    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [April 7, 2000]
    [Pages 656-658]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the Legislative Agenda for International Family Planning
    Assistance
    April 7, 2000

        Thank you very much. Please be seated. Good afternoon, and welcome
    to the White House on this beautiful day. I want to thank all of you who
    have joined us, particularly the Members of Congress who are here.
    Representatives Carolyn Maloney and Jim
    Greenwood will speak in a moment, but I
    also want to acknowledge the presence of Representatives Nita
    Lowey, Nancy Pelosi,
    Ellen Tauscher, Lois Capps, Connie Morella, Joe
    Crowley, and Barbara Lee. Thank you for being here.
        I thank Secretary Shalala for being
    here and for her strong advocacy. And Secretary Albright and Dr. Ifenne of
    Nigeria will talk in a moment. We are joined today by the Ambassadors
    from Albania, Colombia, and Nigeria. We
    welcome them.
        I want to thank the foundations and the nonprofits who are here, who
    have stepped up their own support for women's health and family
    planning, and all the individual citizens who have also come here to
    take part in this endeavor.
        This week Congress begins debate on a new budget. And we have a new
    chance to return America's support for family planning around the world
    to the level it ought to be, a new chance to lift the international
    family planning debate out of partisan politics and back to what it's
    really about, human potential and human lives. I have proposed an
    increase of $169 million in USAID's international family planning
    assistance this year and $25 million to support the U.N. Population
    Fund.
        Members of the administration and I have made clear at every
    opportunity that we are ready to fight, and I know you are ready to help
    us win.
        One person who is not here today, who wanted very much to be here,
    is Hillary, but she's out struggling
    to make sure I gain a place in the Senate spouses club. [Laughter] But I
    would like to quote something she said last year at the Hague forum:
    ``We know that no nation can hope to succeed in the global economy of
    the 21st century when its women and children are trapped in endless
    cycles of poverty, when they have inadequate health care, poor access to
    family planning, limited education, or when they are constrained inside
    social or cultural customs that impoverish their spirits and limit their
    dreams.''
        Two weeks ago I was in a little village in India, a country with
    nearly a billion people and a per capita income of about $450 a year. I
    met the women who, with the smallest amount of encouragement, have
    started the women's dairy cooperative and taken over the local milk
    business. I saw their community center's computer that any village
    woman, poor or nearly illiterate, can use to get the latest information
    on caring for a newborn child.
        Think about how life in that one village is changing for the better
    because women have access to education and health care. Hillary and I
    have seen again and again around the world, in the smallest, poorest
    rural villages on every continent, how empowering women lifts the

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    lives of individuals and transforms the future of communities.
        Family planning is a vital part of that empowerment. It allows women
    and families to make their own choices and plan their own futures. If
    you believe God created women equal, if you believe every society needs
    women's contributions to succeed, then you must be in favor of returning
    decisions on family life to the hands of women and their families.
        Around the world, the complications of pregnancy kill about 600,000
    women every year. We all agree on fighting child and maternal mortality,
    just as we're working to eradicate polio and TB. But maternal mortality
    has been stuck at the same level for more than a decade now, even though
    we know family planning could help women bear healthier children and
    save the lives of 150,000 women a year. If you're in favor of healthy
    mothers raising healthy babies, you ought to be in favor of family
    planning.
        Around the world, 34 million people are now living with AIDS, and in
    the developing world, almost half of them are women. Last year, AIDS
    killed 1.1 million women, leaving broken communities, crippled
    economies, and millions of orphaned children. If you care about stopping
    the spread of AIDS, you ought to care about empowering women to make
    safe choices for themselves and for their children.
        Around the world, more than a billion young people are entering
    their reproductive years, the largest generation in history, and the one
    behind it is 2 billion strong. More than 150 million women worldwide
    would like to limit or space their children, but they have no access to
    contraception. The option these young people have and the choices they
    make will have vital consequences for every one of us and will, in large
    measure, shape the world of the 21st century. So if you're concerned
    about the health of our planet and about the health of everyone on it,
    you ought to support our family planning assistance around the world.
        America has a profound interest in safe, voluntary family planning,
    a moral interest in saving human lives, a practical interest in building
    a world of healthy children and strong societies. And because we are a
    nation that believes in individual freedom and responsibility, we have
    every interest in supporting others around the world who seek the same
    rights and responsibilities we ourselves enjoy.
        That is why we have consistently supported family planning since
    1993. We do not fund abortion. We fund family planning we know reduces
    the demand for abortion. And I have asked Congress to return our support
    for international family planning to the level it reached in 1995, a
    level that serves our interests, keeps our promises, and leverages
    support from other donors around the world.
        I urge Congress to give us that money without restrictions that
    hamper the work of family planning organizations and bar them from
    discussing or debating reproductive health choices. Those
    congressionally sponsored restrictions impose a destructive double
    standard. When would we ever accept rules telling Americans at home not
    even to discuss women's health and women's choices? And how in the name
    of democracy and freedom can we impose those rules on others, which
    would be illegal here in the United States? That is not the American
    way.
        We know Americans favor family planning at home and voluntary family
    planning assistance abroad. We should not cloud what is at stake here.
    Does the United States want to save lives, promote mother's and child's
    health, and strengthen families and communities around the world?
    Together, we must make sure the answer is a resounding, unequivocal yes.
        Now I would like to turn to someone who has been a leader for us in
    the administration and around the world in making this case for women's
    health and women's empowerment, herself a trailblazer and a role model,
    who has distinguished herself, I believe extraordinarily, as our
    Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright.

    [At this point, Secretary Albright made brief remarks, followed by Dr. Enyantu Ifenne, Director, Center
    for Development and Population Activities of Nigeria, and Representatives Maloney and Greenwood.]

        The President. Well, I want to thank all of the speakers. Secretary
    Albright, thank you. And I thank
    Representative Carolyn Maloney, purist
    though she is. [Laughter] We need a few. [Laughter]
        And I thank Representative Greenwood;
    so many other Members who are here: Representative Pelosi, who had to leave, Representative Lowey have been leaders in this fight. And I thank,
    particularly, the Republicans who have joined in this fight.
    Representative Connie

    [[Page 658]]

    Morella here. I was just looking at
    Connie thinking, she's probably got more kids and grandkids than anybody
    else in this audience--[laughter]--and therefore probably has more
    standing on this issue than anyone else. And we thank her and all the
    Members of the House who are here. I thank them.
        But mostly, I want to thank you, Dr. Ifenne, for being here. I think you could see what a
    responsive chord you struck. But when you were speaking and then when
    Congressman Greenwood got up to speak and
    he talked about visiting a village in Bolivia, you know, the fundamental
    problem here, I believe, is that too many people are voting on this
    issue based on either pressures they receive or personal values they
    hold dear, genuinely. But they've never actually seen this.
        If I hadn't been President, I don't suppose I ever would have gone
    to those small villages in Latin America and Africa and India and East
    Asia and met with all those village women who are, I think, the most
    impressive citizens in the entire world today, changing the whole
    future.
        When Dr. Ifenne was talking, I
    remembered, when I was in Senegal, I visited with a group of village
    women who came to see me from their little village. They wanted to come
    to the capital to see me, because Hillary had gone out to see them. And it was a village where
    genital mutilation was practiced. And these women organized the village
    and got rid of it. And so they got up, dressed in their beautiful native
    dress, and they came to see me, and they even brought along a handful of
    men who supported them. [Laughter]
        When you see these things, when you see people in the most basic
    ways taking control of their lives, and you realize it is pro-child,
    pro-family, pro-every value that any of us ever proposed to espouse, I
    believe that the United States is--in my budget, I think it's the least
    we should be doing. And frankly, I only proposed that much because I
    thought it was the most I could get passed.
        But if you were to ask me what I have learned as President about our
    dealings with other countries, I would say two things. One is, large
    countries too often forget the little people in other countries. You
    can't afford it here, because they can vote you out. But we know that
    the citizens are the strength of this country; the same is true
    everywhere. The other thing I have learned is that we get far more--that
    foreign policy is a lot more like real life than most people imagine.
    You get a lot more, on the whole, out of cooperation than coercion.
        So, Doctor, we thank you for coming. It's
    a long way from Nigeria. I hope your trip will prove to be worthwhile.
    If every Member of the United States Congress could hear you, I'm quite
    confident we would prevail. For the rest of us, we have to do our best
    to add to your voices.
        But I hope as you argue this, you will remember to talk to those who
    have never been to those villages about what we know is true. The
    empowerment of individuals in difficult circumstances is the ultimate
    answer to all of our challenges, and this is a very important part of
    that.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:02 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Ambassadors to the U.S. Petrit
    Bushati of Albania, Luiz Alberto Moreno of Colombia, and Jibril Muhammed
    Aminu of Nigeria.