[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 110 (Monday, September 18, 2000)]
[House]
[Page H7699]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




       RESTORE FUNDING FOR INTERNATIONAL FAMILY PLANNING PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. MALONEY of New York. Mr. Speaker, in the past few weeks, 
thousands of doctors from the frontline in the global fight to save 
women's lives were here in our Nation's Capital as part of the 
International Federation of Gynecologists and Obstetricians conference. 
Many of these doctors have launched a petition drive urging the 
President and all of us to end the onerous gag rule that impedes their 
ability to treat their patients.
  For these doctors, the death of some 600,000 women each year from 
pregnancy-related causes is not just a statistic. It represents their 
neighbors, their friends, their relatives, and their patients. It 
represents the fact that one out of every 48 pregnant women in their 
communities will not survive childbirth because of preventable 
complications. For these doctors, the fact that U.S. funding for 
international family planning and related reproductive health programs 
has declined 30 percent since 1995 has very real consequences.
  Last week, we heard from Dr. Friday Okonofua, a physician that heads 
the Action Health Research Center in Nigeria, about his fight to save 
women and children's lives. In Nigeria, 50,000 women die annually from 
pregnancy and childbirth complication, 20,000 of these deaths from 
unsafe abortions.

                              {time}  1915

  This accounts for almost 10 percent of maternal deaths worldwide.
  We also heard from Dr. Godfrey Mbaruka, an ob-gyn in Tanzania. When 
he started working in rural Tanzania 14 years ago, he worked in a 
hospital where there were only two beds for delivery. Many women in his 
clinic would deliver babies on the floor. He saw that women were dying 
in conditions that could have easily been prevented, dying from 
bleeding during and after delivery, and from convulsions during labor 
and from anemia.
  He spoke about the simple changes that additional resources allowed 
him to make, such as training and basic supplies including 
contraceptives, that helped reduce maternal mortality in his clinic by 
50 percent.
  However, this hospital could not sustain this improvement. Resources 
for reproductive health care started to fall in rural Tanzania, just at 
the time when an influx of refugees, some 500,000, of which 70 percent 
are women and children, further drained their resources.
  Then we heard from Dr. Enyantu Ifenne, a pediatrician from Nigeria, 
who spoke at the White House on World Health Day about the differences 
family planning makes in the lives of women in Nigeria.
  She spoke about an adolescent girl, Jemala, who was married at 12 and 
pregnant at 13. Jemala did not have access to desperately needed 
reproductive health care. She was in labor for 4 days and suffered 
life-altering damage.
  Jemala is not alone. Complications of pregnancy in childbirth are 
some of the leading causes of disability for women in developing 
countries.
  These are just a few stories, but there are countless others from 
Colombia to Kenya, from Nigeria to Nepal. Although these countries are 
very different from one another, what unites them is the fact that in 
each one women are dying needlessly because of the lack of access to 
effective family planning programs.
  Last November, Congress enacted the onerous global gag rule, which 
sought to stifle doctors and health providers from advocating for or 
against, with their own money, abortion reforms in their countries. The 
ob-gyns here in New York last week put it best when they said, ``We are 
at a loss to understand how it is that the U.S. is now exporting as a 
matter of foreign policy a position that may expose more women to 
unnecessary health risks.''
  These doctors are calling on the United States to end the global gag 
rule because they cannot understand, as they said in their own words 
``being subjected to such a policy that not only would never be 
tolerated within the United States, but would be unconstitutional if 
applied to citizens of America.''
  Last week, we heard from Maria Isabel Plata, the executive director 
of Profamilia in Colombia, about how difficult it is to explain the gag 
rule to women in her country. In Colombia, unsafe abortion is the 
second leading cause of maternal mortality; and abortion is illegal, 
even in cases to save the life of the mother. Yet local organizations 
are afraid to talk to their policymakers about the impact of these laws 
on women's health.
  Ms. Plata told us that women in her country now view the United 
States as a Nation that believes in two types of women: first, those 
who have human rights, those who can freely debate laws and policies in 
their own country; and, second, Colombian women who do not have those 
same basic human rights.
  Mr. Speaker, for those who would question the value of U.S. dollars 
going overseas for family planning, for those of you who support the 
onerous global gag rule, I'd like you to consider the women of rural 
Tanzania; the adolescent girls from Nigeria; and all of the women 
around the world.
  On behalf of the doctors on the front-line for women and children's 
health around the world, let's restore funding for international family 
planning programs without unconstitutional gag rules.

                          ____________________