[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 26 (Tuesday, March 4, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S1929]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        RELEASE OF FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING AID

 Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I wish to speak briefly today about 
the President's resolution requesting the release of fiscal year 1997 
international family planning funding by March 1, 1997, on which the 
Senate recently deliberated. I am pleased that the President signed 
House Joint Resolution 36 on February 28, 1997, and that funding for 
family planning is now available to those overseas who so desperately 
need such services.
  I supported the President's resolution because I believe we must try 
to limit overpopulation. The world's population increases by 100 
million each year. Overpopulation threatens to exert tremendous social, 
ecological, medical, and economic hardship on much of the world. Family 
planning is one of the most effective ways to combat overpopulation and 
its detrimental results.
  I also supported the President's resolution because family planning 
is one of the best weapons we have to save the lives of women and their 
children in developing countries. The longer we delay the funding for 
family planning, the harder it is to save those lives.
  Let me explain: Family planning enables women to space their births, 
preserving their health and improving the odds that their children will 
be born healthy. Delaying the release of family planning funding 
results in less healthy mothers and children and increased rates of 
maternal and infant mortality.
  Mr. President, I served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, 
a developing country. For families living under the conditions that 
exist in many developing nations, family planning is critical. Without 
it, mothers have great difficulty spacing their births or limiting the 
number of children they bear. As a result, they suffer the tremendous 
physical stress of repeated childbirth, often without the aid of 
physicians, and sometimes die from the great burden they have placed on 
their bodies.
  But mothers are not the only ones who suffer in these cases. Their 
children suffer too. When women have children too close together, the 
length of time they can nurse each child is cut short. Mothers' milk is 
the most nourishing food for children during their early years, 
providing essential nutrients that are often hard to find elsewhere in 
the food supply available to families in developing nations. 
Furthermore, children in such families find themselves competing for 
food with many other siblings, instead of only the few siblings they 
might have if their mothers had access to family planning. As a result, 
they suffer from higher incidents of malnutrition.
  And family planning programs have the added benefit of slowing the 
spread of AIDS by increasing access to appropriate contraceptives.
  Mr. President, the agreement between Congress and the President last 
year was that fiscal year 1997 international family planning funding 
could be released by March 1, 1997, if the administration certified 
that a delay in the release of funds until July 1, 1997 would harm 
overseas family planning programs and their beneficiaries. Indeed, the 
administration has issued such findings and documented its case well. 
Its findings show that a delay in funding would result in serious 
shortage of contraceptives in at least 60 countries, including 50 
million condoms, 500,000 IUD's, and 4.8 million cycles of birth control 
pills. Additionally, the delay would result in the closure of 17 of 95 
overseas programs and higher numbers of maternal and infant deaths.
  Some, Mr. President, have attempted to circumvent last year's 
agreement by saying that family planning aid increases the number of 
abortions. On the contrary, by allowing women to prevent pregnancy, 
family planning reduces the need for and number of abortions. The 
administration's findings speak to this issue, showing that a delay in 
funding would result in increased incidents of unintended pregnancies 
and more abortions and that family planning helps decrease the number 
of abortions worldwide. Furthermore, UNICEF reported in 1996 that 
600,000 women die annually of pregnancy-related causes; 75,000 of those 
deaths are due to self-induced, unsafe abortion.
  Mr. President, it is clear that international family planning aid 
helps protect the health and lives of women and children around the 
world. As we aim to improve the socioeconomic conditions in developing 
countries, let us recognize that family planning is a help, not a 
hindrance, that must be sustained.

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