[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 126 (Thursday, October 7, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10687-S10688]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 MAKING THE MOST OF FOREIGN ASSISTANCE: FAMILY PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today I would like to talk about a 
critical subject, the need to support family planning as part of our 
international development agenda.
  Family planning saves lives. It is a basic health service, especially 
in parts of the world such as Malawi where 1 in 7 mothers die in 
childbirth or Mozambique where 137 infants die per 1,000 live births 
and where life expectancy is just 37 years.
  This is a health issue and it is a development issue because the two 
are virtually always related.
  Ten years ago, members of the United Nations met in Cairo to draft a 
20-year action plan to alleviate poverty through women's empowerment 
and universal access to reproductive healthcare.
  Recently, a new report by UNFPA has come out, ``The Cairo Consensus 
at Ten: Population, Reproductive Health, and the Global Effort to End 
Poverty.'' This report assesses how far we have come and how far we 
have to go and argues that we have to mobilize political will and 
international assistance if we are going to build on previous gains.
  This report revealed that, a decade after the Cairo meeting, more 
than 350 million couples still lack access to a full range of family 
planning services. It found that almost 530,000 women die each year 
from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, mostly from preventable 
causes. It also found that 2 out of every 5 people on the planet still 
struggle to survive on less than $2 a day, and many of them earn less 
than half that tiny amount.
  The report concluded:

       Policy makers have been slow to address the inequitable 
     distribution of health information and services that helps 
     keep people poor . . . Developing countries that have reduced 
     fertility and mortality by investing in health and education 
     have higher productivity, more savings and more productive 
     investment, resulting in faster economic growth. Enabling 
     people to have fewer children, if they want to, helps to 
     stimulate development and reduce poverty, both in individual 
     households and in societies. Smaller families have more to 
     invest in children's education and health. Rapid population 
     growth contributes to environmental stress, uncontrolled 
     urbanization and rural and urban poverty.

  However, United States funding for UNFPA, which Congress has 
repeatedly passed, has not been distributed because the administration 
has refused to do so. Releasing the funds for UNFPA, which the 
administration has cancelled for the last 3 years, is a great way to 
help countries alter this template of maternal and child mortality, 
poverty, and under development.
  This issue isn't about coercive abortion in China. UNFPA has a 
program to end coercive abortion in China. It is not about abortion at 
all. The UNFPA does not provide any support for abortion.
  This is about providing health services for desperately poor women 
and their families.
  The administration's own investigative team looked into UNFPA and

[[Page S10688]]

found no evidence of wrongdoing and urged immediate and unconditional 
release of these funds.
  Study after study has shown that development is fundamentally about 
women: dollars go further and programs mean more when they reach women. 
Increasing women's access to education, health care, and human rights 
brings enhanced child health, improved food production, lower 
population growth rates, and higher incomes--in short, better quality 
of life for women and their families.
  Reproductive health is an important component of this agenda, 
especially when we look at maternal and child mortality rates. That is 
why it is so important that we support the UNFPA and in the process 
advance our other foreign assistance goals.

                          ____________________