the House-passed language in the Senate.
       Finally in January, 1996, in order to disentangle the 
     foreign operations appropriations bill (HR 1868) from this 
     debate, a compromise was reached under which (1) the

[[Page S1581]]

     Smith policy language was dropped, (2) FY 1996 
     appropriations for population assistance was reduced by 
     35%, and (3) a formula was adopted to delay USAID's 
     ability to obligate some of the appropriate money, in 
     order to allow Congress further opportunities to curb the 
     Administration's pro-abortion crusade.
       During 1996, the House offered a compromise in the form of 
     a far weaker pro-life provision, the ``Callahan 50/50 
     Amendment.'' Under this provision, organizations that 
     violated the ``Mexico City'' conditions would have remained 
     eligible for funding, but at only 50% of the FY 1995 level. 
     (This restriction would have applied only to new, FY 1997 
     funds--not to the $303 million carried over from FY 1996.) In 
     a September conference committee, appropriators coupled the 
     Callahan provision to additional language that would have 
     allowed obligation of an additional $293 million in 
     population-control funding during FY 1997--for a total of as 
     much as $713 million. But White House Chief of Staff Leon 
     Panetta told the appropriators that President Clinton would 
     veto the entire omnibus funding bill rather than accept this 
     proffered compromise.
       Because of this veto threat, the final September funding 
     bill [now PL 104-208] contained no new policy language to 
     constrain the Administration's pro-abortion activities--but 
     again set a population-control funding level about one-third 
     lower than the 1995 figure, and placed ``metering'' 
     limitations on how soon the Administration can obligate those 
     funds.
       This episode perfectly illustrated the White House's 
     ideological commitment to keeping abortion as a fundamental 
     component of the program, at all costs--reflecting its close 
     alliance with organizations such as the Planned Parenthood 
     Federation of America (PPFA), an organization that has openly 
     proclaimed its operating ``principal'' that ``reproductive 
     freedom is indivisible'' (i.e., that abortion must not be 
     treated differently from other birth control options). 
     Immediately following the episode described above, Gloria 
     Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of 
     America, said her side had won ``a moral victory in defeating 
     abortion restrictions,'' but added, ``The cost has been 
     enormous.''
       The September law also guaranteed the White House a chance 
     to substantially increase the amount of money that it can 
     obligate during FY 1997. Under the law, President Clinton 
     must file a ``finding'' with Congress no later than February 
     1, stating his opinion regarding the effects of funding cuts 
     on ``the proper functioning of the population planning 
     program.'' The law further requires that, before the end of 
     February, both the House and the Senate must vote on a joint 
     resolution which, if approved, would release an additional 
     $123 million in population-control funds during the current 
     fiscal year--without any restrictions on the use of these 
     funds for the Administration's pro-abortion 
     activities.

                          ____________________